Joining the rare but always brilliant category of “games that sound like someone scratched the high concept into their arm at pub closing time with the sharp corner of a Frazzles packet” is Assassinvisible – a stealth game about an invisible assassin that’s so invisible the player doesn’t know where they are. True, games like Invisigun have experimented with this interesting concept before, but in Assassinvisible it’s framed by another – the whole game exists as doodles in a bored student’s notebook. Here’s the Tres-tray:
This one’s going to be very quote-y, because I’m still trying to wrap my head around it myself. The Steam page describes Assassinvisible thusly: “A cute bite-sized puzzle and stealth game that takes place in the margins of a bored pupil’s notebook. You’re an invisible assassin, sneak your way past the guards to reach your target and erase it!”
The idea, as far as I can tell, is that you’ll track your own movements through the hand-drawn puzzles one square at a time, trying to reach your target and take them out. Through the framing, you’ll also learn more about the student drawing you. Here are the features, which themselves feature the word ‘complexifying’:
- Hand-drawn levels (that the kid made, certainly not us) with ever complexifying, unique and interesting situations -absolutely no filler.
- An original gameplay where the character is invisible for the enemies, but also for the players!
- A touching story told through a pupil’s notebook.
- Your ultimate revenge for all those years spent being bored (and having fun) in class.
It’s from French studio Zaatar Café, and it’s out on the 13th of December. Until then, the studio have a few smaller releases on Itch.io you can find here. My favourite of these is ‘the elusive portal snake’, which Zaatar Café didn’t design, but recreated from memory after a previous mash up of Portal and Snake they played on Itch got deleted. Storied!