With a trailer treatment more akin to summer blockbusters than a levelheaded look at urban planning, the infrastructure-themed video game Infra appears to capture the excitement of blowing up buildings, not maintaining them. But the creator sees thrills and drama behind routine maintenance, according to an article at CityLab. Finnish game designer Oskari Samiola, inspired by the dire predictions of collapsing bridges and pockmarked roads in the documentary Crumbling America, decided to dramatize the issue with a first-person shooter-style game that pits the protagonist, an engineer, against the disintegrating fictional city of Stalburg. The game descriptions suggests that, while players are equipped with just a flashlight and camera, things get pretty serious.
Currently raising money on Indiegogo and expected to come out this October, Infra will features 26 levels and 11 hours of gameplay taking gamers through sewers, maintenance tunnels, metro stations, abandoned factories and numerous setting around Stalburg. There's no violence in the game—a Super Smash Bros-like fight against a computerized Robert Moses would be interesting—only a battle against the mistakes of the past and structural corruption.
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