In Industria 2's announcement trailer, protagonist Nora slowly descends into an abandoned mine. An android flings open a door and staggers towards a flickering light, dropping to its knees. Suddenly, the atmosphere becomes more sinister, as crimson light envelops the android. The screech of clanging metal rings in the caverns, and a larger machine with tendril-like appendages snatches the android, jamming a cable into its back. The android quivers, a surge of energy flooding its mechanical body.

And then the machines turn and direct their gaze towards Nora.

Seeing that trailer, you might expect to find similar scenes of biomechanical horror in the original Industria. However, the first game is largely devoid of such scares, save for the odd robotic enemies that patter out of dark corners and lunge mindlessly towards the player. The original Industria mimicked Half-Life 2's Ravenholm, sending Nora across the fictional city of Hakavik with its East Berlin-inspired brutalist architecture and abandoned concrete streets.

Industria also focused on exploration, environmental puzzles, and its surreal and apocalyptic atmosphere, rather than combat. “Enemies [in the original Industria] work pretty simply. The weapons function pretty simply. There were only four weapons. Not a lot of difficulty, not much challenge, to be honest,” says David Jungnickel, Co-Founder and Art Director at Bleakmill Games.

“The first game was based very heavily on Half-Life, and we realized when we were making it that Half-Life was quite dated. It's amazing, we still love it, we’re still big fans and everything, but the formula of Half-Life 2, it's 20-odd years old now,” adds Steve Chapman, Bleakmill's other Co-Founder. “When we finished the first Industria, we realized there were a lot of issues with the game design that we wanted to fix.”
 
That was why Bleakmill Games took a different approach to Industria 2, adapting the tropes of survival horror games in addition to the trappings of first-person shooters like Half-Life. A self-confessed fan of classic horror films like The Thing, Chapman says horror had a major influence on Industria 2’s development.

“Survival horror just seemed like a natural fit," says Chapman. "The game's got quite a dark story. It's pretty sobering, I think, for Nora as a character—what she's gone through, realizing what she's done, and her part in the whole story."

Nora isn't completely helpless even in the face of abject horror. Rather than the modest arsenal of weapons in the first game, Nora will have the ability to mod and upgrade her weapons in Industria 2, allowing her to handily tackle mechanical adversaries. At the same time, combat won't be as straightforward in the sequel either, with the studio overhauling the AI system that powers the game’s enemy encounters.

“With the first game, enemies could see you and hear you. That's pretty much the extent of their complexity, to be honest,” says Chapman. “This time the whole thing is based on having a task list where they do a chain of different things. They might interact with the environment. They might patrol. Their ability in combat is a lot greater than it was in the first game.”

Enemies can even exhibit behaviors that players can exploit. “There's a couple of different factions in the game. They can actually interact with each other, so you might come across a couple of enemies already fighting each other. One of those factions can call for help and get some help from teammates too,” says Chapman. This offers room for elaborate strategies. Another scene in the trailer sees Nora attracting a swarm of robot critters to a lamp, allowing them to overwhelm nearby enemies.

Explosives can also be crafted to eliminate large numbers of foes. “You're not going to want to do it mid-fight," Chapman adds. "It's not going to pause the game. You're going to have to get down on the floor and start making stuff in your bag, and you're gonna wanna do that before you go into combat."

Developing a fleshed-out combat experience feels largely at odds with the sense of vulnerability that most survival horror games tend to espouse, but Jungnickel is quick to point out that Industria 2 isn’t just a survival horror game. It borrows elements from the genre to create a compelling, emotional journey for players. “For me it's an adventure where there is action, there is narrative, there's scary moments, there's scarcity, and there’s tension.”

Chapman agrees. “Industria 2 has these single player, first-person shooter vibes from the 2000s, but then there's also moments of peace, of just walking through some beautiful scenery.”

The original Industria wasn't a traditional horror game, but it still bore a sense of quiet creepiness within its empty alleyways, patrolled by robots programmed to turn humans like Nora into scrap. This psychological horror is something that Jungnickel says will be elevated in Industria 2, alongside its biomechanical foes.

 “For the second game, we definitely want to keep a nuanced tone but make it a bit more rich this time, give it a vibe and a mood that's a bit more dark.” They've succeeded—at least if the parasitic robot in the trailer, a silver monstrosity outfitted with several dangling wires and bulbous metallic tumors, is anything to go by.

Look for Industria 2 on the Epic Games Store later this year.