Tag: invisible inc

Steam Sales!!

Steam’s Summer Seal is raring to go once again, much to the dismay of backlogs everywhere. I haven’t taken any damage to mine yet (although I am eyeballing 3 or 4 different 50+ hour RPGs…), but here I am nonetheless to encourage you all to take a lot of damage to yours, like I did last year.

New here? Read this and join the fun!

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Pyre

Pyre! Pyre, get Pyre. Get it. Go get Pyre right now. I’ll wait.

Congratulations! You just bought what is currently my GOTY, and one of my favourite games of all time. The cosmic basketball might not be to everyone’s tastes (as someone who shirks sports games entirely, I actually really enjoyed the Rites), but the real treat is in the family of misfits you find and, hopefully, liberate. It’s beautiful, and I’m not just talking about the visuals. Even weeks after finishing it, thinking about the ending has me wailing. I’m an absolute sucker for found families- and I’ll never forget the time The Nightwings welcomed me into theirs. (Steam / BBLC)

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Invisible Inc.

I so nearly binned this, but something told me to just give it one more shot… and it swallowed me whole. Fantastically tense strategy/stealth game, it’s a little bit rogue-like which is what turned me off to start with. You have never before, nor will you ever again, be so aware of doors being left open. Story gets kinda weird, but as long as you have a passing knowledge of cyberpunk tropes you’ll have a good time here. (Steam / BBLC)

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fault

Official word states the title of this series should be presented in lower case. I don’t like it, but fault’s earned enough of my respect that I’ll acquiesce. Holy crap, it’s hard to explain without spoiling anything, but if you have any tolerance for visual novels at all, and a strong stomach for terminology, these games will blow you away with their presentation alone- and you’ll stay for the plot. First five minutes of milestone two had me staring agape at my screen. Next level stuff. (Steam / BBLC)

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Wonderboy Girl: The Dragon’s Trap

A gorgeous refreshening of the Master System’s best game (controversial!), I already gushed about this at tedious length in my original post. It’s got some retro trappings that are moderately eased by optional difficulty settings, and the inclusion of Wonder Girl is handled with absolute elegance. (Steam / BBLC)

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Hopefully I haven’t done too much damage to your backlogs, but also I really hope everyone checks these titles out and gives them a chance!

Invisible Inc.

It’s an isometric cyberpunk sneaky tactics game by the same fine folks who made Mark Of The Ninja. It plays somewhat similarly to ancient classics Space Crusade and Heroquest (which sadly are the most recent examples I can think of). I thought it had a story campaign, but the missions are actually randomised… and an alarm went off in my head:

“This is a rogue-like!”

Offended, I immediately shut it down and consigned it to the bin. But…

I got the bug, bad. I’ve played 4 hours of it already and I’m hooked.

Invisible Inc. gets raided by The Corporations and its agents are scattered to the winds. Invisible’s AI datacentre can only last on backup power for 72 hours, so the remaining agents must race against time to regroup and build up their firepower for a raid against The Corps to hijack a server powerful enough to get their AI up and running again.

After the training mission, you’re presented with a small selection of random missions, each of which will bolster your reserves in some way- be it a prison compound housing one of your captured agents who will join your team upon rescue, or a cybernetics laboratory which houses equipment you can use to augment your agents.

Each destination has a travel time, so there’s more at stake than just consdering what kind of boon would be most beneficial to your team. Getting a new agent would be great, but it is worth spending 12 of the 72 hours to get there, or better to spend 6 raiding a nearby weapons facility?

Campaigns are hugely customisable for difficulty too, making guards more or less alert, increasing or reducing the amount of time they can be knocked out for, size and complexity of maps… it’s endless (and Endless Mode is one of the options too).

Fin or Bin:

I’m in the final six hours of my first campaign, played on baby mode because I still don’t like rogue-likes. I intend to Finish this run- not sure yet if I’ll play another immediately after, but I’m confident I’ll be coming back to Invisible Inc over the next few years.

(Steam)