Enjoy over-complicated games that require God-like planning skills (and remembering how you planned it later on when showing your work in a Youtube video)? Factorio might be the game for you!
Title: Factorio
ESRB Rating: N/A (Yet)
Developer: Wube Software
Publisher: Wube Software
Price Tag: $20.00 (quite reasonable, IMO)
Steam Early Access Release Date: February 26th, 2016 (started mid-2012)
Release Date: Sometime this year (currently Early Access)
Game Engine: Allegro
Available for these other systems: PC only, Mac and Linux support coming soon
Number of Players: Single (Co-Op semi-supported)
Genre: Top-down Real-time strategy/Survival
Game Features: Currently, the point of the game is to make a factory to fit your wants and needs. Start off by hand-crafting by making a pickaxe and surface mine ores (such as Coal, Iron, and Copper) and eventually move up by placing items on conveyor belts via robotic arms (named “Inserters”). By then, you’ll be able to make Assembly Machines that can do the crafting for you (but at a slower speed).
To unlock more things to do, you must do research (which require Labs and tiered Science Packs (Red, Green, Blue, and Purple respectfully).
However, two things to note. The first is resources (except Oil) are finite and will require you to re-plan once they dry up. And the second, most machines produce pollution. The local wildlife don’t exactly like it and will attempt to sabotage your hard work.
Story: Currently, there’s no real ingame backstory. The player character spawns in with some Iron Plates, a Burner Drill, and a Stone Furnace. Though there is an endgame, which is to launch a rocket into space. The player character is also not alone on this world. Creatures (named ‘Biters’) lurk around and will randomly attack.
The more pollution the player produces, the more frequent the attacks. Eventually, the creatures will evolve into “Spitters”, and stronger, larger Biters.
Enemies: Efficiency (and your own brain) are ‘enemies’. If you don’t know how to plan ahead, you’re not going to go anywhere for awhile. But even when you finally manage to figure out how to plan that Green Science automated production area, you got creatures called “biters” who can run faster than you and attack. This is especially annoying when starting up.
Combat/Health System: As mentioned (several times), there are creatures called “biters”. They supposably consume pollution and it causes their numbers to swell enough to form an attack group against your factory. You can destroy their hives, but that just makes them angry and begin to evolve into harder enemies (such as ‘spitters’).
Dying is actually quite brutal. If you die, it’s a permadeath. You lose everything you have and are forced to reload a save to before you died.
It’s advisable if you’re new to the game, to play in Peaceful Mode. This way, you can focus on building machines instead of worrying about attacks. You can also turn it off by accessing the console and typing in /c game.peaceful_mode = false, followed by /c game.forces["enemy"].kill_all_units() to reset the biters and their hives.
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What I liked;
-This game has a free Demo that has three levels. It’s just enough to teach the basics.
-It’s pretty cool seeing all of your inserters at work.
-Completely mod friendly. And these mods can either make the game easier or more challenging on you, depending on which ones you downloaded.
-Supports playing with friends or strangers willing to help you with difficult (to you) parts of the game (such as setting up automating Blue Science).
What I didn’t like;
-The backstory is on the Wikipedia, instead of being ingame. Though I hope to see this changed in the future.
-The game may sometimes cause you to yell “UGH!!!!!” when trying to figure out setups.
Final Opinions/Thoughts;
If you’re into Minecraft Mods like IC2 and BuildCraft, this game might be for you. However, this game requires a LOT of patience. Expect to take 1-2 (or more) hours trying to figure out “how in the hell am I going to get these to go there?!”
Following one of the many Factorio tutorial videos on Youtube, is highly advised to get an idea on what to do. Even I’m doing it.
One important note to make. Resources, are finite. Aka, they WILL disappear overtime. And you must plan for this when this time comes, or you will have your entire network be useless in one way or another.
Though there are mods, such as one that can give you infinite resources (similar to Oil) if you wish. How you play your copy of the game, no one is going to shun you for it.
Lastly, what seems to be quite the challenging game is also quite addicting for some strange reason. Though I believe it’s because it feels like several 5,000,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, and you’re trying to figure out how every little piece fits. Jigsaw puzzles require you to use your brain (and patience) to solve it.
And like a jigsaw puzzle, the game rewards you for figuring it out.