Have you ever wanted to build a mighty industrial empire? If so, then Industria is for you. The theme is fairly unique and it is woven throughout the game to make the experience seem real and worthwhile.
The board is beautifully illustrated and depicts four areas. The factory area is key and these can be purchased throughout the game. The game operates over 5 Eras (an Era track is another of the 4 areas) and the factories are placed in rows to correspond to the Eras. The factories become more modern with each new row down the board, a nice touch. The first row contains things like the Gold Mine and Brick Factory whilst the last row contains a Bio-tech Plant. These little touches help Industria shine. The 2nd main section is the Technology track and this includes many of the techs that helped the world modernise such as the Steam Engine. The technologies also modernise as they get to the 5th Era. The final area is the scoring track (in the form of cogs).
The aim of the game is to acquire the most victory points. Each Era contains a certain number of tiles and these are put up for auction. The tiles include technologies, bonus tiles (canal, port, rail etc) and resources. A unique bidding system is used to auction the tiles and once the auction is over they can use their remaining money to purchase factories. The factories each have a cost and some of them (all beyond the 1st Era) require resources to build them. Once a factory is purchased it is owned by that player and no one else can purchase it. Some factories only earn victory points but others produce resources. These resources will be needed to build the factories in future Eras and this is a major element of the play in Industria. When a player builds a new factory they must pay a small fee to the player owning the factory that makes the resource they need. In this way players can secure future revenue streams for themselves to further advance their empire.
The only way around this is to acquire the resource tiles via the auction phase. The technologies award large amounts of victory points but no income and for this reason the bidding on technologies can be fierce. So the game is nicely balanced between the need for factories for income and technologies for victory points.
But hold your breath, here comes another element to consider. The factory area and technology area depict many links or paths that connect the factories and technologies to their like. If a player can acquire any two that are linked by a path they will earn a 3 point bonus. Careful planning and good timing is a must. Many factories also have 1 or 2 symbols on them. These symbols represent the many bonus tiles I mentioned earlier that are auctioned off. A player will earn 2 bonus points for every factory that depicts the symbol of a bonus tile that they possess. This is yet another way to plan ahead and maximise your investments.

Industria is small (box size) and unassuming but it is a very polished game and deserves more exposure. It will challenge players as the resources at your disposal are very limited, but it is very satisfying to acquire high scoring combinations. Good game play and a game that looks great - what more could you want!