Terra Invicta
WISHLIST MORE HOODED HORSE STRATEGY GAMES
the GameAn extraterrestrial probe is detected approaching Earth. Unknown to humanity, an alien force has arrived in the far reaches of the icy Kuiper Belt and has begun mining a dwarf planet to prepare for an invasion.
With Earth’s nations unable to unite to address the alien arrival, transnational groups of like-minded political, military, and scientific leaders develop covert channels to coordinate a response. With the aliens’ motives uncertain, factions emerge, driven by hope, fear, or greed.
You will control one of these factions.
- The Resistance works to form an alliance of nations to mount a coordinated defense
- Humanity First vows to exterminate the aliens alongside any who sympathize with them
- The Servants worship the aliens and believe they will solve all the troubles of the world
- The Protectorate advocates negotiated surrender as the only means to avoid annihilation
- The Academy hopes the alien arrival heralds the opportunity to form an interstellar alliance
- The Initiative seeks to profit from the chaos and destruction
- Project Exodus plans to build a massive starship and flee the Solar System
A distant anomaly, a mysterious crash site, and a spike in reported disappearances. Could this truly be humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial lifeforms? As your field agents investigate sightings and your scientists race to explore new fields of research, you will slowly learn the truth behind the alien arrival.
- From early sightings and UFO crash sites to rampaging alien megafauna and robotic armies, it will rapidly become clear that the other six human factions are not your sole competition. Throughout the game, illustrated events will present you with difficult choices as you investigate growing alien activity on Earth. Uncover the mystery of the aliens’ origins and motives – unless, of course, you are Humanity First, and all that matters to you is extermination.
- Terra Invicta has a global research system that creates opportunities for both competition and cooperation. Shared scientific advancement unlocks private engineering projects. Factions can choose to focus on private projects, at the cost of weakening Earth as a whole and ceding influence over global research direction to other factions with different priorities. Left unchecked, factions like the Servants or the Initiative may steer the world’s efforts toward developing methods of social control, rather than propulsion or weapon systems.
You begin on Earth as the head of a shadowy organization devoted to your chosen ideology. The aliens are coming – soon – but your first enemies (and perhaps allies) will be other human factions.
- Lead a faction united by ideology, rather than a nation defined by territory. This is a stark change from most strategy games – in Terra Invicta, you will not paint the map with the colors of some chosen nation. Instead you will rule from the shadows and compete with other factions for control points representing a region’s military, economic, and political leadership.
- Geopolitics is your sandbox – unite or break apart nations as best serves your ends, while using those under your influence to conduct proxy wars against the other six factions. Earth’s regions are modeled in detail, from educational levels and unrest to GDP and inequality. Gaining command over regions with great monetary wealth and military power can allow you to implement your will on Earth, but the war for the Solar System will not be won without also securing regions containing space launch facilities.
- Enact your will through a council of politicians, scientists, and operatives sent around the world (and even into space). The starting abilities of these councilors will improve through gaining experience and acquiring control over powerful organizations like intelligence agencies or wealthy corporations. A veteran commander may make the perfect choice to lead a tactical team under the council’s direction, while an experienced diplomat works to secure the funding needed to resist the alien invasion.
- Seek out like-minded populations and politicians and take actions to convert followers of opposing ideologies. Public opinion is modeled along multiple axes – the Servants’ alien worship and the Protectorate’s advocacy of negotiated surrender may largely align in terms of support or opposition to the aliens, but events that show the aliens can be defeated have the potential to convince followers of the Protectorate that resistance is a realistic choice.
Terra Invicta bridges the gap between our modern-day world and the vast interstellar empires of other space strategy games, asking you to take humanity’s first steps in colonizing our Solar System, where over 300 asteroids, moons, and planets in constant motion create an ever-changing strategic map.
