The Invisible Hours Reviews

C'est très bien.

I was skeptical about this game for at least two reasons. 1) I was tired of Tesla’s mythological reputation. 2) For years, story based 3D adventure games (e.g. Agatha Christie, Blacksad, The Council, State of Mind, Frogwares games) have largely failed to deliver on their promises, with the exception of Telltale Games. But wow, was I wrong. I haven’t finished the game yet, but I’m about halfway through, and it’s been a blast so far. I’m not particularly drawn to gameplay-focused games unless they have psychologically fleshed out characters, interesting relationships, and good voice acting. This game ticks all those boxes, and it has managed to pull me in so thoroughly that I’ve found myself playing for hours on end. Sadly, as is often the case with a specific type of games I enjoy, it hasn’t sold well. It seems to me that story based games (except the pseudo-deep ones like Disco Elysium, Talos Principle, Undertale, A Plague Tale, Oxenfree, This War of Mine, Bioshock Infinite, and for some reason Doki Doki), have been struggling for years to find an audience, as evidenced by the downfall of Telltale Games, unless they’re paired well with good gameplay or interesting atmosphere (e.g. SOMA, Outer Wilds, NieR Automata, Hellblade, Pathologic, Stanley Parable, Enderal, Firewatch, original Bioshock, Mass Effect, and lots of point-and-click games). So I think Tequila Works needs to sugar their upcoming pills with unique settings if they want people to give them a chance. Spec Ops The Line had the same problem, a nice story with not-so-interesting gameplay and setting. I mean, make Tesla a cyber-cat or something, I don’t know.. Oh and it's not a one hour game unless you're rushing to the end, which is basically skipping the game.