Factorio
Factorio is a game in which you build and maintain factories. You will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies. In the beginning you will find yourself chopping trees, mining ores and crafting mechanical arms and transport belts by hand, but in short time you can become an industrial powerhouse, with huge solar fields, oil refining and cracking, manufacture and deployment of construction and logistic robots, all for your resource needs. However this heavy exploitation of the planet's resources does not sit nicely with the locals, so you will have to be prepared to defend yourself and your machine empire. Join forces with other players in cooperative Multiplayer, create huge factories, collaborate and delegate tasks between you and your friends. Add mods to increase your enjoyment, from small tweak and helper mods to complete game overhauls, Factorio's ground-up Modding support has allowed content creators from around the world to design interesting and innovative features. While the core gameplay is in the form of the freeplay scenario, there are a range of interesting challenges in the form of Scenarios. If you don't find any maps or scenarios you enjoy, you can create your own with the in-game Map Editor, place down entities, enemies, and terrain in any way you like, and even add your own custom script to make for interesting gameplay.
Game Discussion
Steam User 956
This game is dangerous. The expansion is coming out a week after I'm going back to Uni and I'm seriously debating which of the two things I should pour time into. 10/10, would get addicted to again.
Steam User 281
Factorio:
— Where Fun Meets Conveyor Belt Nightmares
Review:
I thought Factorio would be a quick, fun distraction. Now, 500+ hours later, I’m dreaming about conveyor belts, blueprinting factories in my head, and wondering why I can’t be this organized in real life.
Why It’s Awesome:
You start alone and end up turning an entire planet into your factory playground.
Watching machines work together is oddly satisfying—until one belt ruins everything.
“Just one more conveyor” is a lie. You’ll be up at 3 a.m. building the perfect setup.
Funny Realizations:
Pollution? Eh, who cares… until the biters show up, then it’s panic mode.
Conveyor spaghetti is a real thing. One wrong belt, and your factory turns into chaos.
Multiplayer is chaos. Either you’re building together like pros or screaming about why coal is in the copper line.
Little Problems:
This game makes you feel smart—right until you realize your belts go in circles.
Biters aren’t just enemies—they’re nature’s way of telling you, “You’re the problem.”
Final Thoughts:
Factorio isn’t just a game; it’s a way of life. Build, automate, and completely lose track of time. It’s fun, frustrating, and somehow, I can’t stop playing.
Rating: 9/10 – "500 hours in, and it’s still a chaotic experiment that somehow went right."
Steam User 417
Started playing Factorio thinking "cute little factory game" now I'm calculating the bandwidth bottleneck of my local McDonalds drivethrough.
My girlfriend dumped me for prioritizing belt throughput over our relationship. Tried explaining that automated inputs are more reliable than manual insertion, but she said that's not how intimacy works.
She left me but the joke's on her - that's one less resource drain on my mental CPU and I can finally focus on nuclear power optimization!
Factorio really makes your brain overheat sometimes, but the process of working through the issues of your factory always ends up with a dopamine hit... then you run into new issues and the cycle starts again.
Factorio is listed as a survival game because it teaches you various survival skills, like how to survive on 2 hours of sleep and barely any food in an environment not quite suitable for humans anymore. I don't need a circadian rhythm, I have circuit networks.
Since I started playing Factorio I noticed an increase in my problem solving skills in real life.
To optimize bathroom breaks I implemented a buffer system called "empty bottles"
Even though I hesitated buying it (I refunded it twice), Factorio is the most fun experience I've had playing a sandbox game since long ago, and it actually brought my fascination with engineering activities to the surface.
It also ruined my life in the best possible way.
Sure, I'm probably on several government watchlists for my concerning Google searches about optimizing nuclear missiles production - but my factory... my factory is beautiful.
And it must grow.
PS - I've calculated that reading this review has took approximately 3.7 minutes of your potential production time. Please optimize future reading sessions accordingly.
PPS - This review was written while under the influence of 12 productivity modules.
Steam User 214
I figured it's about time that I reviewed this game.
Whether or not this game is for you, Factorio is undeniably one of the best polished games that has ever been made. Bugs, when found, are rarely more than minor quirks, and are promptly fixed when reported. I've seen cases where a bug has been reported on reddit (not even the right place to do so), and a patch was released within a few hours.
In terms of gameplay, Factorio scratches a certain itch that very few games provide. While it can seem intimidating at first, It actually does a very good job of leading the player step-by-step through what is needed. It does not, however, hold your hand. You are expected to figure some things out, and If you're the type of gamer who expects everything to unfold in a linear "this is the right thing to do" manner, you'll be disappointed.
I'd expect that my play time alone should indicate my thoughts on the game. In short, If you enjoy puzzle-solving, and find yourself getting "nerd-sniped" when confronted with an interesting conundrum, then you should pick this up and give it a go. Just, don't do so when you have a looming deadline. Factorio has a habit of causing unintentional time-travel, when you sit down to play it for a couple of hours after the evening meal, only to find that it's suddenly 4am.
Steam User 239
crashland on a planet
start exploiting the natural resources
pollute the area
kill and extinct the wildlife
build a trainstation on their corpses
expand to pollute and kill on a global scale
do all this while having fun
Steam User 238
The game is top tier no critiques, just wanted to show some appreciation for how amazing the developer is.
This was an Early Access game, they spent the time to fully flesh out the base game which is now amazing and pushed it to full release. Fostered an amazing modding community with built in modding support so people could extend the game.
Now 4 years later brought on the amazing modder to build a fully fleshed out expansion which actually significantly expands the game.
No fake Factorio 2 to milk money, no dlc farming every year for money.
Even with the DLC now available you can revert to any old version of the game and still play the mods if you can't afford the update or just want to play an older version.
The crazy devs honestly built a whole game from early access with an expansion without trying to rip anyone off, just focused on making a great game.
Stand up and take a bow.
Steam User 182
Factorio is the most dangerous game on Steam.
This game imprisons you in a way unlike any other. This game is so good and addictive that you can't get out, you think "just a little longer" and it's suddenly 3 AM. You get stuck and you can't get out, no matter what.
You can easily spend several hundred hours on a single save, and once you have tried everything vanilla has to offer, there are about a million fantastic mods out there.
The process is as follows:
You start losing contact to your friends, to your family, your grades plummet and you get kicked from school/university, and you are fired from your job. It is now only you, your computer, and Factorio. Then you ask yourself:
"Was it worth it?"
Yes. Yes it was.
Because the factory must grow.