- Take your faction beyond the confines of Earth, building space stations to act as shipyards and fuel depots, constructing mining stations to acquire advanced resources, and establishing bases to serve as research or construction facilities. Terra Invicta zooms into the strategic geography of the Solar System, presenting space not as a series of isolated stars that you order units to move to and from, but rather a rich and varied landscape of asteroids, moons, dwarf planets, gas giants, and other celestial bodies creating texture and tactical opportunities at every turn.
- The expansive map is constantly shifting as celestial bodies orbit the Sun. This means your space stations and forward operating bases are constantly moving as well, forcing you to plan accordingly and adapt to the evolving circumstances – your colonies among the Jovian moons could find that a once-distant alien military outpost or Initiative privateering base has suddenly become a close neighbor.
Terra Invicta explores what might be – how colonies on Mars might function, what plausible engines could power our spaceships, and the nature of how space colonization and warfare might proceed. Players may find themselves establishing a mining base on the asteroid 16 Psyche after noticing it is rich in metals – and then learn that in our world NASA is planning The Psyche Mission for the same reason.
- Exploring and eventually colonizing space will require access to many resources: water for life support and propellant, metals for manufacturing, fissiles for nuclear drives and weapons, and more. At the start, you’ll have no choice but to acquire such resources on Earth and suffer the high cost of using rockets to escape Earth’s gravity, but over time you’ll increasingly choose to instead rely on asteroid mining and other means of securing local supply.
- Spaceship design in Terra Invicta draws from the best of scientific speculation and hard science fiction. You can design your own ships, selecting from an array of weapons, drives, and other modules to place on a variety of hulls, ensuring each ship has the right mix of fuel capacity, maneuverability, and other capabilities.
- Tactical combat is built around a realistic simulation of Newtonian physics, where momentum and maneuver in 3D space are just as important as the firepower your ships carry. Fire missiles and use point defense cannons to destroy incoming projectiles; build up momentum then swing hard to bring the enemy into your firing arcs; or grapple with the difficult decision to retract radiators and sacrifice heat dissipation to achieve better armor against an incoming enemy barrage.
Terra Invicta is built with modding support in mind, and much of the game is accessible to modders without a coding background. We hope that the Solar System setting and geopolitics simulation will provide a useful framework for modders to realize their own creative visions.
Game Discussion
Steam User 227
This game is actually somewhat challenging for me to recommend to many people. I think this game has something a lot of people have trouble with (as evidenced by some other reviews, which I think are people correctly identifying that this game does not work for them) so I just want to frontload this with some caution for anyone potentially interested in this game. Still, if the idea of this game sounds interesting to you and you have the grit needed to stomach making frequent mistakes or a willingness to start fresh a few times there is no other game like this that I have played. If you are comfortable with grand strategy games like Europa Universalis and also comfortable with losing is fun games like dwarf fortress this game is in your strike zone.
This is quite a long game, as it stands less than 10% of owners have beaten it, and I suspect that number will probably stay pretty true throughout this game' existence. Still, it is also deceptively forgiving on the regular difficulties, and it takes far more than many realize to reach a true failure state which is unfortunately something that is not evident until you get a lot more experience with the game. There is even an achievement for winning as the resistance after an alien-aligned faction achieves their victory condition.
It is also a very complex game. There are two main layers to the game: earth and space. Both have different intricacies and importance depending on how far into a campaign you are. Each layer contains a huge amount of information that at first feels like trying to memorize a textbook in your head. As you play more, you will probably have many "So THAT is why that is useful!" moments as you go through. This is a game that throws many different tools at you at once. You have to learn which wrench used is for certain bolts and which hammer is best for certain alien heads. When you get to space it throws a second different toolbox at you for good measure. I restarted my games several times when I realized how some things work. Even then I could have probably still played through and won just with some added difficulty and time.
It truly feels like a game where you start as a hopelessly outmatched rag-tag group trying their best against an advanced alien race and their lackies. At game start you are hopelessly outmatched. The aliens have technology that far out classes your own, and to make matters worse you have at least two human factions that also want to work with the aliens.
