INDUSTRIA PC Review

INDUSTRIA is an impressive title, especially from a small team. The mystery surrounding a different parallel reality along with protagonist Nora trying to figure out what exactly happened provides a gripping mystery. This coupled with an impressively designed city and satisfactory FPS combat holds a lot of promise for the entirety of the journey. It's a short but expensive adventure that leaves the player wondering in a good way. Encouraging you to look at the details during Nora's journey and come to your own conclusion. INDUSTRIA gives everything a short solid adventure that will leave you guessing until the end.

INDUSTRIA stars Nora, a scientist living in East Berlin during the end of the Cold War. After getting a frantic call from her partner Walter Nora rushes to a facility called ATLAS to find Walter's machine is a success. Deciding to chase after him Nora activates the machine and is transported to a different reality where East Berlin has been completely evacuated and deadly machines roam the area. Nora must find Walter as a mysterious person who guides her through the city and she learns Walter is more connected to what happened here than she prefers to know.

The narrative isn't direct, instead, it communicates much of the important parts through collectibles, the environment, and your own connections. Most of the journey is Nora just trying to find Walter and his connection to this reality with breaks showing off this reality-bending bridge in the shape of a library and a stage. Much of the context clues are from these sections and everything collides at the end with the player left to determine what just occurred.

You'll have to defend yourself against the robots within the city, which come in 4 different types. They're well-designed but commonplace enemies you've seen before such as a melee robot, one that can use guns, robotic dogs, and kamikaze drones that are easily dodged. Combat is well done with the player having access to 4 guns and 1 pickaxe. If you play the game on its standard difficulty, which allows autosaving, you'll have more than enough supplies so those seeking a challenge should play on the harder option.

Occasionally puzzles will break up the action and exploration. These are simple affairs such as locating a key item, shutting off power, and hitting switches in a timely manner. I did run into a glitch where Nora was unable to pick up a key item because I was holding too many key items. I was quick to determine the issue but hopefully, the developers will resolve this in the future.

Environmental design is great, with a series of dark apartments filled with abandoned rooms sometimes housing items. You'll collect notes from those who occupied the buildings and I did wish the developers went a bit further with these, showcasing people living during this period and having to leave immediately. As the environments highlight the invasion Hive robots that are left in this empty city, some just conserving energy by laying dormant and others actively just patrolling as nothing happened.

The game's visuals are well done and the lighting is great in small areas. When you get to the more open sections you'll start to notice limited draw distance, bland architecture, and trees popping in. This is excusable considering as you'll be in closed areas for much of the journey.

The sound design and voice-acting are surprisingly well done. The voice actors did a fabulous job of conveying each character's present emotional state and the weapons sound excellent. The musical score also complements the sense of isolation during the course of the 2-hour adventure.

Speaking of the length, INDUSTRIA is expensive. $20 is a lot for an adventure that lasts for about 2 hours. It's a quality journey but personally, $15 would've been the ideal price for this title.

INDUSTRIA delivers a solid 2-hour adventure with mysteries, profound moments, and satisfying combat encounters. Many may feel the ending leaves a hollow feeling of uncertainty but others may enjoy the challenge of figuring out what happened. It's expensive and short but worth playing.
 

Adam Siddiqui,
Managing Editor, NoobFeed