INDUSTRIA

The world is pretty well realized, visually cohesive and interesting at a surface level. Unfortunately it never develops past the level of "I wonder what's going on". It successfully drew me in and gave me the desire to find out more about what happened, but that information never comes. When I finally reached the main objective of the journey and what I thought would be a revelatory expositional moment instead a character just monologues cryptically and vaguely, explaining nothing. Then the credits roll. I don't think I didn't get it, I think it's just incomplete, which is a bummer. Unfortunately, the gameplay was also underwhelming. The combat is serviceable but nothing special. The guns are are visually fine, but have little gameplay variety. There is very little hit feedback on enemies, and they all pretty much just run in a straight line at you. The one exception are the hitscan ranged enemies, which are just annoying because they absolutely shred your health while moving erratically at long range. There are extremely basic puzzles and platforming challenges as well, but nothing that rises to any level of challenge beyond stacking crates to get over a ledge, or picking up a handle and installing it in a door to allow entry. There are two difficulties which, disappointingly, can only be chosen at the beginning of the game. If you play this game I would recommend avoiding hardcore difficulty as saves are fairly far apart, and you will end up replaying long sections of fairly bland gameplay. The inclusion of a hardcore difficulty that restricts saving would make more sense if this was more of a survival horror game but in a short narrative fps it feels like a bizarre inclusion. I wouldn't say I had a bad time either, it was an alright diversion for a few hours but it is difficult to recommend considering the incomplete story and how bland the gameplay is. If it's on sale and you really like singleplayer fps and don't mind the unfinished narrative, maybe.

Great little indie shooter, hopefully it does well enough they can make bigger and better FPS games in the future. On a side note for those like myself that suffered from low fps etc, press alt ctrl delete to open task manager in game, then go to the details tab, then right click on the industria Win64 Shipping.exe and move your mouse up to set priority and select High and close task manager, i know it's a pain in the arse to do this each time you play the game, but being an indie release it's a small price to pay for a minor inconvenience. no pay to win, no predatory macro-transactions, no algorithym's implemented to psychologically manipulate you into opening your wallet after paying full price for the game. and it is DRM free well worth the $19.40 AUD i paid.

The game itself is fun and enjoyable, plays like half-life episode. One questionable swear word at the beginning could be omitted and certainly reduce the rating of the game to teen. The gun play, the atmosphere, and the story are fun and intriguing, but they end it.. abruptly, and weirdly. They give you health and ammo before the ending cut-scene. But WHY? Because they intended the game to continue. There was intended to be at least 1 or 2 more levels that were obviously cut, some games can get away with it, this game cant because of the pacing. I wish the devs will finish the game in the future, but if you enjoy an excellent 5 hour tech demo, and I kinda do, you cant go wrong.

I found myself in a situation where for some reason I couldn't switch weapon with either the keyboard keys or the mouse. My character is stuck in a position where she point the weapon to ceiling... Can't even use the escape key to quit the game or use a typewriter to save my state of the game before force quitting it.

industria is clearly trying to sell you on its art direction and moody and on those fronts it succeeds. unfortunatley, some of the notes can't be picked up so the story you're left to piece together beyond what's immediately shown to you has some odd holes. some feel deliberate, some feel like the sad case of a bug causing problems. when you're not exploring and doing light puzzling, you're shooting and on the subject of industria's shooting I will say this: it certainly works. it's not a bad game by any means, but it's not stellar. it does the things it really cares about really well (art direction, mood, tone and design) and it does the things it doesn't seem to care about as much... passably. guns don't sound great or feel great and don't register very well when you hit enemies but it becomes pretty apparent pretty quickly that this was never the intent. there's a ton of love poured into this game and I think that alone makes it worth a spin. that and it's like 3 hours long. which is a good length, I think - it certainly doesn't overstay its welcome even if it is over a little too soon.