Invisible, Inc. is a roguelike, turn-based, strategy stealth game. Moving past the buzzwords, it's a game where you move your units through randomized levels by observing the patterns of enemy movement and then avoiding them on your way to the exit point of the level. If you're lucky, you'll find some items or cash along the way. As you go further in the game, you face more and more dangerous enemies. Eventually you get spotted, die, and have to start again from the beginning. You do that last bit a lot, actually.

I've noticed a lot people assuming that the game is similar to Shadowrun Returns or XCom due to the isometric perspective. It really isn't, and if you go in trying to play it that way you will end up being frustrated. Invisible, Inc. is a stealth game and a roguelike. Combat is difficult and usually not an effective way to deal with enemies. Also, it is a roguelike, to the extent that word still means anything, and you will most likely fail a lot as you learn how to play, and sometimes just because the random number generator screwed you over. How much you enjoy it will depend on your tolerance for that sort of thing.

Also, this being early access, there's always the question of whether the creators are going to actually finish the game. Klei is a pretty well established company at this point, and they previously did a public beta similar to early access with their game Don't Starve. Personally, I think they're trustworthy based on that track record. Not that I'm an expert or anything.

Despite the high positive review % this game is criminally underplayed and I believe I can provide some insight that isn't covered in the other reviews and also address some points from the negative reviews because they may deter people that would otherwise enjoy this game and get their money's worth. That said I will be as objective as possible.

First thing, this is pure turn based strategy gameplay. The campaign and storyline is there but you need to enjoy the raw gameplay in order to appreciate this game. Despite what you've been told the 'stealth' part is completely optional; it can be as disgustingly brutal as you want it to be. My preferred end-game is to kill everything and I've found the right setup to make it extremely effective.

Winning isn't about figuring out what strategy works; they all 'work' even on the 'Expert' difficulty. The reason Expert is considered by Klei to be the intended difficulty is because it's the hardest preset that doesn't limit your options. Specifically 'Expert Plus' only discourages knocking out guards until you get EMP access but I don't expect anyone who hasn't played the game to know what I'm talking about here; just know that even the "hardest" difficulty still only limits your strategical options temporarily.

I can accept most negative opinions of some features but my major gripe is their point about the RNG. Take it from me; you do not lose because of RNG when playing on a preset difficulty (not custom settings). In most cases blaming RNG on your loss is a clear case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. You lose because you made strategical or tactical mistakes. Of course everyone makes careless mistakes from time to time and Invisible Inc acknowledges and embraces that with a number of "rewinds" that essentially legitimises save-scumming.

There is an alarm system that increments every turn, adding difficulty over time throughout each mission. Some opinions express distaste for it but I think it's great. Historically most stealth games are very easy; you can be as patient as you'd like and often killing or incapacitating people has no repercussions. If that's the requirement for stealth games then this isn't one. It's a strategy game first and foremost, and a very unique one.

Overall this game isn't easy at the higher difficulties. Beginner exists for a reason so it's ok if you can't brain. If you let it this game will teach you how to brain. Not recommended under the influence of alcohol or sleep deprived, or try anyway, whatever. Fight me in the comments, on the forums, or real life.

All right, so I do recommend the game, but I'll say right away that it's easily not for everyone. In short, if you're expecting a well-pieced together story, you won't find it here, but if you're after a rogue-like turn-based dungeon crawler, then this game will be right up your alley.

The presentation is probably the game's biggest strength. It's put together well in shiny visuals, clean UI, and a fun gameplay concept that takes isometric turn-based combat and makes it stealth-oriented, where you're better off avoiding the enemies rather than engaging in fights. The game is fun, if you enjoy turn-based tactics that let you plan your every ally's move.

The gameplay concept is solid, but some of its execution was a fair bit annoying to me personally. A lot of the challenge presented felt simply artificial and unfair. The raising security level each and every turn forces you to rush each mission. Exploration is simply not rewarded under this system, because the longer you stay on your mission, the more security measures will be added after every few turns, which will eventually put you in a tight spot. I never came across any way for me to freeze or reduce the security level. It's just a rush against time, but on turn-based basis.

I was also not fond of the fact that I couldn't buy any equipment for my party in between missions. The only time I could do it was if I happened to find an automated shop during missions, when I had virtually no money to spend. Of 4 agents I had in my missions, 2 were running about without weapons and just being used to sit on the guards. This brings me to another annoyance. If you don't have a weapon, you have no way to deal with the guards. No idea what sort of agents these are who can't even take out a guard from behind unless they have a tazer. Things start to get more complex when you meet enemies in armour, who are invulnerable to most weapons, and your only chance is to play a cat and mouse game where you're constantly running away.

But, I really did like being able to improve my agents in between missions by upgrading their stats, even if stats themselves did feel a bit unbalanced. Speed felt like the most useful stat by far, since it gave you more action points, with hacking being a close second, since everything requires hacking. But strength and anarchy felt next to useless. Strength only lets you carry more items, and anarchy makes you steal slightly more money from the guards.

And lastly the story, well, it was mostly on the background. The most of it you'll see is in the opening and ending cutscenes. But the rest of the game you're just dungeon-crawling really. It was pretty neat to get to pick which mission to do from a wide selection. It's very non-linear and each mission simply increases your assets - either you rescue an extra agent to add to the team, or you find some new shiny gear to use. Though because of that, it also meant that there were no story-related reasons to do any mission. You could expect the same approach in each one and merely doing as many as you can to pass 72 hours in-game before having to do the final one with what you've got.

I was also hoping there'd be some more character development. All the agents in your team were just mute puppets for you to control. They never showed any personality or had anything to say aside from a witty one-liner at the start of each mission.

Having said this, if you are a dungeon-crawl fanatic and like challenge, you should enjoy this game very much. It has higher difficulty modes, as well as an endless mode too where you have to survive for as long as you can. Overall, it's a worthy game to try and I have had my fair share of fun with it, even though the main campaign is rather on the short side.

"Invisible, Inc." is a one-of-a-kind and an instant classic. As a turn-based strategy game, it requires a high level of planning and strategy to succeed. This is compounded by the "rouguelike" aspect of the game, meaning that you are not allowed to reload a previous save if you screw up. Depending on the difficulty level you choose, you may either have the ability to retry the level, use a limited number of "rewinds" which bring you back to the beginning of the previous turn, or, on "ironman mode," have no safety net at all, meaning if you lose your team it is time to start a new game.

This unforgiving style is compounded by the seemingly unfairness of the fight. You are outnumbered and outgunned, infiltrating unknown enemy territory (levels are randomly generated), and you must rely on your stealth and cunning to make it through. Still, there are a number of tools at your disposal: distraction techniques, lethal and non-lethal attacks, a wide variety of powers and gadgets that range from traps to cloaking devices, and a hacking system that targets the various devices found in the level allowing you to access, disable, or remotely command them.

While there are some random elements to the game that vary the way each run plays out (such as which types of missions are available, the layouts of each level, and items/powers you find on the way), the rest of the game is very deterministic. If you are very careful and diligent, you can play the enemy like a fiddle, pulling them this way and that so that your other agents can reach the mission objective (and/or rob the corporations blind). However, screw-ups do happen, and when they do, the situation can plunge from "astounding success" to "catastrophic failure" very quickly. There is no HP meter for your agents. If they are shot, they are permanently downed until another agent either drags them to the exit (leaving them vulnerable in the process) or revives them with Med Gel (which you may have inconveintly left behind to make room for that fantastic new gadget). It is possible to go on without them, but later missions are only going to be harder and it may be next-to-impossible to succeed with an under-manned team.

Hacking is a vital part of the game in order to get past cameras and drones - and to access the various "shops" that come in the form of firewalled terminals found inside the levels. The hacking system is, in some ways, a game within a game. You can switch between the "real world" and the "virtual world" of your A.I., Incognita. Everything she does requires power. Power can be generated by programs within Incognita, or through the actions of your agents (such as using their cybernetic augments or ordering them to hack consoles). This adds yet another layer of complexity to the game. If you are being hunted by guards and barely staying afloat, the last thing you want is to run out of power and get spotted on camera because you couldn't hack it. It leads to situations where you are running risky maneuvers in order to get to consoles, just so you can proceed unhindered through the rest of the level. The number of hazards, and their respective firewall levels, is increased each turn, so careful planning and efficient power usage is essential.

In the end, the beauty of "Invisible, Inc." is its balance and the choices it forces you to make. It is both ruthlessly hard and extremely satisfying when you make it through a level without a hitch. You must choose between dodging past enemies, knocking them out for a couple turns, or killing them, each of which has its own concequences. You have to choose between that awesome gadget or a new hacking program that will help you with the increasingly difficult firewalls. You may have to choose to end your campaign or limp along with an under-manned team because your agent was seperated from the rest of the team and shot. This, and the huge variety of strategies available, make it a wildly satisifying experience. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys strategy games.

Nobody does stealth like Klei!

If you enjoyed playing Tenchu: Stealth Assassin on PS1, you need this game.
If you enjoy XCOM (the original or the reboot), you need this game.
If you've ever seen an episode of Mission:Impossible, you need this game.
If you enjoy "Rogue-likes", you need this game.

Invisible, Inc. puts you in a dangerous, near-future, 1984-esque big brother world of mega-corporations gone bad, with nothing to survive on but your wits and the specialized abilities of your hand-picked team of professional spies.

The game plays like a "run and hide" XCOM. The goal here is not to storm the battlements, mow down the guards, and plant a flag over their corpses. You're outnumbered, outgunned, and certain death waits around every blind corner. In true espionage fashion, if your team has to pull their guns, it means you've screwed the pooch, your team is compromised, and now you're in a desperate firefight to sprint to the exit before the corporate army seals off the building.

At the beginning, you pick two team members, whose special abilities will dictate your play style through an increasingly punishing randomly-generated corporate maze. You can bring a sniper, sure! But maybe a computer expert would be less noticeable than gunshots ringing through the halls. Or you can bring a stealthy lockpicker, but then who's going to judo chop the guards when they show up wearing body armor? Along the way, you may have the opportunity to rescue captured agents and increase your team's size. The agents available to be rescued are randomized, creating a different play experience each time.

The graphics and sound create an inviting, futuristic pulp-fiction atmosphere. The music is appropriately dangerous, and fitting to the Mission: Impossible play style. There are a ton of options to make the game easier or harder in whatever way you choose, so you can pick your own challenge level, from a casual romp through a save-scumming corp beatdown to hardcore, ironman, no going back, the-T-1000-is-after-you mode.

Get it. You'll be happy you did.

An incredible stealth tactical game that has you infiltrate facilities as a group of cyberpunk rebels who get one-shot in any direct confrontation. It's part XCOM, part Into the Breach: there's no randomness in numbers, and you can get all the information you need (like guard routes). However, to spy on them efficiently, you need to take risks and scout ahead... which is dangerous.

The game is balanced perfectly. The alarm is constantly rising, pressuring you out of overly cautious playstyle, but get too cocky—and you get wiped. Unlike XCOM, you can't really clear the level: you stun enemies instead of killing them, and if you dawdle, they'll come to and set after you from behind. The tension becomes very real, very quickly.

The visuals are clear and memorable, the characters likeable, and the music pleasant. The only downsides I can think of is that the rules of vision become complicated sometimes (it might be hard to figure out in a crowded room if your hiding place will fall into a guard's field of vision as they move); and also that your success heavily depends on the random level generation: if the two objectives of the last mission are in two different ends of the map, you'll be heavily disadvantaged compared to someone who gets them close.

Then again, the latter is balanced by how short the campaign is. If you fail—which you will—you won't feel like you've lost a ton of progress, and starting over doesn't feel like a chore.

All in all, a great tactical game for anyone who loves to think on the grid and plan their every step. (Also, Internationale + Parasite = OP.)

Nobody's reading my opinion of an ages old game, but this is the ultimate stealth game and deserves a lot more respect from a historical perspective.

This game is incredible. It has been quite a while since I had the effect of "What? Already 3 in the morning? But ... one more mission ...." (it is 3:33 AM as I write this)

Klei took all the good things about round-based strategy from the big brother XCOM and added their experience with stealth games and some unique gameplay ideas to the mix and ... it works perfectly. To round it all up they got some rogue-like elements like permadeath for the agents and (depending on the difficulty) very limited possibilities to retry. But failing the short campaign (took me 5 hours on first try on beginner difficulty) will always yield some XP that unlocks new agents and abilities for the next round.

That alone would be enough for a great little game but Klei also shows again just how good they got with art and design. Artwork, sound design, UI - every little detail down to how the menus fade in feels just right and makes this good game a perfect one.

If you like stealth, and if you like round-based strategy, this is the game for you!

To the guys and gals at Klei: Fantastic work, I can't wait what you are working on next!

A corporate pacification squad prepares to break down the door and rush in assault rifles blazing. Your escape route is clear, but Banks still needs one turn to hack the brain of the Plastech CEO you were sent to interrogate. What do you do?

After being beamed to the mission site, you are faced with two doors leading to the opposite sides of the building - one is watched by a guard and the other is clear. Send your team through the unguarded route and you risk being trapped at side opposite to the escape elevator when your intrusion is noticed. Have Nika knock out the guard so you can split up and he'll wake up in a few short turns, starting a facility-wide manhunt. What do you do?

While ransacking a Sankaku tech office, Dr. Xu has been caught alone by an armed security drone, programmed to kill. The rest of the team, too far away to help, will be sighted by a patrolling camera drone next turn, revealing their location to every Sankaku security personnel within six city blocks. You only have enough power to hack one of the drones. What do you do?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=495237730

I don't think there's ever been a game more consistently suspenseful as Invisible Inc. Even when you dance around guards and fill your accounts with corporate capital uncontested you aren't allowed to forget for a minute that it only takes one miscalculation to launch you into a freefall. The biggest credit for this goes to the alarm mechanic. Invisible makes detection a matter of unavoidable, gradually advancing doom rather than a fail state or an excuse to turn itself into an inferior action game.

The alarm level creeps upwards with your every turn and every mistake, introducing new security measures and guards into the level, and not a single one of the many gadgets and programs available to your agents can do so much as slow it down. It will only stop when the sirens are blaring, private military troops are flooding the building and your agents are darting frantically from room to room, burning through every item and augmentation they have in order to stave off death for just a little while longer.

Invisible isn't a game about avoiding detection, it's about surviving it.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=495237777

The core of the game, sneaking from cover to cover and ambushing guards, is immediately intuitive. Instead of of deriving false depth from superfluous mechanics it sets up complex situations and tough choices with just a few precision-designed rules. Things are mixed up by the equipment salvaged from the field, ranging from movement-boosting stimulants to electric door traps. Customization isn't the right word here, though - your resources are always scarce so you must take whatever you can find and build your strategy around that. Plans only last minutes before being replaced by mad improvisation.

Let's go back Dr. Xu and his predicament. Maybe he found a rudimentary invisibility rig in the previous mission, not powerful enough to get him out of the drone's field of view but allowing him to run up to it and temporarily disable it with his EMP tool, an augment only he has access to. Or perhaps Decker can use a stimulant to gain just enough action points to reach the room and gun the drone down. Or maybe there's no way out, but Xu survives his injuries and can be recovered from a detention center later on.

Oh, and the corporations aren't short of tricks either. The reason Xu got caught? He opened a safe after you triggered a countermeasure program that sets an alarm to all containers on the level. And what if the program was activated by you stunning that same drone that's now threatening Xu so he could sneak to the safes undetected? This is where Invisible Inc. really shines - being a host to a multitude of tactical causes and effects without ever being overwhelming, and never letting you settle into a comfortable routine like many of its peers, even classics, do.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=495237816

The soundtrack punctuates the action with surprising vigour and demonstrates some of the best use of reactive music since Proteus. When the tension rises, so does the tempo, making sure your heart will pump faster and faster as the alarm tracker keeps filling up. Likewise the art design is just as slick as one can hope for, taking a good step forward from Mark of the Ninja's and Don't Starve's Saturday morning look while still staying recognizably within Klei's house style.

As cool as its presentation is, in terms of UI design Invisible does stumble into an occasional tripwire. Finding the correct button to hack that pesky camera instead of a nearby server computer requires a bit too much fiddling with the camera than I'd like, and the times I've found myself unwittingly knocking out a guard with a conciousness monitor suggests that the varying abilities of guards and drones could be more clearly communicated. These are very minor gripes though, and would be hardly noticed if the rest of the game wasn't so well-crafted.

It is tempting to call Invisible an almost-perfect clockwork of a game but that would hardly do justice to the terror and triumph it evokes each mission and each turn. Every drop of sweat and tears I shed over it makes me more convinced that I'm looking at a future classic. It is the kind of a game that will creep into your mind and steal your heart.

Great game, but frustrating as hell. Hard as hell. Your tools nowhere near match the opposition, and there will be many instances where you will get 2-3 missions in and get team wiped every single time no matter how careful you strategize. Leveling/buying equipment is extremely difficult due to low amounts of cash and high cost of skills and items.

Klei is awesome, and this is a buy and must own for sure. Just don't expect to sit down and play it for eight straight hours, you'll get too frustrated. One or two tries during a visit to Starbucks is all I can take without getting frustrated, and I never ge tmad at games.