The weirdest thing about video games is that they force players to confront their worst phobias. The popularity of a game where, say, you have to escape from a burning house filled with bloodthirsty mutant zombies eludes me, but I can appreciate a video game that explores the terrors of real life. And what is scarier than collapsing … urban … infrastructure!!
INFRA, from Finnish gaming startup Loiste Interactive, follows a structural engineer (oooo!) who finds that a city’s system has fallen into extreme disrepair due to government corruption. From the game’s Indiegogo page:
INFRA includes over 26 highly detailed levels with multiple routes and hidden secrets. These sum up to over 11 hours of gameplay. You play as an engineer equipped with just a flashlight and a camera. You get to visit dozens of unique locations, such as water tunnels, sewers, maintenance tunnels, metro stations, abandoned factories or other facilities, the streets of the city, modern offices, old and wooden parts of the town, dams, rural areas, homes and more. You travel by foot, car, metro and other vehicles. It is your task to avoid hazards and survive in the crumbling world.
In the game’s trailer, a gravelly, intense voiceover explains the situation:
“There’s no way we can keep everything in good repair. Things are breaking down all over the city, and no one’s doing anything about it.”
NNNNOOOOOOOOO!!!!
If its Indiegogo goal is reached, INFRA will be released in October 2015 — if not, it will come out a few months after that. We’re taking bets on how many pieces of real-life American urban infrastructure will have utterly fallen apart in that time.
