Terra Invicta

Terra Invicta is a strategy game representing grand strategy game genre, in which we have to face the alien invasion. It was developed by Pasovian Games studio, who gained fame thanks to mods for XCOM series and their first fully independent project is clearly inspired by tactical series by Firaxis Games team. As a result, the developers managed to find a publisher - Hooded Horse - but also run a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. It raised over $216,000 with a minimum goal set at $20,000.

Plot

In Terra Invicta, Earth faces an alien invasion, whose activity has been detected in the Kuiper Belt, just beyond the orbit of Neptune. However, even the threat of a cosmic invasion is not able to unite the divided humanity. On the contrary, in the face of the threat, politicians, scientists and military officials are beginning to form transnational parties with different goals. Even those who want to defend the Earth from aliens do not fully agree with each other, and there is no shortage of those who think about forming an alliance with aliens or even surrendering to the invaders.

Game mechanics

Like many similar series (Victoria etc.), Terra Invicta allows us to take on the role of a commander of a chosen faction, and our task is to expand its influence, either by arms or diplomacy. There are seven playable factions in the game, each with different victory conditions. For example, the organization Humanity First seeks to completely eliminate the aliens and their sympathizers, while The Academy thinks about forming an alliance with the invaders, and Project Exodus - about escaping from the solar system.

In accordance with the rules of the genre, the game demands that we immerse ourselves in a complex economic and political system. What's interesting, the world is not simply divided between the seven mentioned factions. On Earth there are nations with their own armies, organizations, etc.

It is these nations that we influence in order to achieve our own goals, for example, by putting pressure on intelligence agencies to detect and eliminate invaders and by leading national fleets into battle. And the aliens are not idle: their activity manifests itself through alien bases and mysterious or destructive random events. The whole game takes place in real time, although at any time we can use the active pause function to give orders in no hurry.

The development aspect was also solved in an unusual way. Instead of separate technology trees in Terra Invicta we have shared scientific progress for the whole Earth, which unlocks private projects for each faction. The latter are necessary to achieve the goals of a particular faction and we can focus only on them. However, this is quite a risk: not only will it weaken the entire planet, but it will also put control over the direction of research in the hands of rivals, making it harder for us to access further private projects. As a result, factions can not only compete, but also cooperate.

Over time, the conflict also moves into space, made up of more than 300 planets, moons and asteroids. All of them are in constant motion, which makes the map constantly change during the game. The developers have approached the ship design and combat in an equally realistic way. We can choose from many types of hulls and placed on them weapons, drives and coolers, and battles take place in real time in 3D space.

In battles, the momentum and maneuverability of units are as important as their firepower. You also have to take care of dissipating the constantly accumulating heat, but this can translate into adding weak points (such as a vulnerable heat sink). All this means that technological and economic superiority does not determine victory, as it does in many 4X strategies.

Game modes

Terra Invicta campaign on Kickstarter allowed the developers to add two additional scenarios. In the first, the game's action moves to the Cold War era, while in the second, it moves to a future where the colonization of the solar system has long since begun. The former allows you to test yourself in a time when humanity was on the brink of nuclear war, which will make it much more difficult to defend ourselves together against aliens. In the second you can immediately start battles in space, as we start with already built stations.

Technical aspects and other

3D graphics of Terra Invicta do not differ from what we can associate with other strategies. The game is accompanied by music composed by the Hamburg team Breakdown Epiphanies, which has scored the soundtrack of the acclaimed Battle Brothers. Moreover, thanks to Kickstarter, the creators managed to engage professional voice actors speaking in many languages.

The game was designed with mods in mind from the beginning. Terra Invicta allows fans to easily create their own modifications without any programming knowledge.