Invisible Inc is the next game from studio Klei Entertainment who has made a name for themselves for having great visual design and gameplay. Their previous two games: Don’t Starve and Mark of the Ninja were two of my favorites. With Invisible Inc, the developers are going back to the stealth genre but with a few unique touches.
The following spotlight is based on Early Access build three. Screenshots and comments here may not represent subsequent versions or the release build of the game. Klei is putting out major builds about once a month and are looking to finish the game by early 2015.
Stealth and Subterfuge:
Invisible Inc takes place in the future where corporations run the world with money and information up for grabs by the best spies. You play as an operator of a spy network whose job it is to infiltrate secure locations to prepare for some major incident in 72 hours.
You’ll begin the game with two spies available and can unlock more as you play. Spies have basic stats relating to movement, hacking, inventory and theft along with a character specific special ability. Once you’ve chosen your team and passive perks, you’ll choose a mission which takes time away from your 72 hour window.
The missions themselves all feature procedurally generated levels. When you select the mission on the map, you’re given an idea of what rewards you could find — new agents, upgrades, extra money etc.
It’s very interesting to look at Invisible Inc after playing the excellent Mark of the Ninja that managed to do stealth in a very clean and easy to understand way. With Invisible Inc, the developers have created a very challenging system designed to test how well you are making decisions.
The rules are as follow: Agents have action points or AP that they consume by performing any action. Moving through the buildings is handled in turn based style. Your agents go first then when your turn is up, all guards will perform their actions. Besides movement, you can also hack things like cameras, turrets and more based on your current energy supply to get around easier.
Your starting crew and bonuses will dictate your strategy early on.
Guards have a vision pattern highlighted by red on the ground. The red is split between light and dark red to represent what they can sort of see and what they can clearly see respectively. Move into the light area and the enemy will come searching to see what he just glanced.
Get spotted in the red and the guard will have you trapped. At that point you have two options, you have one action to get that agent out of harm’s way or your other agent must disable the guard.
Failure to do either and the guard will shoot your agent and kill them unless you bought any healing items with you. Now I bet some of you are thinking that the game is all about taking guards out one at a time until the level is clear, but Klei has thought of that.
Quick and Clean:
What makes Invisible Inc so interesting is how the game is designed to force you to move quick but at the same time have a plan and that is done by limiting your options. Guns and ammo are rare and your main option for dealing with guards is to knock them out. Agents come with a taser like device that they can use while in overwatch or from behind.
However guards are only knocked out for a few turns. You can keep a guard out longer by pinning them to the ground or moving them, but that ties up one of your agents to be a babysitter. Once the guard wakes up, they are obviously going to start hunting for the person who clobbered them.
In this situation, there appears to be no way to get around this stationary guard without being spotted or knocking him out.
And while guns are the safer option, they play into Invisible Inc’s “timer” in a manner of speaking. An alert rank is displayed at the top of the screen that increases after each turn.
When the meter completely fills up, the alert level will go up by one. At each higher level, new threats are added to the level to make it harder — cameras go online, new guards appear, etc. As you can probably guess, killing guards will raise the alert even quicker.
What all this adds up to is a game of cat and mouse where you want to do everything you can to avoid interacting with guards. The game is also a rogue-like in that agents that are killed are gone for good, forcing you to weigh how long you spend on a mission and when to get out.
Your rewards come in the form of money that can be used to buy items and upgrade your agents and a score that is tied to the Meta game of unlocking new agents and items for subsequent games.
Combine all that with an impressive art style and Invisible Inc is a very strong game even while in early access. But the plan does have a few holes in it as the game’s main bullet point can also cause trouble.
No Plan B:
The main problem with Invisible Inc at the moment is the difficulty and learning curve. Even playing the game on the easy setting, things are left up to luck at how the levels are built to determine your chance at surviving. One time you may have a level where the exit is right next to you with no guards, other times you may have rooms with multiple guards from all sides.
Figuring out detection fields is very important as guard patterns only change when they are searching for you.
Because of how the alert system and guards work, it’s very easy for situations to snowball and at the start of the game you really don’t have the options and items to get out jams. And since this is a rogue-like, you’re always one unlucky level or turn from losing your agents and getting a game over.
There were times starting out where I encountered rooms with multiple guards with overlapping detection fields and there didn’t seem to be a way to get around without being spotted.
Another rogue-like concern is how limited your options are for getting people out alive. In order to escape any level, you need to find the elevator which as with everything else is in a randomized position when you start. If you get in trouble and things escalate before you can find it, you can pretty much kiss your agents and your game good bye.
The tutorial is also a bit light and the game could probably use a few more advanced lessons on avoiding detection and the hacking options. One very important detail that isn’t mentioned is you can hide behind the wall next to doors and guards will not detect you when they walk through. Something like that should really be a part of the tutorial to explain to people what their options are as I still have cases where I’m not sure if hiding in one spot will get me detected or not.
Like a Ghost:
Invisible Inc continues Klei’s style of creating impressive titles and the game is a very great foundation similar to Don’t Starve for expanding with new content. The use of turn based stealth is amazing and gives the game a very unique feel to it. While the learning curve may be a bit high at the moment, this is shaping up to be a very great game.