At game start you have no idea what you are up against. You represent an illuminati-like faction whose objective is to (if playing as the recommended start faction resistance) understand and fight back against an unknown alien threat. You may start off looking at all the nations of the world and grab a whole bunch of European countries. UK and Germany have decent tech and military and are fairly easy to grab and are under your control point cap with some flexibility for other nations in the world. You try to unify them into a federalized European Union (after de-brexiting the UK) but find out actually only the union leader France can do that. Unfortunately, a different faction has control of France and it is going to be a pain to knock them out. Oh well, you continue onwards, or maybe if you are like me restart.
After a year of work and a new space station in orbit you finally have enough resources to try to take out the single ship in orbit conducting surveillance. You are warned that this is very bad and you should probably try to stop it. You send 6 ships after a single alien ship conducting surveillance. Of your six ships, three burn like paper to the lasers of the alien ship. The three remaining ships that got close found out that your navy battleship sized cannons actually don't do much damage to the ship, if they even reach it at all. Turns out chemically propelled chunks of metal aren't fast enough to hit something hundreds of kilometers away in space easily. Worse, it turns out the shots that do hit don't hit hard enough to penetrate its armor.
Now you learn about the importance of armor. At first you might try to armor everything, only to find out wow, turns out armoring an entire ship is expensive. You used most of your space boost to build your ships that took mere moments to disintegrate. And armor adds more weight, and thus more boost to create your ship. You now learn the importance of having a space economy. Turns out you don't need boost if you build it with resources mined in space, and maybe it would have been better to have saved your boost for the first moon and Martian bases. You could have gotten resources there and saved so much boost in building your ships. Maybe here you might restart and try again with this knowledge on a fresh run, although if you don't you can definitely still pull off a win I promise. Some may feel this is 4-5 hours wasted, but if you are the type that likes continual refinement against a challenging enemy it's quite fun.
It's 2030 again and this time you have a decent space economy. The ships you make this time are still pretty cheap, but instead of the naval guns you built two types of ships. One loaded with torpedoes and one loaded with several 40mm intending to saturate the alien ship with enough garbage that eventually some of it gets through. You learn that actually you didn't need to armor the ships that much. Most of the time your ships nose is the only thing that gets hit since it is pointed towards the enemy anyway. Your 6 layers of boron carbide nose armor managed to save 4 of your six ships and you finally blew up that alien ship.
Only to learn that what you took out was the alien equivalent of a national geographic crew when they send two actual combat ships your way and dust your four remaining ships and space station a few months. Strangely you notice they left your lunar and mars bases untouched.
Here is where you start to realize your advantages going forward. Those alien ships actually took a pretty long time to retaliate; they had to fly all the way from past Neptune which took months of game time. While those ships were flying maybe you could have built some newer ships with the new lasers you just researched to take out their missiles. They left your mining bases untouched and maybe are underestimating you. Maybe next time they send two ships you will instead have 8 more waiting for them. And on and on it goes until you finally outmatch them, first with sheer quantity, then later with technology.
If this kind of strategy and in-game story generation interest you, this game is unlike any I have played and I highly recommend it. If you are averse to having to restart or frequently start fresh with alien-bombarded scratch I would caution you that you may not enjoy this.
I also think the actual story in the game is quite good. The writing and characterization of the factions is told mostly through the global technologies you unlock. Each faction has a unique story identity that is actually pretty believable for how people might react to an alien invasion. My favorite being Hanse Castillo and their voice actor portraying an anti-alien insurgent who is determined to win by any means necessary. The Academy is also surprisingly crazy in their goal to achieve mutual recognition with the aliens.
There are some other nitpicks. I wish there was more hinting with technologies, especially ship drives, are recommended for. I think categorizing them by intended role might help. The very end game is also a little slow due to distances your fleets travel for solar system cleanup.
