Invisible Inc.

How an indie spy game made turnbased tactics relentlessly exciting

- Jon Bailes

Cleverly, Invisible Inc is a balance of contrasts, a yin-yang structure of opposing forces that combine in harmony. As a turnbased strategy game, it wants you to take as long as you need to make your decisions, yet also demands precision timing. It wants to retain an element of risk in every act, but removes the genre’s characteristic percentages and dice rolls. It wants you to have all the info you need to make your next move, while ensuring every mission is an unknowable challenge. It wants Roguelike replayability, without the brevity or abruptness of most Roguelike campaigns.

The foundation for all this is a focus on stealth. Invisible, a hi-tech private espionage outfit in the late 21st century, finds itself hunted by a group of powerful companies. You control its remaining agents as they infiltrate a series of corporate facilities to acquire info, money and equipment. Keep surviving and gathering resources long enough and you get a chance to enter the enemy’s HQ and take their systems offline. Until then, you spend your time sneaking around offices, labs and bank vaults, avoiding guard patrols and hacking security systems to meet various objectives.

The first contrast is between the familiar and the new. You start with two characters (you can rescue further operatives along the way) whose movements around grid-based locations are governed by AP, or action points. Following basic stealth protocols you stay in cover, look ahead before you advance and only engage guards as a last resort. But there’s already another crucial resource to consider: power. You won’t get far unless you remotely disable security cameras, drones and laser grids, or access locked workstations and safes. And you can’t do that if you don’t maintain your power supply by activating replenishment programs or leeching from onsite terminals.

When it comes to the rules and flow of play,