Factorio

Overall this game was a blast to play, but it had its moments of lulls.  I gave this a 73%.

Factorio is not meant as eye candy,  it’s not trying to be, but it is.  It’s it’s own kind of happiness.  I open it, and I immediately smile and my brain starts pumping.  I love the simplicity.  It nails what it should do. it doesn’t dazzle you with breathtaking vistas, the game focuses on delivering the goods where it counts: the factory. Sure, the graphics won’t make your jaw drop, but they do their job efficiently, much like the factories you’ll be building. There’s room for improvement, sure, but that’s where mods step in, and dont get me wrong, they wont improve the graphics but they will improve the function.  For example, check out Bottleneck, a super simple idea, it will highlight how your production facilities are doing.

Factorio isn’t just a game; it’s a masterclass in addictive gameplay that leaves you wondering if it should get an extra point in my gameplay category. Seriously, can I give this thing a 6/5?  It has been years since I first learned how to play, so my memory on that first moment is fuzzy, but I do remember the learning curve not being crazy hard.  It was simple and straight forward.  I spawned on this blue/silver/shiny stuff.  Oh, that has to be a resource.  Cool! Look how much of it there is!  As I hover over the resource my eye moves to the right side of the screen and I can see the volume of resource changing, the resource amount.  Oh, ok, there is a limited quantity, I need to think about where to find more later.   But for now, I need to harvest this I guess.

As soon as you get your furnace going, you realize you need a chest to store your resources, then you get tired of running back and from patch to patch, from miner to miner, from miner to furnace that you realize there has to be a better way.  And there is.  And this is the crux of the game.  You work towards automation, moving one resource to another location to build another resource.  Over time these get more and more complex.  The complexities grow exponentially, and by the time you get to fluids and blue circuits, it can be frustrating… well, now that I think about it, my first frustration may have been with Plastic Bars, but at this point that is seems simple to me.

From the moment you dive into the intricacies of building your first factory, you’re hooked. From the moment you decide to destroy your first factory to build something more efficient, because all of those belts just dont make sense.  From the moment you get that first fucking robot.  It’s like crack for the engineering-minded, with each new challenge drawing you in deeper. And just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, Factorio throws a curveball your way, reminding you that efficiency is a journey, oh no, you ran out of power.  Those steam engines just aren’t doing it.  They won’t scale with the amount you are growing, you can’t produce enough to meet your demand!  The gameplay is addicting, its great for travel, it works fine on a laptop, on a steamdeck, on whatever.  You can pause it, you can let it run, you can do whatever.

Oh jeez.  I didn’t event mention it.  The entire time you are doing all of the above, you are being assaulted by aliens.  Good luck.

extremely lacking, but at the same time a ton of opportunity

an area of opportunity, music and sounds do get redundant, I would like to see some fan made content here, but at the same time i dont think i looked

game is great until you hit about 50k robits, but that could be part of the model, dont build that many.  I dont like that model, I want to build as many as I can

i want to give another point here.  the only game that I have played longer is Civ 3, which i dont play any more, but I played that for 10ish years…so this is close.

This game scores lower than Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire [23/30] but in my heart I like to play it more.