Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Sep 27, 2021

  difficult to recommend, because it's so...understated. but i'm going to anyway it's a slow burn, and i'm not even sure Loiste Interactive fully understands what they stumbled upon. between the dramatic tone shifts and the level of detail that extends so far beyond what's expected out of a game like this, there's so much passion here and it's hard to tell why, because everything that makes Infra good is so subtle. here's what Infra conveys: the feeling of being where you're not sure you're supposed to be, taking in this unusual part of the world, doing whatever you need to do to get things done, and moving on. despite Infra being so slow, it never wastes your time, because being able to spend time in these places is its own reward. and sure, there's parts of Infra where that good curious feeling drifts away, but it always comes back, stronger and more immersive than ever. Infra's rough and depends on the player to keep exploring despite all kinds of adversity. telling someone to play this game is like telling someone to go outside - there's nothing proving going outside will be fun, there's just the chance of something interesting, and there's a lot of stuff outside, like water and trees and light and cars and secret tunnels and mysteries to solve. even if you'll probably get stuck and probably want to go home after a few hours dealing with pipes and tunnels, i still recommend.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 8, 2021

  Infra is one of those idiosyncratic games that leans so hard into its niche that alienating a mass audience is inevitable, and yet will end up being the all-time favorite of a small group of people. The niche, in this case, is some combination of “people who love the physics puzzles and Eastern European aesthetics of Half-Life 2 and would enjoy the game more if it had no combat” and “people with a genuine interest in all the banal, ignored infrastructure that makes urban life possible.” To wit: whereas most video games open with explosive action or quiet character introductions (followed by explosive action), Infra opens with a powerpoint presentation about the state of decaying infrastructure in a Baltic city. Your character controls the slides. Most people will find this boring and faintly ridiculous; I loved every minute of it. It’s not just that I appreciate novelty in games, and the verve of spitting in the wind, but that I love interactive spaces where I learn about places and systems I’m unfamiliar with. Over Infra’s many chapters, you’ll explore decaying dams, power plants, water treatment facility, sewers, and other sorts of infrastructure that most of us take for granted, and while Infra is in no way a simulation (it’s very much a Source Engine game, with all the environmental puzzles and slightly wonky physics that entails) it approaches its subject matter with a mix of seriousness and enthusiasm, and really sells that the scenario pictured (in which pretty much all of a city’s infrastructure is sold to private interests and left to decay) can be compelling horror, in its own way. There’s an attempt to make a sort of Big Conspiracy plot and narrative out of all this, and it’s an entertaining diversion, but it’s not what you’re here for; you’re here for strangely relaxing walks around urban decay, using your phone to take pictures of every issue you find.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 18, 2022

  57 hours later and I have finished my first playthrough, and wow. I was [i]expecting[/i] a walking simulator and interactive novel type of experience. What I got was a lore-rich, atmospherically consistent blend of like, Bioshock, Half-Life, and Firewatch. I cannot do enough in my life to make sure more people play this game, because it's a top 3 for me. You're a civil engineer/structural analyst named Mark who has been sent onto the field to take some photographs of structural failures and any "important documents" you happen upon. This begins Mark's urban exploration journey into the VERY WELL fleshed-out "concretepunk" world of Stalburg. Many of the locations Mark encounters are in serious disrepair, and require the player to solve a few logic puzzles a la Half Life/Portal to progress further. Don't feel bad when you have to look up some walkthroughs. Over the course of your journey, though, as you read the aforementioned documents, you will find yourself uncovering a deep story of corruption and cover-ups. And that's just the surface-level plot. The game rewards you for investigating the maps beyond the linear play route, and as you do your own investigating, you may uncover things about a cult that preys on the homeless, or a biochemical weapon sold by a company specializing in nukes, or a privatized slum that uses the welfare money of the impoverished to line their pockets while forcing the residents of the slum to use a valueless, artificial currency while they grow addicted to a poisonous mushroom species. And none of that even speaks to the old companion ARG that came with the game. It is not a horror game, but you will notice the longer you play a growing feeling that you are not alone and that in fact you are being watched. The creepy murals interspersed throughout the game don't ease that worry either. This game is so, so satisfying to play, and I have left it feeling like I've genuinely been to and explored every inch of some strange, empty, abandoned city. Just take lots of pictures and make lots of saves because the platforming in this game can be a little hard to get used to! Genuinely a favorite of mine, and I find myself recalling back to older maps in the game and feeling in AWE that this game could have THAT MUCH in it. Please play this game.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 28, 2022

