The core of the game, though, rarely changed, and watching the devs try to figure out how best to stay true to that was an insightful experience. New characters, new equipment, new bad guys. But every few weeks a new build would hit, and things would fill out a bit more. The initial release was a bit thin there wasn’t really any “metagame” to speak of, just an endless parade of corporate HQs waiting to be busted into. Week after week, I put hours into the game now called Invisible, Inc. The security systems had learned to bite back. But this time, unexpected things kept happening. As I’ve watched the game grow, the devs interact with the community, and new players dive in, I’ve come to develop a new, more positive opinion of early access-though still with a degree of caution.įor months, Shalem had been infiltrating corporate outposts, slicing into their security systems, and sneaking away with the loot. Now, nearly a year later, they’ve added the game-now renamed Invisible, Inc.-to Steam’s ever-growing list of early access games. And when Klei quietly offered fans buy-in early access to the game last fall, I put aside my reservations and jumped in. I devoured the promotional streams, watched hand-held footage taken at last summer’s PAX Prime, and read the forums. Worst of all, some games never leave early-access, being dropped entirely by their devs, left as an unfinished husks of unbalanced mechanics and programmer-made art.īut… cyberspies. At the early access stage, some games are little more than tech demos or proofs of concept. Early access games can be bad: unbalanced, buggy, and often unfocused. What if the fans drove the devs to make bad decisions? I also didn’t want to pour hours into an early build, burning out on the game before I got to play the launch release. I wasn’t sure how I felt about how early access let players influence a game. Sure, Klei had found lots of success with early access for another one of their titles, the Tim Burton-esque survival game Don’t Starve, but I remained skeptical for a host of reasons. But I was concerned, because unlike Klei’s impeccable Mark of the Ninja, this new project would be released as an “early access” game. James Bond meets Johnny Mnemonic meets high-tension, turn-based decision making. The pitch was solid: Squad-based tactics a la XCOM, but with cyberpunk megacorporations and supercomputers, and a dash of Cold War-era style and flair. Right around this time last year, Klei Entertainment was putting the final touches on its first public release of Incognita. “Another easy payche- Wait, what the hell is that?” Shalem linked into the building’s security system and smirked as he deactivated a nearby camera. This evening he was after secret R&D info held deep in a Sankaku Robotics facility. Shalem-11 slipped out of the service elevator smoothly, adjusting his tie and checking his corners, like always.
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