INDUSTRIA

In recent years, there have been few first-person shooter games that focused on storytelling. Most games of this type are aimed at fans of action games who do not rely on the story, but rather present it as content that accompanies the experience. Our game today is INDUSTRIA, which focuses on storytelling and makes the combat element an accompaniment. For the core experience in an experience that, in its ambiguous and questionable beginning, is reminiscent of experiences like Half-Life and BioShock.

Storytelling and Ambiguous Beginnings

Events begin in East Berlin in 1989, on the day of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which separated East and West Germany for several decades. You play the role of scientist Nora, who receives a message from her colleague Walter, who tells her that he will try to save her ATLAS project before the consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall affect the project, and this is where it starts. Nora goes to the project facility to use her project’s machine, which transports her to an alternate reality! In this reality, Nora finds herself in a city devoid of life and full of aggressive robots, but she receives help from old man Brent, who helps her get to safety and perhaps find Walter. What is the ATLAS project? What happened to Walter? What is this new reality? Why do machines control this reality? The game asks all of these questions right from the start without giving you many details, which piques curiosity and makes you want to know more.

Lack of Answers and Confusion

The unfortunate thing is that the game asks a large number of questions and doesn’t answer most of them. Even the essential questions were not answered. For example, there is a strange library that you go through repeatedly without any explanation or context explaining what is happening and why you went through it. The lack of explanations left us confused. When we found out we ended the experiment with no answers! On a graphical level the game is modest, but it serves its purpose. What sets it apart is the strange industrial designs and machines scattered around the environment, as well as some good designs for the enemies you face from the robots. This is unfortunate. Such an interesting world was not done justice in terms of story telling and explanations. On the audio level, the game offers some tunes. To be noted from time to time.

Simple Controls and Entertaining Combat

The control system is simple and is limited to the movement and jumping system as well as the fire button and the aim button. The game is similar to the experiences of classic games, where you jump on some boxes or elements of the environment to reach high areas. The shooting experience is very simple and perhaps a bit primitive, but it is entertaining and serves its purpose. The appeal of the game lies in its story and the fights against robots are not difficult, except that the ammunition is somewhat limited, which makes you have to use the weapons more carefully. In addition to the ax, which you can use to break through some barriers, you get four other weapons.

Lack of Puzzles and Limited Explanations

The gameplay experience does not contain any real puzzles and there are some simple obstacles that require you to move to a specific area to activate a closed door and then return to the previous area to get to your destination. In addition to the conversations between Nora and Brent, you will find a group of letters and notes that tell some details about the world in which events take place in it, but many of them tell us about details that generally do not clarify the big picture and the events don’t explain that interests us.

A Short Experience with Limited Replay Value

INDUSTRIA is a short experience. The developer stated that it will take between two and a half and four hours, and we completed it in about three hours. The game offers no real value for replaying the experience unless you want to play it on a high difficulty setting, which reduces ammo and increases enemy difficulty, but you don’t get any other story details. In doing so, INDUSTRIA delivered a gaming experience that served its purpose and presented an interesting world, but failed to explain the events and answer the questions we were looking for answers to.