Invisible Inc. review: Stylish sneaking with some tight time pressure

Appropriately, Invisible, Inc. is a marvelous piece of sleight-of-hand. What it is: a fast-paced, mid-budget tactical stealth game of limited scope. What it feels like: a grand spy version of XCOM, with a small elite team of operatives desperately fleeing a massive conspiracy to destroy them, scraping together the tools to turn the tables. That’s one of the most remarkable tricks a smaller strategy game can pull off, and Invisible, Inc. does so… most of the time.

Hacking terminals for justice

At its core, Invisible, Inc. could be thought of as “Stealth XCOM,” complete with an isometric viewpoint, fast-paced movement, and a minor strategic layer with role-playing-style character development. But Invisible separates itself from most other tactical games by focusing on the pressure of time instead of perfect strategy.

The drive to be fast exists on both the tactical and strategic layers of the game. Tactically, Invisible, Inc. keeps the pressure high by frequently increasing security and awareness of the targets you’re infiltrating. Each mission takes place within a procedurally generated building, having one of a small handful of goals: break into a vault, find an experimental weapon, or free a captive agent. The smaller scale of the game rears its head a little here, as infiltration targets all tend to look and feel similar, especially early on, before different high-level enemies appear depending on the specific corporate target.

Guards of various abilities patrol the halls of each building, with more summoned if you take too long. Most methods of taking guards out are non-lethal, and those guards start patrolling more aggressively once they recover, increasing the pressure. If you kill the guards instead, that triggers heart rate monitors that result in the game sending in even more pressure.

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