I picked up this game recently after hearing good things and after seeing its steam page i spent the 15 pounds for what i hoped was a full experience.
Is it worth it? Maybe in the future but currently not.

The Positives
So far whats here is pretty fleshed out, the little that that might be.
The stylistic choices when it comes to the game feels great. The menus feel in setting and fleshed out and the guide books and posters really immerse you into the setting, wrapping your head around everything the first time felt like a real learning experience. My first hour was spent smiling and being genuinely surprised by some of the depth in whats here, even something as simple as the helmet overlay when you put on the pressure suit was genuinely surprising to me. The amount of detail put into the little things that are there were surprising, many of them you wouldn't expect from a small developer like this one.

One thing that's surprisingly fleshed out for a game like this is the character interaction and creation system, i'm not going to get into it in depth here (mostly because i'm not really 100% on how it works myself) but the character creation itself has just enough to make you genuinely invested in your character.

The negatives
My main issue with the game is it's lack of things you'd expect for a space wreck survival and exploration game, as well as the many many bugs I experienced whilst playing.
The game is currently a laggy mess. i've experienced more technical issues than actual challenges from the game itself. there's very little in the game so far and most of it is spiced with "jank". The most threatening thing i've come to so far is being softlocked by the patrol ships and being unable to escape, as they continue to dock you and crash into your ship.
A few of the bugs that keep breaking my experience:
- Being unable to command my character to act on anything whilst unpaused
- Being continuously docked and then ignored by the officers in patrol ships
- having weird nameless NPCs just appear in the back of my ship for no reason
- being stuck on the weird title card page because i pressed the button too fast

On-top of all the bugs, there really isn't enough to get you to spend the £15 on it. what's here is fleshed out, but it's still missing that spark, and the game-play loop is pretty repetitive from what i can tell.

Would i recommend the game: maybe, once it's ironed itself out.

A few months ago I wrote a review for this game with less than 10 hours in the game, after beating the game twice, once without killing anyone and without weapons or armour. I'm mid way through my hunt for every achievement so I'd like to update my review to reflect what I've learnt.

Gameplay[/b]
Intravenous is by far one of the best additions to the top down shooter genre. I've seen, and for a while agreed with, the statement that Intravenous is like a stealth Hotline Miami, but it goes much deeper than that.
Intravenous clearly takes a lot from the splinter cell games, the stealth being the key part of it. Stealth in this game is intuitive. Enemies are smart, and at times almost unfairly vigilant. It's entirely possible to beat this game without being spotted once (I wouldn't recommend it, I'd rather rip my teeth out with garden pliers)
Enemies are smart, they investigate noise, will spot bloodtrails and follow it, will wake up knocked out companions, once had to restart a mission because they found my pile of knocked out bodies and woke them all up.

Stealth however isn't the only option. In my opinion going in guns blazing isn't the best nor the easiest option, enemies hit just as hard as you do and without sufficient armour or strategy you're about as bulletproof as cardboard. This game will take every opportunity to punish you for being careless.

Combat feels meaty and can be difficult, Stealth feels tense but can be very rewarding.
be ready to use savegames a lot. Don't feel bad if you can't do a level first time round, once you begin to remember guards' routes after a few runs you'll be able to finish most levels fairly quickly.

The plot[/b]
Massive spoilers coming up later on.

The story opens with a pretty simple story, Revenge. your brother is killed by thugs and you want to avenge him. Nothing complicated, for the most part you can ignore the story entirely if you just want the action and you'll not miss out on much. The ending does however leave quite a bit to be desired.

I've only finished the game by sparing the baker, and so I only know that ending. In my opinion it's satisfying but lack luster. The betrayal by the Accomplice feels very tacky. I understand it's an excuse to make the epilogue and the killings feel justified, and the ending does feel satisfying, seeing it all crumble as you finally kill your only ally. I get that Intravenous isn't a story game, and to be honest for the most part I couldn't care less about it, but the ending never sat right.

Graphics[/b]
The sprites, although basic, feel gritty, and the cut scene art, even if reused quite a bit, show the effort put into making this game unique. The maps are made out of tiles and assets put together and re-used throughout the game which can make areas feel quite sameish, which for some might be a bit of a put off, however from what i've played it doesn't really detract from the experience as a whole.


Opinions[/b]
Intravenous is fun, I really enjoyed it. there are so many ways to play and routes to try through the pretty large maps and there's a lot of care that's been put into making intravenous an experience.
I'd 100% recommend this game.