The Invincible is a first-person Adventure Game based on the novel of the same name by Stanisław Lem. It was developed by the Polish developer Starward Industries, published by 11 Bit Studios, and released in 2023. You play as Yasna, an astrobiologist who, along with her crew, is returning from an exploration mission to find and map habitable planets. Her ship, the Dragonfly, makes an unplanned stop over the planet of Regis III for one last survey mission and to investigate some strange discrepancies in the reconnaissance data. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
The original story of the novel was changed in a few ways, the major one being that the humans on Regis III are divided into two factions: an exploration team from the Interplanetary Commonwealth, and a warship of the Cosmosolidar Alliance. And then, of course, there's a third faction...
The Invincible contains examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptation Deviation: The main point of difference being the inclusion of a separate group of explorers from a different nation. However, the game does keep you on your toes in regards to how much of the rest of the plot has been changed by initially making you believe that the Invincible is already on the planet and that it failed in its mission: the dissection of the fishes' magnet-sensing organ, the convoy being ambushed in a canyon, and so on fit with the novel's version of events. Only when coming across a surviving crew member is it revealed that it is the Condor, the Invincible's sister ship, which touched down on the planet, with the eponymous ship still being en route, which is much more in line with the original story.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The autonomous Antimatter Throwers end up causing a lot of mayhem when the black cloud causes their programming to switch from protecting the crew to eliminating the crew.
- Apocalypse How: Regis III underwent a Type 4: anything but the oceans are devoid of life due to a combination of a supernova combined with the arrival of the robots of the Lyran civilization.
- Cool Starship: The Alliance starship which Yasna visits towards the end of the game is a gigantic, shiny mountain of steel. It makes the Alliance transports scattered around its landing site look like toys, and those are each the size of a small house. Novik at one point scoffingly comments that it was deliberately built to be impressive, to which Yasna can reply that it's definitely working as intended.
- Determinator: Yasna, despite all the setbacks and losses she suffers, refuses to give up.
- Happy Fun Ball: The Cyclops, the ultimate fighting machine of the Alliance, looks rather unassuming when compared to the threatening Anti-Mats: a rounded, floating, grey robot that tapers towards the bottom. Yasna compares it to a spinning top.
- It Can Think: One of the possible endings has Yasna release the Flies that were contained by the Condor's crew earlier. Not only will they leave her unharmed, but they will also form into her face for a brief moment, showing that they are capable of gratitude.
- Late to the Tragedy: Much of the game consists of trying to find survivors of the two expeditions.
- Microbot Swarm: The "Black Cloud" or "Flies" that cause all that trouble. They are a product of the robots and machines of the extinct Lyran civilization. Whereas the original robots were huge and complex, the "Flies" that developed are around the size of a large coin and act in huge swarms, with their abilities increasing the larger the swarm gets. They possess a two-step life cycle, the first being bushes which grow out of metallic substrate, and the second being the microbots. They are able to neutralize both machines and human minds through the creation of magnetic fields which are off the scale.
- Moby Schtick: Rohytra's hatred of the Black Cloud has more than a few shades of this. He becomes increasingly determined to destroy the cloud by any means necessary and ends up provoking fights with it even after he has reached comparable safety. Yasna and Novik can try to convince him that trying to get revenge on the cloud is as useless as getting revenge on a storm or ocean.
- Multiple Endings: Depending on what Yasna does near the end of the game, it could lead to several endings, most of which having variations.
- Nuke: If Yasna or Rohytra fire the nukes at the Cloud, it will culminate in them retaliating by attacking the Condor, which leads to their deaths.
- Wait for rescue: If Rohytra is convinced to not fire the nukes at the Cloud, he and Yasna will wait for the Invincible to arrive for a potential rescue. Yasna can optionally go to the Flies' nest and release the Flies that were contained by the Condor's crew prior, in which they briefly reform into Yasna's face and leave her unharmed.
