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.

A landscape shot of an alien planet, which looks like a desert with huge, jutting rocks, and then there’s a low-hanging moon in the background.

And when I look at The Invincible, it makes me feel that way too.

you might see it in the screenshots.

There are turquoise skies fading to starry black, and boiling oranges beneath them.

Cover image for YouTube video

I find it mesmerising.

In the game, you are a biologist working with a small research crew on a vessel thatisn’tThe Invincible.

Yasna’s journey to remember what’s going on becomes your journey, then.

A screenshot from The Invincible. It’s a first-person view from a rocky canyon as the boiling orange sun above goes down. The player holds a scanning device that looks like an old, small, film recorder. A basketball-sized, metal probe hovers nearby.

This isn’t a combat-oriented game.

Nor is Yasna super-human in her physical capabilities.

There’ll be the scrape of canvas as she does so, and some grunts of exertion.

A screenshot from The Invincible, in which we see in first-person as the player reaches out to touch the domed head of a chrome robot in front of us.

Even shimmying down from a ledge takes effort.

It even makes a feature of them.

The other half of the ‘what you do’ equation involves playing with gadgets.

A screenshot from The Invincible, showing the yellow interior of a vintage space rover vehicle, its dashboard, and our space-suited hand and arm reaching out to flip the radar lever we see on it.

As you walk around, you’ll find things you’re free to prod and poke.

When you do, you’ll want to touch it.

It’s almost irresistible; switches and levers protrude from everything, begging to be used.

A screenshot from The Invincible. We see the top of a circular, metallic probe popped out to reveal some switches and flashing lights within.

It almost doesn’t matter what these things do as long as they look and sound the part.

It’s all Smeg fridges everywhere you look - chunkiness and curviness and thick metal heftiness.

The game delights in it.

A screenshot from The Invincible, showing a rocky and caved planetary surface bathed in a greenish mist and glow.

But it’s never very hard.

Even the gadgets you’re given to help you explore and locate things never seem to amount to anything.

They’ll be intertwined in some exploratory moments, but I hardly use some of them the entire game.

A screenshot showing the photo mode in The Invincible. We see a zoomed out image of an astronaut standing on a sandy path near the edge of a rocky cliff. In the distance, a ringed planet can be seen in the turquoise night sky. On the other side of the picture, we see a boiling orange sun. The two colour hues are almost in competition with each other. It’s very pretty.

They end up feeling like props.

A few more oversized fidget-spinners of machinery to fiddle around with.

This doesn’t appear to be remappable using a controller but is using mouse and keyboard.

A screenshot from The Invincible, showing a first-person perspective of an astronaut character holding up a walkie-talkie like device locator and looking out at a rocky area with a low-hanging, orange sun in the sky before them.

There are bumper presses and holds required on the controller too.

Optional head bobbing, optional motion blur, text size increase, optional text backgrounds.

It’s a very pleasant place to be.

There are too many facades, and the ideas and interactions that are there never go quite far enough.

Ultimately, it ends up feeling a bit thin.

It never quite takes off.