Much like movies and TV shows, there's no shortage of video games based on comic books. Among the series that is soon getting its own video game adaptation is the Invincible series written by Robert Kirkman, best known for The Walking Dead series, which ran from 2003 until 2018 that was adapted into an animated TV Show now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. While the main series is focused on Mark Grayson as he balances his school life while fighting evil across different dimensions, Invincible Presents: Atom Eve focuses on one of the central characters of the universe, Atom Eve, another high schooler who possesses the power to alter matter with her mind.
At its heart, Invincible Presents: Atom Eve is effectively a visual novel. The two story episodes I experienced in a recent preview build were filled with a lot of dialogues between different characters featuring writing in line with the source material, plenty of choices to make, which influenced Eve's relationships with other characters, and some beautifully drawn scenes that feel faithful to the comic books origin of the tale. The choice and consequence system seems to go rather in-depth, so there could be plenty of replay value in the final version of the game. To make an example, in the preview build, Eve is dating her fellow superhero Rex Spiode because of choices made in the first episode, which wasn't available in the build, but players can choose to only be his friend in the final version of the game. The story feels interesting enough, dealing with Eve's double life as a high-schooler and a superhero, so I'm definitely curious to see how everything will eventually develop.
The relatively straightforward visual novel gameplay of Invincible Presents: Atom Eve is made a little more involving by the introduction of RPG mechanics, which include character customization and turn-based combat. By completing story sequences and defeating enemies, Eve will obtain a certain amount of experience points, leveling up after reaching certain thresholds. Upon level up, it will be possible to unlock a variety of abilities via the Skill Tree, which is divided into three different branches. All branches include combat skills and perks that unlock new options during dialogues, an interesting approach that makes both halves of the game feel coherent.
The Invincible Presents: Atom Eve turn-based combat system is extremely simple, but it comes with some very interesting twists. Among Eve's stats is Energy, which provides the heroine with the power needed to unleash her special powers, which include a straightforward melee attack, a protective shield, a powerful beam, and so on. Ending the turn before all Energy was used will allow Eve to keep the unused Energy so as to unleash more attacks the following turn or use her beam attack at full potency since its power increases the more Energy is used to activate it. Enemies obviously can unleash different attack types as well, and players are forewarned about what they are going to do with icons on the battle interface. Given how Eve is often outnumbered, players will have to use the right moves at the right time in a sort of rock-paper-scissor system that works surprisingly well. During Episode Two's first fight, I thought combat was more of a chore than an interesting feature, but as things moved forward, I started enjoying it quite a bit, especially as difficulty is tuned in such a way that the player needs to use all of Eve's tools properly to win.
My time with Invincible Presents: Atom Eve was short, but I definitely enjoyed what I experienced. If the story manages to stay interesting and combat challenging, we could have a really good visual novel on our hands when the game launches before the end of the year on Steam.
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