Invisible is an exquisite struggle for survival

A time limit is a daring choice for a metroidvania. It’s something I thought I would hate in a game, especially as a player that is easily lost. But time is at the heart of Invisible, making material shortages a key concern. It motivated me to further cut up and parry the multi-layered maps of the world in order to fight for the survival of my people and to set the stage for exquisite exploration and discovery Invisibleevocative and deadly world.

In Invisible, Automata hunger for a precious stone substance, anima, which serves as their life force. If it runs out, automatons face a worse fate than death: They turn into a mindless enemy called the “invisible” and attack friends and family with whom they once lived. After a war between humans and machines, you play Alma, a slot machine hell that is out to solve the crisis and rescue her fallen friends – members of her combat team who defended the machines in the war.

Every character Alma speaks to has a countdown of the hours left, from the shopkeepers in Gear Village to NPCs throughout the game. As their counters approach zero, machines start to deteriorate – they look uncomfortable when you interact with them and eventually go unseen. But Alma is on the clock too: every time she dies, a pause screen shows her remaining hours of play, which means how much time a player has left to beat the game. The only way to keep a machine from becoming invisible is to give it a disposable item, Meteor Dust, which will add 24 hours to its in-game life. It can also be used to extend Alma’s life.

The focus is on the difficult compromise of who to save and who to leave behind Invisible, and it is a key feature of global responsiveness. It is tempting to try to save everyone, but you just can’t. Initially, I gave Meteor Dust to an older dental farm called Teresa who had only a few hours left, but it only added marginally to her time in the game – I couldn’t find enough extra Meteor Dust to save her. I returned to find her window wiped out; A few screens down her shattered suit lay in a heap of rubble. Not only had I let her down, I now had less to myself and less time to resolve the anima crisis for everyone.

I was forced to take a mercenary approach and give Meteor Dust to Samuel who makes chips for the game Nier: automatons–like upgrade system. I needed his services to survive. This is just one point where the game threw me into moral limbo. When Alma’s counter drops below 100 hours, an NPC offers to murder other characters for you and gives you their anima. These compromises – what you do for Anima and who you give Meteor Dust to – are a startling reminder of how scarcity can force us to look at others through the lens of utility. Avoiding these heartbreaking decisions became a powerful incentive to get better faster, explore smarter, acquire new upgrade skills, and search the map for more Meteor Dust.

In a world where every second counts, there is a strong incentive to try new ideas and less time to ramble on a path that doesn’t work. Invisible‘s world has three meticulously interconnected layers full of little treasures: there are lush forests, icy aquariums and complex skyways with a tangle of railings. The goal is to collect five meteor shards to build a powerful weapon, but the game doesn’t require any particular order. Keys are universal so I used them to open new region gates, curious to open new areas. I awarded elevators that appeared where overwhelmed enemies tried to kill me. When I learned to defend myself, I broke all the barriers that were supposed to prevent me from doing so.

The game’s brilliant, Zelda-like dungeons are tightly themed, and my growing toolbox has given me multiple ways to solve puzzles. I used my ice grenade pistol and ice shuriken, toggle switches with a grappling hook, or the cut of a knife. These dungeons were filled with enemy classes that were clearly previously friendly machines that went unseen – many of them were the same types of machines that lived in Gear Village. I faced platform challenges and pointed to the map for shortcuts to reaching the Meteor Shard bosses – and I used these new skills to battle unseen automatons, many of which were fallen members of my team.

If the pressure of the countdowns sounds too much, the game can also be played in Exploration Mode, which will stop the timers of all characters, including Almas. (It’s always available in the options menu, along with a number of difficulty modifiers.) This is especially useful if you’ve got lost or if you find the game’s isometric combat difficult, like I did in the beginning. Combat can be a challenge if you are not used to parry-based mechanics. Alma can only do a few swings before her stamina bar runs out, but a “perfect” parry rewards players with a critical hit, making the fight feel like a satisfying rhythm game.

As you explore, you’ll come across backstories of characters told through logs and flashbacks. They reveal more of Invisible‘s tradition as the backstory of the anima crisis. But these flashbacks are most impressive when they reveal Alma’s own origins and the stories of her teammates, or the tension between her hot-headed desire to save everyone and the awkward combat training with her team. What emerges is a love story between queer, humanoid robots when Alma tracks down the ax-wielding automaton Raquel – desperately trying to save her life, even at the expense of her own.

Invisible is phenomenal for so many reasons, especially its beautiful landscapes and brilliant puzzle design. But it’s the sense of urgency – with the game’s countdown that makes me want to get back up when the going gets tough – and how it flows back into the game’s interconnected map that makes it Invisible a must. Whether it’s pure survival or love, there are always reasons to go new ways.