During the final scene of Starward Industries’ firstperson narrative adventure, we encounter a bug. It speaks to the qualities of this thoughtful piece of science fiction that we instinctively wonder if it’s actually a feature, pondering the implications of a bold but apparently intentional decision that certainly reflects the concluding choice we’ve just made. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve been wrongfooted by the debut release from this Polish studio, which clearly isn’t afraid of diverging from conventional game design wisdom. As we look out across the surface of Regis III through the eyes of astrobiologist protagonist Yasna, several minutes passing by without incident, we finally concede that something might have gone wrong. Even so, we’re happy just to sit and enjoy the view.

There are plenty more jaw-slackening vistas during the eight or so hours it takes to reach the endgame of The Invincible, an adaptation of sorts of Stanisław Lem’s 1964 hard sci-fi novel – this year marking the 50th anniversary of its English-language translation. It invents a new expedition to Regis III that falls chronologically between the two outlined in Lem’s book, detailing the travails of a much smaller craft and crew to tell a more intimate tale, distilling many of the themes of the source material into a relatively compact form. Since Lem’s work has often been declared unfilmable, that might seem like an act of hubris on the part of his countrymen, though in a sense that’s fitting: this is, after all, a tale of humanity’s folly, the central mantra that ‘not everything everywhere is for us’ drilled home through dialogue and even written across an optician’s chart. “We’re not supposed to be here,” Yasna says, after the latest in a string of incidents that suggest someone – or something – doesn’t want this mission to end well.