Scoping out the Klei booth at PAX this year gave me the opportunity to check out their new title: Incognita, a game that’s best described as a stealth turn-based tactical game. Now again, I think the most helpful thing I can do for you is to give you a solid comparison and then go over what makes Incognita unique. On a most basic level, Incognita feels very much like XCOM. The movement, action points… the core mechanics are very much the same. What is different is the role of the player as the commander, and the approach you take to the almost labyrinthine level design.
The core focus of the game is not to dispatch enemy units, but rather to steal corporate secrets. Players do this by deploying operatives with different specialties on missions to infiltrate enemy head compounds and do whatever is necessary to achieve your goals. In the demo I was given two separate operatives, one that was fast and specialized in unlocking doors and another that was slightly more combat focused and allowed me to hack into nearby computers. Certain computers gave me CPU usage as a resource that I then used to hack into cameras or security systems.
Incognita has a fundamentally interesting premise because stealth games are not generally done in a turn based format. It’s also a game where levels are procedural generated, meaning that cautious exploration will be a focus of every playthrough. I’m not certain how the game will turn out as a whole experience, in that I don’t know how well the stealth mechanics are going to carry an experience that lasts for hours, but it’s built on a solid framework. I’m just not sure if I’d ever play it instead of XCOM.
