Factorio – The Most Fun You Can Have with Logistics

...> a survival game with a deep game-play loop of building factories to supply your survival efforts.

Design efficient factories to meet your goals

Factorio is a survival game about managing resources and building efficient factories to help you survive. Resources are littered across the map, and players must exploit them as efficiently as possible. The game's final goal is to launch a rocket into space to escape the planet. The real meat of the game is designing efficient factories to create everything you need for that goal.

An Efficiency Simulator

Miles of conveyor belts will haul mined rocks and resources to the facilities that process them. Robot arms transfer goods onto other belts, and eventually trains, though the tech curve to get there is exponential. Despite its relative complexity, Factorio features an approachable tutorial for learning the production ropes.

Balancing production and the ever-growing need for power is one of the biggest tasks the player has. Power is generated by burning fossil fuels, but that creates pollution. The planet's aliens, known as Biters, will begin attacking once pollution levels become a significant concern.

Suddenly players must think about defense and dedicate some gathered resources to protecting their factories. Players who want to avoid the game's survival aspect can play on Peaceful to avoid that mechanic entirely. It's useful for learning the ropes since it places less pressure on new players.

Serviceable

Factorio's graphics and audio are serviceable at best. The top-down perspective is reminiscent of old 16-bit games from the '90s. The game features a 75-minute original soundtrack, which invokes post-apocalyptic feelings.

Given how long players can get sucked into one save, the soundtrack is not nearly long enough. The music is repetitive and eventually worth turning off in favor of your own music. That's not to say it's terrible, just that it wears thin after a few hours.

Automate everything

At the start of the game, players will mine ores and chop trees themselves. The research tree progresses to unlock automation and conveyor belts so that players can focus their attention elsewhere.

Setting up automated resource harvesting is the foundation of Factorio. Creating efficient loops and perfecting the individual pieces of your massive running machine is very satisfying. Despite the game being billed as 'Early Access' on Steam, it feels complete.

The developer has added mod support to the game, and Factorio features a robust modding community. There is also a co-operative multiplayer feature for players to work together. Delegating tasks to others can help speed up your machine complex's production.

The Factorio community has also created extensive guides and videos for efficient resource harvesting. Engineers and those who enjoy puzzles and efficiency will get lost in the ever expandable puzzle that is Factorio's game-play loop of continual improvement.

Conclusion

Factorio is one of the best puzzle strategy games you can buy on PC today. Perfecting your production cycles is a satisfying game-play loop that makes it easy to drop hundreds of hours on this game.

Modding support in Factorio can fundamentally change the research and production trees. It helps create an experience that feels fresh, despite the dated graphics and middling soundtrack. The replay value of Factorio is off the charts, with hundreds of hours sunk into just one save.

Factorio may not look like much, but it features one of the most addictive game-play loops in gaming.

TL/DR

Factorio is a production simulator that you'll lose days of your life playing thanks to a satisfying game-play loop.