The Invincible will ask much of the audience, but the rewards could be well worth it

^Stay tuned for 1080p gameplay and expanded impressions through your vidscreen: it's futuristic!

Headed up by Starward Industries, which is a super-group of devs who can list such esteemed projects as The Witcher 3, Dying Light, and Call of Juarez on their collective CV, The Invincible is an adventure game based on an acclaimed genre work by a celebrated Polish author which I haven’t read and neither have you.

That’s where its similarities with The Witcher games start and end. The Invincible is a landmark work of hard science fiction which explores the perils of space colonisation and the very nature of alien life: the forms it may take, whether we’d recognise it, and how our prejudices might affect our decision making when encountering it. The game of the same name is not a beat-for-beat adaptation of the book, but a re-telling centred around a new character named Yasna: a female protagonist who doesn’t exist in the novel, but has been created fresh for the game as a concession to the fact that it is no longer the mid-sixties.

As Yasna, you are searching the planet of Regis III for clues as to what happened to your old crew, who have all died mysteriously here following contact with… something. The 45 minute demo we played offered what appears to be an early chapter of the game in which Yasna investigates a rocky valley strewn with abandoned vehicles, wrecked automatons, and the corpses of astronauts. Pretty grim stuff from the outset, but The Invincible is not a horror game, and there isn’t any excessive gore here, nor a single jump scare.

What there is, is tension. A foreboding sense of atmosphere about the place where you are constantly trapped between trepidation and the desire to learn more. As your avatar, Yasna is spacesuit clad, and it’s felt in every movement: this is not space Lara Croft, she is by necessity slow to climb obstacles, and clumsy when operating intricate machinery (which you’ll be doing a lot of) on account of her massive space gloves. What this means, practically, is that if the waste matter hits the air recycling system you are simply doomed.

The game plays on this most teasingly: on more than one occasion there is a scene where every one of your instincts as a Video Game Enjoyer is thwarted by the space suit: there’s no running or dodging. Just hope. On top of the constant sense of peril, this is not a beautiful planet: it’s a barren tomb. And this is a universe in which the digital revolution never happened – an “atompunk” setting as described by the devs.

What this means in practice is a cheery retro-futurism about it all, like stepping into the illustrated cover of a classic sci fi novel. The landscape is littered with analogue tech, Robbie the Robot mechanoids, and antigrav vehicles with all the curves and flourishes of a 1960 Buick LeSabre – it’s almost goofy, and a harsh juxtaposition against the sheer desolation of the planet itself.

The overall effect is oppressive, but not excessively so: the pull to unravel the mystery of Regis III, and the methodical pace of the tactile, investigative gameplay is enough to provide a regular distraction from the pervasive unease.

So, what do you actually do, aside from wander around feeling anxious? Well, you poke around, look at stuff, and fiddle with things. From a gameplay point of view, it’s all very basic, and you’re practically guided through every step by the disembodied voice of your commander who crackles through the radio with reassuring regularity. Through the course of the demo, we are introduced to various pieces of equipment from Yasna’s permanent inventory: scanners of various sorts, for the most part, and beautifully rendered in period detail, with warped cathode ray displays, chrome bevelling, and filament bulbs. It of course has the distinct feel of a tutorial level, and so we’re confident that the game proper will have less of a tight leash on your activities. Indeed, in interviews, the developers have talked The Invincible up as a branching narrative with an emphasis on player choice.

Early on, the game has you piecing together a scene of destruction from the black box lithographs salvaged from an automated tank weapon. It expertly imparts a slow realisation that the danger befalling the souls in the recording is still very active, and that you are very much at risk. There is a moment of conceptual peril here that works more deeply than any cheap jump scare could, and it’s a testament to the effectiveness of patient pacing: if you trust the audience to not need a constant feed of action, you can reward them with special, subtle moments that will stay with them for days, weeks, years even.

It’s clear that the developers love and understand what hard science-fiction means, and are not afraid to translate the genre’s characteristic trust and respect for the audience into a game which lets moments breathe, and even forces the player to pause for a while and take in some dialogue. You could read this as a roundabout way of saying that it might end up being a bit boring and, well, that’s a real possibility for much of the user base, and a pitfall of the genre: big, complex ideas need space to be big and complex.

So, it won’t be for everyone. But its ambition is undeniable: a next-gen exclusive game which aims to give the medium its own Andromeda Strain or Solaris, without compromising the vision for the sake of needlessly upping the pace.

The Invincible is due to release next year on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC