The Invincible is my kind of science fiction. When I look up at the stars, I feel wonder and mystery, and romance, even. I believe anything is possible out there and that we only have to find it. And when I look at The Invincible, it makes me feel that way too. You can see it in the screenshots. In hues that are almost gaudy, there are sweeping desert landscapes where huge finger-like rock formations reach out as if to try and scratch the surface of strange moons behind them. There are turquoise skies fading to starry black, and boiling oranges beneath them. It’s like looking at a postcard of what space could be – a space of emotional warmth and feeling. I find it mesmerising.
This particular setting – this fiction – is based directly on a book written by Polish author Stanisław Lem in 1964. It’s a book by the same name, The Invincible, and it tells of a gigantic spacecraft landing on an alien planet and making a stunning discovery. The game is told from a different viewpoint but it very much deals with the same overarching storyline and themes: the relationship between different forms of life, and how something might evolve if left unchecked.
In the game, you are a biologist working with a small research crew on a vessel that isn’t The Invincible. Whether or not that gigantic ship is even in the game, you don’t know – you have nothing to do with it. Your name is Yasna, and the game begins with you waking inexplicably on the surface of the alien planet, alone, wondering how you got here from your ship and where the rest of your crew are. Yasna’s journey to remember what’s going on becomes your journey, then. And casting you as a biologist and not, say, a soldier, informs a lot of what you’ll be doing in the game, as well as how you’ll be doing it.
