INDUSTRIA

I haven't been that immersed for a while. The atmosphere and art style are superb. But there are too many issues for me to keep playing. The reasons I'm refunding the game Performance / Optimiziation: On a 1080ti with default settings at 1080p it went from 70 to 20 fps. After the game opened up, performance went steadily down. Save system (on hard): You have to find typewriters to save. These things are very scarce and at terrible places. Bugs: Weapons stop working. Now combine the three things I described and you have the last few moments of me playing this. I was already searching (for a while) for a point to save my game (1. should have been doing other things and 2. keeping a game open that heats up the house and wastes electricity aka money is not an option). When I encountered a new enemy type. My attempt to neutralize the threat failed because one after the other, my weapons stopped working. I my last save was way over 30mins ago. Screw that! *My others specs don't matter because they are overpowered.

So, obviously, I'm tempering my criticism because this is clearly an indie project with a small staff and limited budget. Overall, I love the concept and the gameplay, though simplistic, is fun. The environments are very well designed. Even though the game itself was relatively small in scope, the environmental design made it feel like a larger world. My ONLY complaint is that, due to the limitations of the studio, it ends far too early. 4 hours of gameplay is a generous estimate. It's 2 and half if you're moving slow, and the story, what of it that there is, cuts off somewhat abruptly. I'm sure that the studio is planning on using initial funds from this game to fund a second, potentially longer sequel. Overall: Fun gameplay, interesting premise, great environments, but limited in overall scope. I'd say wait for a 25% off. I'm content paying $20, but for some, that may be a tall ask for how limited the content your getting is.

I really liked this game. It's is so immersive. The shooting is precise and satisfying. The atmosphere and graphics are first rate. There are no quests but the main story but it serves the game well although the story is scant. The voice acting is good although also scant. My only criticisms, aside from the bugs, are: 1. the game is extremely lonely. There is almost no human interaction. The monsters are all robots which does the game a disservice and adds to the emptiness. 2. The checkpoint system aims to punish you, especially in light of what I describe below. HIGH RISK: you may not be able to finish Industria. I was playing the last areas, about 80% complete, and the saves were corrupted, except an older one. There was only one way for me to complete the game and that was to try to run through the last 20% but with no deaths. Death meant I had to go all the way back to one save that worked. WARNING: THIS IS NOT A RARE BUG.

The game play itself is actually quite good. The shooter elements were great and enjoyable. There was one time where the game threw infinite enemies at me, which is a mechanic I don't like, but it was a small part of the overall game. There was a decent variety of weapons. The puzzle aspects were decent. The only real gripe I had with them was that It wasn't always clear where you could place an object like a valve. Others like the rust remover puzzle were very logical. The graphics were fantastic. Everything from sun rays, lighting, water, foliage, objects, etc were all more like looking at a AAA game than an indie. There was a bit of pop in at times but not much. The voice acting was well done as was the music. Where the game fell apart a little was the story. It never did a good job of fleshing out it's ideas right until the very end which was poorly explained and left more questions than answers. One can easily say that a sequel could provide these answers but maybe that is true and maybe the sequel never happens. It would have been better to provide a more thought out narrative during this game. There were invisible walls at a few points which I always find to be a cheap substitute for providing a real reason I can't travel somewhere. I played INDUSTRIA on Linux using Wine and VKD3D. It has a resolution option, a v-sync toggle, three AA settings, an FOV slider that goes from 85-110, and five other graphics options. The difficulty settings affect how you can save with normal allowing auto saves and hardcore only allowing saving at typewriters. You can change the difficulty when loading a game but not in game. Performance was great but you will need a decently beefy system at 2560P maxed out. There was about thirty seconds where the frame rate dropped below 60 FPS but the rest of the time it was above that. The game never crashed and I didn't notice any bugs.

Industria is a first-person shooter where you play as a woman named Nora Sohlheim, who was transported to a post-apocalyptic, alternate Germany overrun by killer robots while looking for Walter Rebel, her lover. It's very obvious that this game is inspired by Half-Life 2, especially the City 17 levels which have the same aesthetic, being bleak European towns infected with alien-like machinery. No gravity gun or physics-based puzzles, however. Gameplay is pretty basic, for most of the game you shoot through, but there are parts where you must find items to progress. The combat is pretty fun, you have different weapons and quite a variation of enemies. Maybe it's by design, but I feel like our carrying capacity is a bit too little, especially since the enemies took quite a bit of our weaker weapons' ammo to take down. The shotgun is great and satisfying to one-shot every enemy though. The weak point of this game is the story. Yes it's short, but the ending raises more questions than answers. It's obvious that there is something bigger and stranger going on, like the transition Library levels which was never fully explained. I'd also like a boss battle, but there are none. But there is a sequel of this game coming soon, lets hope that it clears up whatever questions we have left. In conclusion, I think Industria is still worth a try, especially if you have an itch for HL2's City 17 or wanting to fight killer robots. But if you expect a great, satisfying story, sadly I must say that you'll most likely be disappointed.