Industria (2021)

• Playtime: 78 minutes

• Played: 2025

• Expectation: Somewhat positive because it's a "Half-Like"

The Good

• Feels like a Half-Life 2 mod.
• First hour is solid.

The Bad

• You play as a woman so you don't have pockets to carry ammo, apparently.
• Flashlight works on batteries. Ugh.
• Bog-standard weapons, enemies, pickups, et cetera.

The Ugly

• Very limited autosaving.
• You can only save manually at checkpoints.

Review

I was kind of enjoying this until a point where i misjudged a jump and died. The game set me back 5 minutes and some enemies didn't respawn (??). I made the jump only to discover it was apparently a dead end. Then i failed the jump back. At that point i decided this just wasn't worth it.

Just fucking let me save. Or at the bare minimum have proper autosaves. I don't want to replay the same section multiple times because your platforming is wonky.

It's an ok shooter with an intriguing narrative that unfortunately doesn't go anywhere. The ending is abrupt and very unsatisfying, probably to leave something for the sequel. I felt like I was maybe halfway through when the game ended.

It's a shame since other than the story, the game doesn't have much going for it. Combat is fine but pretty easy. Enemies aren't very interesting or challenging. Environments aren't very inviting or (again) interesting to explore.

But I appreciate the effort that went into the game, and I'd love to see more story-driven shooters like this one.

huh, well that was a bit underwhelming but okay i guess? this game isn't long and it's a weird mashup of HL1, HL2 and Infra in its aesthetic. The gunplay is very basic and they could have made this a walking sim and just stuck to the puzzles but it wouldn't have the same ambiance that the creepy mechanical monsters chasing you gives it. The game has various basic puzzles, some which are switch based, some that are 'find the key or item' based, and a few that are platform oriented (none of which are very hard) The game has a few annoyances and I'm tempted to drop a star for various offenses such as: a goofy story and bad ending, a meaningless black and white recurring level you keep getting sent back to just to continue to leave out the same exit, grabbable and droppable meaningless rotating objects (caned food) only on one axis that are in german and too far away to see what they really are anyway. max ammo pools so small that you can empty it in a single reload and then pick up more ammo to fully load your SMG, rifle, or shotgun, sound that is too quiet at max volume, everything still just as dark on max brightness, a flashlight that has batteries but actually has infinite energy despite what the meter says on normal difficulty, etc, terrible enemy AI...

it was still okay despite its flaws, short length and lackluster story. There's lost of janky but fun bits and imagination at play in the form of: old tape drives, stubby little clown cars, stuff suspended in space, old computers in the middle of nowhere, a cute statuette of a birb, combine like maschinenkriger fortifications and weirdness dotting the landscape and overgrown cities, a cool steampunk looking Walther PPK, with funky bits welded to it, etc... So, it got the atmosphere and aesthetics down pat IMO, but as an FPS this is below average, its essentially an adventure game that masquerades as a shooter. It probably would have been more at home as an HL2 mod, but there's no money in that.

I wouldn't recommend this but if you dig up HL2 mods to play, you would probably find it worth the 3-4 hours it takes to wade through it. I guess if you are looking for 1990s german nostalgia you'll probably get that too (I wouldn't know, but all the interactable items in the game probably are based on actual things)

An interesting game that proudly wears its Half-Life inspiration on its sleeve. Unfortunately, after finishing it, I am left with the impression that the game developers attempted to do too much with the little amount of resources they had. While a few of the combat encounters succeed in creating tense moments, the combat is very one-note thanks to the enemy AI being very barebones as well as lacking enemy variety.

The story is a little obscure and not properly relayed to the players who don't commit the time to read and piece together every note found. I do enjoy the mystery of these kinds of stories, and especially when the game's world is deeper than what is presented immediately in the main story line, but it has to be in addition to the compelling narrative, and not instead of it. In the same vein, with the game's limited runtime its cast of characters - even if limited - don't quite get the time they need to delevop and grow on you.

There are multiple aspects of Industria that are super promising, and if executed on with more polish and finesse, it has the potential to be a favorite of mine. Here's to hoping they up the ante in terms of allocated resources to the sequel, while keeping the same scope for the project.