The Invincible

The Invincible - planet Regis III, scientific expedition and strange absence of traces of the crew. The player takes on the role of astrobiologist Jasnah, who is looking for comrades and figuring out what happened to the previous station. The open world is small but dense: each location serves for conversations and discoveries. Colleagues leave notes in terminals, and some of these lines are more important than any explanation. Visually, the project is presented in the spirit of retrofuturism with atompunk: bulky devices, lamp panels and remote controls, as if assembled in the fifties. This makes the fictional space race feel familiar from documentary footage. The station’s equipment can be used for its intended purpose: the instruments help examine samples. This is a first-person adventure: exploration of locations, conversations, documents and decisions. There are almost no fights, but there is a choice of lines and actions, and how the story ends depends on them. You can interact with almost all of the station’s equipment, and this provides additional information. The planet greets you with silence and sand, and at first it is not clear whether anyone is alive here or not. Conversations with the remaining people and notes give a picture gradually, and it is better not to ask some questions out loud. The philosophical basis of the famous novel is preserved here, although the plot is different. Several endings depend on how carefully the heroine listened to her colleagues. Conversations with the team proceed calmly, as long as the finds are not involved. Locations alternate with sandstorms, and this adds anxiety without any monsters. For everyone who loves slow science fiction, where atmosphere and thought are more important than shootouts.