623 Invisible Inc. And The Art Of Imperfect Information

I won’t pretend like I know literally anything about traditional Game Theory, but I have read a small amount about Perfect/Imperfect information. I started playing Klei Games’ Invisible Inc. recently, which features heavily this concept.

Basically, Imperfect information in gaming means that there is information in the design of the game that is not available to everybody. In this case, since it’s a single player game, there is information that the computer “player” has, which the human player (me) does not.

There are few instances of this in the game, but the biggest and most obvious is the map layout. Doors obscure your view into rooms, and this is a major gameplay element. You need to (or should, anyway) peak through doors before entering, and even that only gives you limited access to a view of a room. You can also hack security cameras to give you view of rooms for some amount of time.

I can’t help but theorize what the game would be like without this. I think there’s a variation of this game that focuses more on what and how you do and less on obscuring information. The game design would focus more on direct interaction with the environment, planning routes even more carefully, studying the environment thoroughly, predicting others’ movement, and so on.

[ Today I Was Playing: Borderlands 2 and Invisible Inc. ]

#game-opinion, #game-revision