  This game grows on you like fluorescent mushroom, like radioactivity in a nuclear experiment gone wrong, like a cancer that’s beautiful in its luxuriant, fanciful proliferation*. It starts in absolute mundanity: you’re given a flashlight, a construction worker helmet and a camera and you’re sent off to do your job assessing the damage to city buildings and assets, but it eventually evolves into a sort of magical realism so fragile that you’ll have to visit by night, when everyone’s asleep, with your flashlight barely flickering, so that you do not dispel it with your very presence. It’s like a rich and flavourful RPG world that you’re visiting from another dimension, it went quiet just a moment ago and you move freely among its folds and wrinkles, taking in its complexity and mind-boggling design, but never actually being there. I know the INFRA in the title stands for infrastructure, but it may very well stand for infra-reality, because that’s how you’ll be experiencing the world of the game: from underneath, from a hidden dimension accessible only to maintenance men (the underground tunnels you’ll have to navigate for most of your playthrough are a clear indication of that), like the world had been put to sleep with a terrible, deadly disease and you’ve been allowed access to its innermost functions and features in an off the record mission to find a treatment for it. And yeah, you’ll say, I get it, game, the world we live in, that we see around us, is built on another, hidden world, accessible only to its designers and people who make it function, great! But that’s only one layer to the titular infra metaphor. In its best moments the game goes even deeper, to a second layer, which I can only describe as the most striking representation I found in another game to that iconic impossibility in Planescape: Torment’s pregnant city: the crumbling, decaying world is sensing its ending approaching and is giving birth to a pulsating, magical infrareality that you’ll be able to visit at the core of this game. * Pirandello writes about something like that in L'uomo dal fiore in bocca and it’s also how Miguel Piñero describes his deadly disease in Leon Ichaso’s biopic: “Cirrhosis: sounds like a fu*king flower!”.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 13, 2023

  INFRA is not for everyone. It caters to very specific tastes. If you <*> are interested in civil engineering and infrastructure maintenance <*> enjoy walking around in realistic environments <*> want to find every story scrap, audio tape, and hidden object <*> appreciate surprisingly deep stories about corruption and conspiracies then this game was made for you. Is it too long? Yes. Can the puzzles be frustrating? Yes. Did I enjoy it? Also yes.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 12, 2023

  To put it simply, one of the most unique and soulful experiences in the whole medium. It's lengthy, deep, intriguing and has a very strong devotion to immersion. This game really isn't about it's mechanics, it's about the insanely believable and memorable world it creates and how you can uncover it's many secrets by being curious and attentive. At times it's humorous, other times its creepy or just plain weird and everything in between. A fantastic walking sim. Unfortunately, it is a game for a niche audience, as it really does require a lot of patience and an eye for detail or being interested to some extent in city infrastructure. It's a game especially made for those that want to get lost in a unique world that's under the mask of a normal contemporary setting and don't mind spending time simply observing and figuring stuff out, probably the best urban exploration game out there too. If you have the patience and the curiosity, don't skip this one!
• gamedeal user

  Aug 31, 2023

  A decent game. The puzzles are not too hard, the game looks nice and there are some different pathways forward. However I didn't like being "punished" for going the extra mile and collecting/solving extra puzzles. Going the hidden route had me teleported forward missing a whole section I would have liked to explore. Can't understand why I was denied this as a "reward" for solving an extra puzzle. I also found the main characters voice acting to be very muffled and hard to hear in some areas.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 12, 2023