Overall, though, this is a game built around attaining gradual mastery. Even if you end up at a dead end you can still recover by taking a different route. I have almost 400 hours in this game since its early access and still learn so much each game I play. I hope very much that Pavonis continues to develop this, or other games like this in the future.
Steam User 126
This game has a level of mechanical complexity and emergent strategy that I have not seen rivaled by any other game. It is essentially an illuminati 4x, space colonization, and space combat sim stapled together.
This game's learning curve is incredibly steep, and a playthrough can run up to 100 hours to completion.
That kind of commitment isn't for everyone, but if you're on board for that it is an incredible experience.
My one critique: Devs, you have got to drop the war with minmaxxers. When you nerf techs and councilor actions in response to the most fine-tuned, 1000+ hour player time players, you are simply gimping the experience for everyone else.
Don't be like EU4 where entire mechanics are simply not worth engaging with because they have less than 5-10% chance to do anything.
Minmaxxers will ALWAYS find a new cheese, the only thing you are NERFING long term is the FLAVOR of the game.
Steam User 174
Find Xcom's tactical battles repetitive and boring after a while? Wish you could focus on research and grand strategy without stopping to clear out your 250th crashed UFO?
This is the game for you.
Imagine if you could zoom out of Xcom's groescape and interact with the whole solar system. Build orbital stations, asteroid/planetary bases, and fleets of ships that adhere to Newtonian physics.
Pull the strings and manipulate nations from the shadows. Assassinate or imprison rivals. Direct armies. Launch nukes. And somehow find the time and resources to resist the aliens. Or capitulate to them. Or betray humanity and help them.
Steam User 108
I really don’t want to give this game a thumbs up - but giving it a thumbs down would also feel unfair. So here we go.
TL;DR: The early and mid‑game is fantastic. Unfortunately, in more than 30 years of playing PC and console games, I’ve never had my motivation collapse as quickly in the endgame as it did with Terra Invicta.
So what’s the issue?
The core gameplay revolves around cycles in which your agents (the so‑called councillors) carry out actions on Earth. You assign tasks, confirm them, hit play, watch time advance, deal with event pop‑ups, and then wait for the cycle to end so you can do it all again.
It might sound dull, but it’s actually great fun - piecing together major nation‑states from small countries, developing their spacefaring capabilities, and countering enemy councillors. And of course, the aliens will regularly attempt to land armies on Earth, keeping you constantly on the defensive.
By the mid‑game, you might control a third of Earth’s population and enjoy a steady flow of resources from space mining. That’s when you’re expected to take the fight to the aliens. And that’s exactly when the main gameplay loop becomes a slog.
Anything you want to accomplish in space takes ages. Want to build a fleet with shiny new technologies to attack an alien outpost near Jupiter? First wait several cycles to gather missing resources. Then wait several more till all ships have been built. Then wait again for the fleet to actually reach Jupiter. Rinse and repeat. This would be tolerable if there were meaningful things to do on Earth in the meantime - but by then you already control enough nations, have ample research capacity, and the most efficient use of your councillors is simply spamming “Advise” on your biggest states for massive research or production boosts. So every cycle becomes the same repetitive set of orders.
Occasionally you’ll need to retake a lost part of a state, but for the most part you’re just sitting around waiting for your space operations to finish. And since defeating the aliens in space is a monumental task, you’re probably staring at 30–50 hours of this slow grind. That’s when I realized my time is too valuable for this.
However, I had an absolute blast for more than 90 hours in the early and mid‑game, so withholding a thumbs up would be unfair to the developers. Thanks, everyone!
Steam User 99
This game is not for everyone.
In many ways it is spreadsheet gaming. Solar system is easier to navigate via lists of planetary bodies then overview. Fleets and armies are more stats then units, their orders are not point and click but menus to make them to go to certain orbits or regions. Interface in many ways is clunky, design quite outdated and a lot of obvious QoL missing.
