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.
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.
Reviewed on Nov 28, 2022