Invisible, Inc - Impression @ RPS

Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Alec Meer gives his impression of the Early Access version of Invisible, Inc , and it seems he loves the tactful stuff as he put it.

Underneath the Bond-does-cyberpunk skin – visually it’s a meeting of Shadowrun Returns and Evil Genius – it’s primarily a resource management game. How to best spend your movement points and your precious and slow-to-recharge attacks, or how to obtain more PWR, the hacking resource. While you can pick up a little more of this during missions, really once it’s gone it’s gone, so there’s an ongoing dilemma over whether to spend it on hacking cash-filled safes or deactivating security cameras and turrets.

Every decision has consequences, because you’re locking off other opportunities and invariably attracting the attention of the guards. Time too is a resource: ‘spend’ too much of it and you’re faced with a base in lockdown. High stakes, high stress, big old butterfly effect. It all coalesces into a fiercely compelling juggling act, but crucially one where you always feel there’s at least a possibility of recovering before the balls all tumble to the floor.

This is wonderful stuff: tactical, tense, characterful, confident enough to never depart from the realm of stealth, and so far with a random map generator that’s kept me on my toes rather than see me turn away from over-familiarity. Even going on just this alpha/beta/whatever you want to call it build, I’m certain that I’ll be revisiting Invisible Inc often as the year wears on.