XCOM is better than most things – including, I’d argue, X-Com. But have you ever wondering what it would be like if it gave us more interesting things to do than shoot people? Klei did – and once they’d finished transposing Dishonored for two dimensions in Mark of the Ninja they began work on Incognita: a turn-based tactical espionage game.
Widdly-widdly-fast-forward to now, and Incognita is in alpha. And despite its creators’ protests about early stages and missing features, it already looks like a grid-based revelation.
Klei have interspersed their trailer with spurts of animation that look like what happens in my head when playing a turn-based tactics game – the most-exciting possible real-time interpretation of events:
You know those moments in XCOM when you feel completely naked, but for a rubbish percentage and a lot of faith? It looks like they’re here, made worse than ever by the knowledge that this guard will set off that alarm if you don’t successfully thwack him this turn.
And now for the caveats: the game as it exists currently is a single, randomly-generated level, hosting a handful of agents and “little to no progression”. While most of the strategic systems, procedural generation, UI and technical doohickies are already in place, Klei say Incognita is missing “most of our content” – something they’ve prudently decided to include in time for its full release.
“Because the game is still in the early stages, we’re expecting the game to change significantly as we test and iterate on major features,” they write. “We’re also expecting major bugs to pop up during the development, as much as we try to avoid them.”
The details might be complicated, but breaking in is simple: pre-order a copy of the game and you’ll gain access to all current and future alpha and beta builds. Do you think you will?