- Syringe: If Yasna stops Rohytra from firing the nukes at the Cloud by knocking him out with a syringe, Yasna will wait for the Invincible to contact the ship. After receiving a message from Rohan, Yasna communicates with him for a moment, only to be stopped by Rohytra. Because of how the Cloud affected him, when he was knocked out, he lost his memories and saw Yasna as an enemy.
- Lander: If the Dragonfly's lander wasn't destroyed before Yasna went to the Alliance camp, Yasna can escape from the planet in the lander. This can be accessed regardless of which of the above endings the player gets so long as the lander is available.
- Leave: If Rohytra doesn't launch the nuke, Yasna will offer Rohytra to escape with her on the lander, which he declines. Rohytra will mention how he'll have to explain everything to his people when they arrive, which gives Yasna the option of giving him her journal. Before leaving, Yasna has the choice of leaving a container of Flies on the planet before leaving or taking it with her.
- Alt!Nuke: If Rohytra decides to launch the nukes, he gives Yasna enough time to get to the lander and escape before launching them. Alternatively, if the nukes are launched, Yasna will attempt to escape the planet with Rohytra and his men before the Cloud reaches Condor. Yasna will make it to the lander, but Rohytra and his men won't, which gives Yasna the option of escaping by herself or waiting for the others to arrive. If Yasna leaves by herself, she'll live, if she waits for the others then she is killed by the Cloud.
- Alt!Syringe: If Yasna uses the syringe of Rohytra, she'll simply leave. This plays out the same way as the ending where Rohytra doesn't launch the nukes, only Yasna isn't given the option to give him her journal.
- Pet the Dog: Rohytra is introduced as an extremely gruff, paranoid man to the point that his first meeting with Yasna is him pointing a gun at her at point-blank range. Later on, he's shown gently and patiently feeding some of his mind-wiped comrades.
- Scenery Porn: The planet offers some gorgeous views of bizarre rock formations, brilliant skies, and several other planetary bodies being visible in the day sky.
- Shout-Out: There are a few references to other novels by Stanisław Lem.
- At one point Novik, the mission commander, starts telling Yasna a story about a mission where his ship crashed on a planet, everything was wrecked, and then he and his crew met these creatures...
- When Yasna talks about the evolutionary arms race that happened on Regis III, Rohytra angrily tells her to step telling him "robot fables", Fables for Robots being one of Lem's earlier works.
- Space Cold War: Implied to be going on between the Commonwealth and the Alliance. The Commonwealth seems to be more research- and science-focused, while the Alliance has all the cool toys.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Three of the Condor's crewman are revealed to have survived. Well, maybe one and two thirds.
- Stupidity-Inducing Attack: The Black Cloud emits an electromagnetic pulse that destroys higher-brain functions of organics and also causes machines to malfunction. Yasna is lucky enough to only suffer from short-term memory loss, compared to the fates of her crewmates.
- Survival Mantra: When the going gets tough, Yasna will occasionally sing small bits and pieces of an evening song to herself.
- Trauma Conga Line: Poor, poor Yasna. Over the course of a few days she:
- Gets attacked by the Black Cloud twice.
- Suffers from blinding headaches and short-term memory loss as a result.
- Finds herself on the wrong side of Anti-Mats twice.
- Loses most of her crewmates, all of which had become her friends over the course of their mission.
- Sees her only way off Regis III destroyed as her ship's last remaining orbital capsule slams into the ground.
- Gets taken prisoner at gunpoint when she was just hoping to find some, any other human who might help her.
- Has to stumble through an almost literal truckload of corpses.
- And to top it all off in one of the bad endings, she becomes responsible to a full-on attack by the Cloud after Rohytra nukes them. They fail, badly.
- Zeerust: The technology in the game is deliberately designed to look like something from a '60s-'70s science fiction novel cover. Bright primary colors, monochrome screens, and awkward, clumsy robots abound, next to interstellar travel, force fields, and antimatter guns.
