Dieses Spiel hat starke Tendenzen zum Survival-Horror, besonders durch die teils stockdunklen Passagen, die mit einer Lampe erhellt werden müssen. Zudem habe ich es auf dem Hardcore-Schwierigkeitsgrad durchgespielt, also konnte ich nur an sehr spärlich platzierten Schreibmaschinen speichern.

Ressourcenknappheit war auch ein sehr stressiger, aber durchaus spannender Teil des Gameplays – Batterien, Munition und Heilflaschen waren sehr rar, was bei mir weitere Horror-Assoziationen geweckt hat, die ich im Vorhinein nicht erwartet habe. Generell war die ständige Angst vor der nächsten Ecke oder Treppe in düsteren Innenräumen ein nennenswerter Bestandteil meines Spieldurchgangs.

Für mich war die Story leider ein wenig unverständlich, das Ende kam auch sehr abrupt und hat keinerlei Fragen geklärt.

Die Maps waren oft gerade so fertiggestellt worden und abseits des Hauptpfads nur sehr spärlich eingerichtet. Grafisch ist es sehr ansprechend für ein Indiespiel, das Raytracing ist da noch ein netter Bonus, der mal mehr, mal weniger ins Gewicht fällt. Der Gegner-Stil erinnert teilweise an Bioshock, die Umgebung hingegen sehr an Half-Life 2. Besonders schön fand ich die Zugfahrten und den bedrohlich rötlichen Lichtschein der Lampen auf manchen Gegnern in stockdunklen Treppenhäusern.

Zuletzt noch zum allerschwächsten Glied der Bewertungskette – der Technik. Die Performance des Spiels ist generell extrem bescheiden, sobald Raytracing an ist, ich konnte nur dann 60+ FPS erreichen, wenn ich DLSS auf High Performance gestellt habe, was einige feinere Texturen verschwommen aussehen lässt, was ich aber noch verkraften konnte. Nicht auszuhalten waren jedoch die mittendrin fehlenden Übersetzungen, fehlenden Wörter, Wortdopplungen und generell Glitches überall – eine ganze Szenerie lang musste ich z. B. laute Geräuschen von im Boden steckenden Ragdolls ertragen, die trotz erneutem Laden nicht verschwanden.

Insgesamt also ganz knapp vor der Negativ-Wertung, aber durch das gute Gun- und Gameplay eine Überlegung wert.

Industria is such a clear passion project by a tiny team, so its really hard to be upset with the final result. It's a love letter to Bioshock and Half-Life and it functions as a pretty short little FPS campaign that offers a cool 3-5 hour experience, with a side serving of jank. Unfortunately, I do think it has a few too many issues for me to give it a higher rating, but this is one of the highest 3 star scores I've given.

Combat wise, the game is actually decent, and while the encounters are never that complex, the fact that each enemy has a weakness you can figure out through experimentation is cool to see for such a small game. I decided to play on the "Hardcore" difficulty, which gives you less resources, less health, and only allows you to save when you find a typewriter. And for my money, this is the way to play since its short and isn't really that hard to begin with. The lack of saves actually offered some tense moments, and the constant conservation of flashlight batteries helped make the experience feel a bit more dynamic. This is also helped by the exploration being decent, as there are a few times where you can straight up miss a typewriter if you didn't explore the whole area. And while most of the gameplay is survival horror style, there are about 3 fully combat focused sections. 2 of which I think are actually solid, and then 1 of which has an unbelievably stupid design choice that is very frustrating. Thankfully its only one section, but when the game is only 3-5 hours long, it does stand out a bit more.

Visually, Industria has a really cool robo-dystopian vibe and it does a great job incorporating eastern European architecture into a futuristic setting. The game also features several raytracing settings, which is nice to see in such a small game. Unfortunately, these settings do come at the cost of very inconsistent performance, ranging anywhere from 40-120fps with RTX on (Running on a 2080 and Ryzen 5800x at 1440p). As a result, I opted to mostly play without RT just to make things consistent, but the ambient occlusion and shadows are noticeably a bit worse that way. However even with RT enabled, the indirect lighting is basically non-existent which is a bit disappointing to see, especially since large portions take place indoors.

From a narrative standpoint... yeah its there I guess. It's just pretty vague sci-fi mumbo jumbo that isn't really explained or developed much, since the game is so short. It's not bad, and there are a few interesting plot points and ideas but it's so sparse that its kinda impossible to feel much of a connection to it after only 4 hours. It's better than nothing, but I won't be recalling Nora's emotional journey any time soon.

For what it's worth though, I think the devs managed to craft a very competent experience that is certainly worth checking out if you're a fan of the style. It's rough around the edges, and suffers as a whole from it's short runtime, but like I said in the opening, it's really hard to be upset with this, considering this small team was barely able to even get it released. So for that, I applaud their efforts, and I'm now even more excited to see if Atomic Heart can tackle some of that Bioshock vibe we've been missing.