Game Information
Developer: | Bleakmill | Date Started: | 23/11/2024 |
Platform: | Steam | Fresh Play / Continuation: | Fresh Play |
Genre: | First Person Shooter | Time Played: | 4 hours |
Theme: | Sci-Fi | Date Finished: | 24/11/2024 |
Difficulty Rating: | Easy | Recommendation: | Yes (If on sale) |
This was a complete blind play for me. Normally I might have heard about the games I will play or looked up some details beforehand. This one, however, I don't even remember how it ended up in my Steam collection. I even thought it was something similar to Factoria for the longest time. It was only because I was planning out my second A to Z run that I realized I was wrong.
I was looking forward to playing it because I felt an FPS game was a good change of pace. Sometimes, you just need to blast things. However, I would soon learn, that this was not your typical point-and-shoot type of FPS game.
The first thing I noticed was that it had a little bit of a survival-horror element to it. Your weapons carried only two clips of ammunition and several dark rooms required a torch for navigation. The torch itself required batteries to run, so you could theoretically find yourself in pitch darkness. I say "theoretically" because the battery never seemed to run out for me. Not sure if this was because I was playing on the Normal difficulty setting, or if something was bugged.
The game is quite linear, so you really cannot get lost or disorientated. There are however several small dead-end sections that allow you to find extra ammo. In fact, because of this, while I could only ever hold two clips per weapon, I never felt like I was scrambling for ammunition. I could always backtrack and collect if needed (assuming I didn't reach an end-level transition) The game mostly required you to get from point A to B. In between, there sometimes was a small puzzle or two, but nothing overly taxing. I think, I only really had an issue with one of them, because the loading screen tip says that interactable objects are highlighted, but something I needed to turn on to get an elevator working was not highlighting as I expected it to. So I spent a lot of time looking for this "missing" highlightable object, when in fact it was something that I had investigated previously, but not bothered to interact with.
Overall, the game was enjoyable, but there were a couple of things that left me in mixed mind.
The first; the game is unbelievably short. Now it's not necessarily a bad thing, because I still enjoyed the game. I understand Industria is made by an indie developer, and they have done an amazing job with the visuals. It kind of feels like they were testing the waters with this one and wanted to provide something that could catch the attention but did not want to go too far, not until they had an idea of what the reception would be.
The second thing was the lore and the story. For the most part, the story is straightforward. You are Nora and you are following your partner into - what I assume to be - a time machine and you end up 20 years in the future. And this is where the story gets fuzzy then. If you remove the fact that you are searching for your partner, it doesn't really explain what is going on.
At the end of the game there is a little bit of an explanation as to what has happened, which paves a way for a sequel, but it leaves a lot more questions than answers. And even some things that are present in Industria that don't get explained at all. A prime example is the 'Library' sections. The first one I went through happened after stepping through the portal, so I assumed it was a gateway, but it doesn't explain the second, third and fourth visit because you only go through the portal once. I even considered that it might be a dream, but your character never goes to sleep before the library sections take place.
Additionally, while there are notes lying around that give a little insight into what is going on, not everything is covered. There are some things that are left around you - sometimes foreground, sometimes in the distance - but no explanation is forthcoming. I'm hoping now that the sequel has been announced and is in production, the lore can be delved into deeper.
And it's primarily this, and the simplicity of the game, that allowed me to enjoy and appreciate Industria. Now the next mystery I need to solve is when on earth did I even add Industria 2 to my wishlist?
For now, we move on to J which is for... Jusant.
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