  It's good. There's an strive for realism in how the areas work and it really captures that experience of exploring abandoned and neglected industrial locations well, and all those places and rooms you never went to as a kid in your city but that you had curiosity for, like a door inside a metro tunnel. The strive to make the environment feel believable is pretty impressive, it rarely feels like a video-game level, the same goes for the puzzles. As far as I understand the story, I don't think it's really deep or thoughtful, it's mostly a conspiracy thriller and a surface level exploration of the society surrounding the fictional city the game takes place, there's a small layer of horror, but it has a lot to do with the dark atmosphere of the underground areas, and small snippets you get of the unknown dangers there. You see plenty of how some people live in the city, but that never goes in an interesting depth. I think it's nice to have it though, it makes the exploration more interesting and you become curious as to how everything will turn out. The narrative and lore are good fun, and charming too, there's a lot of comical instances that make you question the sanity of the people who live in rather poorly maintained areas of the city or the workers that have to work with shitty and dangerous conditions, there's an alcoholism and drug problem as well... Additionally, there's different secrets, urban legends, and even an ARG surrounding the game, which adds to its world and makes it feel larger than you can grasp. One of the few things that really stands out to me about this game is how there's a lot of personality to the maps, a lot of details concerning the game's world and the humans that are part of it, there's probably like a hundred of them honestly, like signs of people just being more carefree in their workplace, signs of comical situations they had to go through, etc I think that's one of the main things that makes up the game, they consistently reward the player for looking carefully at the environment. The puzzles are often intuitive and don't take too long to solve, they can appear overwhelming at first when they give you a lot of rooms to circle to, but by paying attention to your surroundings you get the gist of what you are meant to do, a little bit in a Myst fashion except Myst had fictional structures and patterns. Solving the puzzles is fun, they also tend to give you more than one way of obtaining an item or prop required for the puzzle, and sometimes more than one solution, but regardless it's important to save in different save slots given you can softlock yourself by losing specific props or even reaching a dead end you can't go back from. Completing optional tasks and making decisions don't have high repercussions aside from the ending but from time to time the game rewards you for them or gives a detail that shows how your task impacted things, which is nice... There's one part I find boring near the end as it concerns walking in an empty and poorly illuminated city at night, which is nothing like the premise of the game, it doesn't help the part before it didn't have much going for it too, mostly just a typical neighborhood... To compensate for it though, the chapter after is such a good one, it feels like playing Jazzpunk, it gives you this little bizarre and isolated society that's compact but filled with things to see and to interact with, it's probably one of the best chapters in the game despite not being quite like what the game is selling you for. Things I consider flaws of this game: <*> The city/neighborhood sunset chapters. <*> Source jank, I want my 15 coins worth of bottles back. <*> While movement is satisfying, the platforming is horrendous. <*> Puzzles/tasks can sometimes be chore-ish or tedious, like the one with the crane, you know what you are meant to do but it's a back and forth if you don't get it just right. <*> The main character Mark, despite having a degree of charm to him, is a bit bland and we don't get to know much of him, he's overall a regular dude that is really good at his job. <*> Eventually props and environmental details start to repeat, like teddy bears are hidden often with accessories but the gag becomes overused so it isn't that neat to see it again and honestly it makes the world feel smaller, they could had maybe given an explanation to the player like maybe it's part of the city's secular folk. <*> Mark just falls at different rabbit holes in a single day by coincidence, like he's just trying to come back to the office but he keeps coming across conspiracy shit, it either makes the world feel smaller or it makes it seem like it's a huge part of the city that's involved in the conspiracy overall for Mark to just easily come across material concerning them. It would have been better if the narrative made this more of an investigative effort instead of plain causality, as it's much more believable, most importantly though it makes these secrets feel more confined and secure, making them more thrilling to discover. <*> The game is too generous with batteries for the camera and flashlight, so there's 0 need to save energy, it leads to Mark mentioning his inv is full all the time which is a lil annoying ngl... <*> I GOT SOFTLOCKED AND HAD TO FIX WITH CHEATS? ALSO SOME BUGS & CRASHES HERE N THERE...
• Halbig

  Sep 19, 2023

  I know, I've only played 2.4 hours, but it was such a slow, plodding 2.4 hours that I can't bring myself to go back for more. Plenty of people seem to like the game, which is great, but it's not for me. The game starts with a slide presentation in a conference room in an office building, which is not exactly a compelling story opener. Then you go about your day. Inspecting infrastructure. Not exactly gripping material, here. If you just want to explore and solve puzzles, then go for it. For me, I need a story line that makes me care about what I'm doing in the game, and makes me want to follow the clues so I can see what happens next. Well, from the 2.4 hours I played and from what I read in the other reviews, this game seems to only be loosely tied together with a tangential story, so, not my cup of tea.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 16, 2016

  INFRA is a game that I first saw on Greenlight about a year ago. I was getting worried with the time it was taking to deliver BUT now that I have seen what they delivered I am blown away. The puzzles are great. They almost reming me of Myst in some regards. And the enviroments are amazing. I wasn't even aware the Source Engine could look this good and run so well. There are a few bugs at the time of this review (launch day) but I have confidence that they will be quickly attended to. The price of 14.99 USD is a very fair asking price for this game. If you decide to purchase make sure you spend time to explore each area to it's fullest. There are little goodies hidden all around the map. The subject of the game really is interesting. I found myself wondering about what sort of underground cities are beneath the city I live in and how much effort it must take to keep it running. When walking around INFRA I feel less like I am walking around river controls and steel mills and more like I am walking through an ancient tomb that has become overgrown and has started to decay. I can't wait to see what else these developers have in store for us. EDIT: This game has no real horror elements. It is more of a puzzle game. That being said there were several points where I had a chill run down my spine or a feeling that something was not right was felt mostly due to walking through the decaying areas alone with nothing but the sound of wind and the structure creaking around me. It is no walking simulator with the amount of puzzles and a few fast paced scenes. There are no zombies or slendermen or Nazis but the enviroment and the structures are working against you.