Invincible: The Hero-Building Game Design Diary 3 – The Bad Guys

May 31, 2024

Now available for Pre-Order

Welcome to the third in our series of preview articles walking you through the upcoming Invincible: The Hero-Building Game. So far we’ve given you an overview of the game, and a look at the starting heroes. Today, we’re going to do a closer look at the bad guys you’re up against.

But first, we need to tell you a bit more about the world that you’re saving.

Zones of Interest

Your battles in this game will take place over a simple battlefield comprised of three zones. Over the course of the campaign, this simple setup will represent everything from Mount Rushmore to the campus of Upstate University.

Each zone starts with 10 civilians, some in danger, others in safety. The heroes will want to protect these bystanders, because if too many of them die – either 15 total, or all of them from one zone – it’s game over. Also because it’s probably the right thing to do or something.

And now we can show you some of the threats facing these citizens.

Anatomy of an Ahole**

Throughout the game, you’ll face a variety of villain cards. Each villain has two powers: A basic attack, represented with a fist icon, which will always deal some amount of damage, and a power icon which could do any number of things.

For example, this Prototype Reaniman’s power is represented by two endanger icons which means “Endanger 2 civilians.” When that power activates, you’ll move two civilians in his zone from Safety to Danger. If there aren’t enough civilians in safety, he’ll kill that many instead.

His power meanwhile will deal two damage to all heroes in the zone… unless there are no heroes in the zone, in which case it’ll endanger two civilians instead. So one of the ways heroes can protect civilians is just by standing between them and the forces of evil. Of course, sooner or later that starts to hurt, and the heroes also lose if the team members get knocked out a total of three times.

And unfortunately for the world, Prototype Reaniman is far from the toughest bad guy you’ll face. There are three levels of villain, each nastier than the last. At level two, you’ll start to see villains challenging you in different ways.

Kursk, for example, will force the heroes to spread out if they want to block for civilians, since they can’t be quite sure where his lightning will fly.

Tether Tyrant meanwhile forces them to make a tough choice about which of their powers they think they can live without next round.

And at level three, things get really scary, with threats like Battle Beast, who’ll pummel you until you’re nearly dead before looking for a more worthy foe.

But hey, not all your enemies are unreasonable psychopaths. Titan, Crime Boss is a reasonable man, who’s even willing to help you fight the bad guys. There just might be some collateral damage along the way.

There is one last type of enemy you’ll come up against – and in this case, they actually are least. Minions are generic token enemies that tend to arrive in bulk. Any damage at all will take them down, but if left unchecked, they can do plenty of damage.

…Especially if a villain like the Magmanite Swarm is around to make them more deadly.

How to Not Die

Of course, heroes aren’t helpless in the face of all this. You can deal damage to villains to defeat them, of course. When you can’t manage that, you can use Rescue powers to move civilians to Safety.

And when you’re truly worried a villain will wreck you, you can try thwarting them.

Whenever a hero thwarts, they can put a marker over one of the blue Thwart spaces on a villain card in their zone. Fill them all, and you’ll stop the villain’s next power activation.

A Ballet of Violence

Put it all together, and you’ve got the makings for a vast array of interesting combat puzzles. Every game you’ll face a different combination of enemies, presenting different kinds of threats in different places. Which will you focus on defeating? Which will you thwart? And which storms will you attempt to weather through a combination of rescuing and smart positioning? The answers will rarely be the same twice – especially because your tools will always be changing as well.

We’d love to show off some more of those tools, but the most terrifying villain of all – time – is going to cut us off here. So join us next time as we show off the most potent tools in your arsenal: Ultimate Powers.