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 624
I believe this game has contributed to the healing process of my depression by assisting in the re-training of my brain's reward cycle system.
For a couple years I stopped doing all my favorite things and only wanted to sleep. I forced myself to do my job, but felt no satisfaction. I forced myself to do my chores but didn't feel good when they were finished. I would sometimes even force myself to play a video game, thinking I could just force normality back into my life.
In one of these "game-forcing" moments I started up Factorio and sarcastically said to myself "yeah, Christopher, the game you've always been too dumb for is going to magically click on your 4th attempt." But, it did!
Sometimes I think games appeal to us because--while offering us an escape from life--they do emulate life in ways our minds find comfortable. We are given "problems" to solve, tools to do it with, and the resources to make it possible.
Factorio has this appeal. It's enjoyable because the challenges are manageable. Problems are fixable. Tools are plentiful. And the resources are in large patches visible clearly on the map. You have "problems" like life, but they are offered in a way that makes them fun to solve, and the rewards come quickly. Futhermore, your "rewards" from solving a problem are often ideas! You'll take these ideas and either use them to cleverly solve problems, or just do fun stuff. Again like life -- there are prescribed challenges, but you can also just goof off a bunch.
After hundreds of hours of dissociating from life and just playing this game (please understand I'd have otherwise just been dissociating anyway) it was bringing life back to parts of my brain. I wanted to come back to the computer and try stuff I'd thought of while I was away. I was actually wanting something again.
The execution of all my little ideas was rewarded quickly and predictably. My failures were often enormously entertaining. I never felt the urge to start my game over because whatever inefficiency I wanted to address within my factory could be resolved with the products that very factory had produced!
I definitely felt the "addiction" that others describe with regard to this game. But ultimately when I pulled myself off the computer and made an attempt to return to real life, I found that my reward cycles seemed to be repaired. I *did* feel good about my work. I *did* feel good after completing chores.
Even if this correlation is not causation, it's been a spectacularly fun game.
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 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 217
Pros: Addictive, well balanced gameplay loop that makes you lose hours playing
Cons: Addictive, well balanced gameplay loop that makes you lose hours playing
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.