INFRA

Yet another one that I was recommended by a YouTuber I follow, but this time it was Real Civil Engineer. I got about 3 videos into the playlist before I stopped and went to play it myself, and I’m glad I did. The game surprisingly has a very intriguing plot, which is not something you’d expect from a game where the main objective is to survey abandoned and collapsing infrastructure.

If it’s not obvious, this game started off as a Portal mod, I mean, it’s a Source engine fangame of course it was Portal mod, but the two games are very different. In fact, I’m pretty sure the only thing both games have in common is that there is a lot of stuff that can kill you if you’re not careful. The first thing you’ll notice upon starting the game proper (not counting the prologue chapter) is just how beautiful the world is, and you really do get to take in every detail, because your job in the game is to document all the flaws in it with your camera.

The other thing that you can and should take photos of in this game is just about any document you can find, but you can also give those documents a read, and I highly recommend doing so. As the game progresses, there is a whole underlying storyline about corruption, backstabbing, espionage, political turmoil, and details on why the city you’re exploring under is just about falling apart. And this is just left there in the open, written about in documents and audio logs that you can just find. It might take you a couple playthroughs to find them all though, it’s worth it though, as stuff you learn at the end of the game (if you’re vigilant enough on your first playthrough) can help recontextualise the stuff you learn at the start of the game.

It’s a very good job that this is a game for what its worth. The aforementioned Real Civil Engineer actually mentioned in literally the first two episodes that one of the first story beats you get would be considered a “close call” if it happened in the real world, and that he’d just call his boss and condemn the whole building. Video games! Where you can just let yourself go into potentially lethal situations and it’s perfectly okay.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/251110 £23.79