But for those who are OK with those drawbacks, this game might just be a real treasure. It is complex, with intertwined mechanics. Some of them come online much later then others, so even if you think you figured out the beginning of the game, you'll probably still fail later.
This game is strategic. It took me 192 hours to win my first run - I had to restart and reload so many times because mistakes had consequences much later. Planning ahead is paramount, neglecting some aspects will result in lagging behind when those become really important later.
And that's on top of pure vibes. Alien invasion, the threat and the potential. A rare timeframe of modern age transitioning into realistic near future shaped by the player. Invention of better techs to become on par with aliens to finally push them back.
This game is not for everyone, but it is very rewarding for those, who are ok with mid UX and are interested in setting. Tens of hours of melancholic solar system domination.
Be wary of losing your family while contesting Jupiter.
P.S. Devs themselves seem to be cool guys. During Early Access I had broken game state that crushed my game. Made a bug report, devs asked for more savefiles to figure out the issue, and then even sent me back a fixed savefile. Good stuff!
Steam User 98
Crusader Kings with an X-Com skin.
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The game play is heavily rooted in the grand strategy model, while the story is an X-Com derivative influenced by Hearts of iron politics.
Overall I have to say the game feels like it was made in 2006 and not 2026. I don't mean it in a bad way, but that it's actually more substance over style. Rather than flashier games that may be style over substance. They didn't shy away from deep mechanics or overly complex interfaces. You can get lost in menus and claw your way through the codex trying to find your next move. Meanwhile the alien invasion looms in the background waiting for you to make a decision.
The decision process comes off as turn based, despite trying to hide it behind wait times. The globe and time scale rush by while you really only get to make meaningful decisions at fixed intervals. It's a game firmly rooted in the strategy side of the story in contrast to X-Com's wider layering of tactics.
If you've played both old and new X-Com games, the older X-coms were a blend of strategy and tactics. The newer X-Coms leaned more heavily into the tactics while minimizing the strategy layer. And Terra Invicta swings heavily in the other direction, strategy to the point where you might think you're in Crusader Kings reskinned to a modern day alien invasion.
In short: I'm trying to say the game is good, but likely for a niche audience. If you need fancy graphics, an amazing soundtrack and lots of action, you're not going to find it here. But you will find an incredibly detailed interface with a variety of meaningful choices to help you navigate through bizarre global politics during a time of international catastrophe while trying to bring humanity to finally launch itself back into space with a wider purpose.
You have choices ranging from which countries to take over and how to run their governments, down to how to build modules for starships and which asteroids to investigate for mining across the solar system. It's overwhelming, in a good way.
The minimal tutorial serves only as a basic guide to the exhaustive control set up. But don't expect it to teach you how to win. The codex can tell you what each choice does, but it can't tell you which is the right choice; because it depends on what's going on at any given time. Difficulty is as much about the choices you make as it is the random elements that might just decide to end your faction before it even gains traction. You can expect winning to take 100 hours or more, and you can expect losing to take nearly that long before you realize you screwed up 90 hours ago and can't fix your mistakes without starting over.
Expect to lose and learn from it until you come up with a strategy capable of overcoming the odds. And then do it again, as the replay value of having different factions with different goals is a nice touch.
And that's about all that's worth describing. You either enjoy the grand strategy model with many layers of menu choices or this isn't even your genre.
As an added bonus the game is relatively easy to mod and the devs are pretty responsive to community issues and bug reports.
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Bottom line: X-Com if it were a bureaucratic nightmare instead of a tactical skirmish simulator.
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Steam User 97
Perfect game if you are:
- Looking for a deep, deep strategy game.
- a fan of Xcom: Long War, Stellaris, Civ etc. looking for a new game to sink hundred of hours into
- Looking for a sci-fi strategy game.
Just be warned, only go into this if you have a lot of time to spare / willing to forego all responsibilities in the real world for a couple of months!