Invisible, Inc.

It's one of my all-time favourites. A turn-based stealth game with a unique, tense gameplay that will keep you on the edge of your seat. It combines exploration, stealth, short and long-term planning in a procedurally-generated environment that stays fresh and unpredictable even after 50+ hours. It will take you on an emotional rollercoaster - from initial confidence to total devastation when you make mistakes that end in a disaster, from doubt and despair to exhilaration when you manage to get out of a seemingly hopeless situation. Rarely any game makes me feel this way. You play as an underdog, not an overpowered superhero like in most games. You have no chance in direct combat, outnumbered and outgunned by guards who become absurdly overpowered later in the game. You're like a mouse in a room full of cats. Your characters are not muscular super soldiers like in XCom but fragile individuals with their stories and personalities (and stylish outfits). The only advantage you have is intel and planning. Game gives you a lot of info and it's up to you to make best use of it. That's one of the reasons why I absolutely love this game. I think Invisible Inc. is not wildly popular because it's quite difficult (especially for beginners), nerve-wracking (with increasing alarm and the need to constantly analyze) and it's not a shooter like XCom. Tutorial doesn't cover everything, so you'll need to experiment and figure out stuff on your own and you will fail a lot at the beginning. If you're feeling it's too hard for you, watch [url=https://www.youtube.com/@AndrewKay/playlists] Andrew Kay play [/url] - it will help you bring your game to the next level. And it's a roguelike, so it's meant to be replayed on a higher difficulty, just like chess - you don't quit after one match. Every aspect of this game is perfect to me - gameplay, art style, writing, sound & music, voice overs... Mastery of game design. It's smart and stylish and I could play it forever.

I spent at least 100 hours on my version from the seven seas, if you catch my drift. Rare example of a game so good i had to buy it to pay my respects.

Invisible, Inc. is one of my all-time favourite games. Its pixely graphics might not look like much, but it's a very complex game that has immense replay value as a roguelike tactical stealth game. I've seen some silly reviews about the game that seem to miss the point, so I've decided to put forth mine given how I've at least played the game enough to know what it's like. The game punishes you for making mistakes in a way that is very consistent with the genre. If you're sloppy, get spotted too often, let the site raise alarm, you will risk getting caught, getting shot or having to abort the mission objectives. It can quickly turn into a scramble for your agents lives. But if you're smooth, you do things by the book, you're careful, you will go through the enemy complex like a handful of ninjas. If you've only played a little you might get some idea about what's the one winning strategy you need to adapt each map, or how the game can be simplified down into a few tips, but once you get to start to know what you're doing, you'll be able to throw all of these tips out and realize how much leeway the game usually gives you even on seemingly hard maps. And as easy as it might be to think that there's one winning strategy, the reality is that you can have fundamentally different approaches to how you play, even on Endless where you can basically get anything you fancy with time, you can focus on killing or knocking out guards, on avoiding them, distracting them, cloaking your agents, you can shoot or hack or disable cameras, etc. the list is so long, with almost every type of game element you have many different choices what to do, how to use them. I'd say already vanilla Invisible Inc has at least 1000 hours worth of game time easily (I'm over it between my different accounts on different platforms and I'm still happy to play it), and then you realize that there is the option to mod this game, adding new agents, new rules, new items, or just re-balancing the whole game to give it a new feel and make it fresh and challenging again.

