Tempting Fate

Stanisław Lem though perhaps not as well know as Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov, was very much a Cold War era science fiction writer of the same caliber.  His lack of renown has much to do with him writing in his native language, Polish, as well as residing on the communist side of the iron curtain.  To this day, many of his works have not been translated into English.  In part it's because of his tendency for idiomatic expressions and wordplay (things which are very hard to convey in a different language and culture), but also because much of what he wrote was a product of the 1960s...or even earlier.  Hence, Lem's descriptions often suffer from some pretty glaring anachronisms.  Calling his works dated though, would be unfair in that he tended to fill his stories with philosophy, satire and criticisms that are just as relevant today as they were over half-a-century ago.  Though he often wrote about flawed utopias, his most signature trope is incomprehensible extra-terrestrial lifeforms, exemplified in his most famous tale "Solaris," but also on full display in another of his works - a novella entitled "The Invincible."

This space sci-fi adventure story is being adapted to a video game format by Polish development team Starward Industries.  This group of former Witcher series devs hope to have a level of success similar to what they achieved when adapting the writings of another Polish genre fiction author - Andrzej Sapkowski.  While not a third-person action RPG, the Starward team have made a smart move by embracing the story's dated elements via an atompunk visual art style.  For those unfamiliar, atompunk is the future that never was.  It's what people thought the future would look like in the 1950s and 60s.  In essence, it is a retro-future aesthetic with the signature bright colors, rocket-shaped starships, spacesuits with big glass visors, and of course ray guns.  It's actually a fairly underused art style that I'm glad is getting a chance to show off here.  

As far as gameplay goes, the novella focused on the crew of the titular star cruiser "Invincible" and an investigation into the loss of contact with their sister ship "The Condor" on the planet Regis III.  The original story features a lot of dialogue and traveling about under dangerous circumstances.  So it comes as no surprise that the developers hinted that the game would play like a mix of Firewatch and Alien: Isolation.  Despite adhering pretty closely to the source material, it does sound like there will be some deviations.  For one thing the protagonist will be a member of The Invincible's crew who has woken up from hypersleep late and has to figure out what is going on (not something that happened in the novella).  It all sounds very intriguing though, so, as one might imagine I have high hopes for this game and look forward to learning more about next year.