I was positively surprised by Invisible, Inc. It's a fun stealth game on the casual side, with similar mechanics to XCOM. Turn-based movement on a grid, upgradable agents, missions you select on a map and so on. There's no base, as the whole premise of the game is that you're on the run with your small crew. You pick a couple agents and hacking abilities to start each run with and the rest you upgrade along the way. You can find two more agents to join your crew and add more abilities to Incognita, an AI that does the hacking. Hacking is probably the most notable mechanic that stands out in the game. You have a separate UI for all the things you can hack in a level and a set amount of power that depletes when you hack, which you can gain back by having agents drain power from systems on the level. Obstacles like cameras, robots and barriers make hacking an essential part of every mission. Stealth overall is heavily incentivized as your options after being spotted are very limited. Unless you plan for it, getting caught can swiftly end a run. You do have a set amount of rewinds and a whole level reset on the easiest difficulty to help you survive some mistakes, but mainly you have to rely on planning your movements around guard patrols and only knocking them out when you absolutely have to. That's because in Invisible, Inc. guards only stay unconscious for a set amount of turns. Things can quickly spiral out of control if you have multiple knocked out guards waking up and getting alerted. KO'd guard economy is kind of a hilarious thing that you learn while playing this game and I can definitely understand people calling it bad design. Personally I didn't find it that unbearable since it adds to the urgent feeling of each mission. Your crew is infiltrating heavily guarded corporate facilities by teleporting in and triggering alarms, so you can't really expect to hang around forever and build piles of sleeping guards in the corners. What adds to the difficulty is that the level layouts are procedurally generated every time and your success can completely depend on that. The layout can make missions a complete cake walk or nigh impossible. The game is extremely hard in that sense, where only a few percent of players have completed the next difficulty after the first, beginner one. Starting agents have a lot of impact on how fun and successful each run can be. There's a ton of them to unlock and their kits have a nice amount of variety. My personal favorites ended up being [spoiler]Dr. Xu and archived Banks.[/spoiler] As with many other Klei titles, the music is fantastic and immediately stood out to me. All I can say is that it greatly enhances the experience, but you really must hear it for yourself to fully appreciate it. For the low price on sale, Invisible, Inc. is more than worth it. It's not the deepest game mechanically or story-wise, but it doesn't have to be. It's fun. Completing the story should take you at least a few hours and if you happen to get hooked like I did, the harder difficulties have tens of hours more to offer in repeat playthroughs.

This is one of the best turn-based strategy games I've played. It's almost as good as X-Com & Baldur's Gate 3.

Stealth Xcom. That about sums it all up though, I can't really point to any breakaway feature. For it's effectively simplified mechanics it sticks around far past it's welcome. That's the thing I would say drags it into the red. They took a 10 minute story and stretched it across many hours of gameplay that isn't sustainably interesting for that long. I remember lowering the difficulty on the last series of what should have been climactic missions not because it was too hard but because I just wanted to skip to the end, which was itself underwhelming.

One of Klei's older titles that stands the test of time, Invisible Inc. is a stealth game where you're rewarded for avoiding confrontations and thinking outside of the box. You'll take a party of two starting agents (with the ability to recruit up to four) and challenge various missions across the globe, over the course of 72 in-game hours. Every outing takes some time off the clock, and your ultimate goal is to build up your team before tackling the final mission. Setting this title apart from other stealth games is the addition of Incognita, an Artificial Intelligence capable of hacking corporate mainframes to provide your party with additional benefits during a mission. Not only will you be sneaking around, dodging and subduing guards, and carrying out your objectives; Incognita will also be taking down network devices, sabotaging drones & defenses, and generally making life miserable for the opposition. This is very much a "Man & Machine" collaboration, where both sides must be synchronized if success is to be achieved. Replay-ability comes about from the procedural generation of maps (ensuring no two maps are the same), the vast array of available agents with their own strengths & weaknesses, the number of Incognita programs available and the plethora of strategies available for tackling a mission. Unlike most games, there is no "one strategy to rule them all", as your time is limited and gaining specific types of gear is not guaranteed. The addition of an "Alarm System" during missions also encourages players to quickly proceed, as opposed to slowly stacking the odds in their favour; you won't be pinning multiple guards with one agent for very long if he's to escape in time. Nor will you be guaranteed the "best gear load-out" for your agents before the game ends. Further expanding on this, you're provided with a wealth of customization options to tailor the game exactly as you wish. And with extensive workshop support, plus a community that's made a huge amount of supporting content, the possibilities are endless. If you're a fan of turn-based strategy or stealth games, I highly recommend picking this game up. While underrated, it's a great example of Klei's breadth when it comes to making quality games and really nails the creativity of indie games in general.

Excellent tactical TBS. I've been playing with the DLC so I got no idea exactly how much it adds but there's a lot of ways for a particular playthrough to go depending on your starting agents and what you can get going once everything is left to fate depending on the missions you go on and what you find once inside. Definitely you need to start to play in beginner mode with all the failsafes in place because its very easy to commit mistakes while you learn your agents strengths and weaknesses not to mention all the enemies and the level's defenses. Seems like you can go in full stealth, nonlethal or go full homicidal and clear everyone out depending on playstyle its all viable but you need to unlock agents through playthroughs to get a good combination going with at least your starting pair (the DLC gives you four more choices from the get go to go along with the two starters). But that's part of the the old school fun vs what is standard now and paying to 'unlock' new characters instead of through actually playing the game itself. The game basically remained invisible in my game library for a decade but no more. If you're a genre fan and you haven't tried it yet... get around to it when you can.