I’ve gotta say hats off to the developers of Factorio. (My thoughts and mini-review of Factorio)

[eBagger]

(Excuse the lengthy tangents, I like to write rambly when I’m doing cardio)

Yeah factory bros, I’ve gotta say I’m inspired. Came outta nowhere, kept seeing pictures of peoples setups being posted on forums, and figured I’d see what all those fucking wires and pipes were about. And I’m glad I did.

Remember back in the days when you’d get home with a new RTS game, and you’d open that shit up and grab the manual, and start reading about all the various units and their abilities and uses? That comfy detailed sprite and description? Yeah thats the comfy feeling I get when I’m playing factorio. And boy is there plenty to read about with tons of sprites to look at. While not exactly the same genre Command and conquer seems so… shallow, or lack of depth I should say in comparison. Not knocking the legend, just never thought how much deeper you could go.

And in my mid 30’s now, gaming certainly is different than decades ago. But I feel the sentiment is shared (I’ve read the Steam reviews) when I say there hasn’t been a game that makes me stay up way well into sleep deprivation since I was young lad. And speaking of Command and Conquer and Starcraft, its probably the first time since I was introduced to those that I’ve got that comfy feeling about a genre and game.

It really satisfies those parts of the human mind that say “Wow it took me 5 minutes to gather 100 units of X….and WOW, with a little engineering and those 100 units, I can now make 5,000 units in the same amount of time!” Kind of exponential growth that our brains find satisfying.

Oddly enough before finding Factorio I had downloaded some mobile game called “Cells to Singularity”, one of those “tap the screens fast to accumulate currency, research new tech that makes each tap +10, research this modifier to make + 50 every 30 seconds” kind of games. Very satisfying and addicting, and Factorio kind of gave that gameplay a direction and purpose.

I’m also the type to quit when a certain amount of reward or satisfaction isn’t met at a certain level of complexity. Cities Skylines comes to mind. Once my population reaches a certain level and particular issues arise, I get a “fuck this shit” mentality and either start over, or stop playing. Factorio has done an amazing job of remedying this with a great balance of complexity, with proper reward return on learning and persevering’s investment. I’ve read a few people this happens at advance oil processing, and I thought that might apply to me, but I’ve happily conquered and currently learning nuclear.

I love the precise ratio mathematical aspect of the game, where optimizing is a whole subsection to learn in itself, but also the mindless “put down a shitload of miners, lay some blue inserters and a buncha smelters, and throw a shitload of material at the problem” approach that can be taken as well.

I’m playing on peaceful mode to learn the ropes because of there is one thing that turn me off from RTSs, and thats rushing. Unfortunately thats the downfall of all Multiplayer RTS or most strategy oriented games, when it becomes all about SPEED SPEED RUSH RUSH and less about methodical placement of units and strategy. But from what I can tell about peaceful mode is at least the enemy seems to grow appropriately with what stage you are at. It’ll no doubt stress me out when I eventually move on to regular mode, but props to those of you who can learn the game while fighting off waves of insects. Its not easy progressing on peaceful mode, its most definitely an accomplishment on regular mode.

The graphics are great to look at, and I love how with simpler graphics styles like Factorio you can really ramp up how ridiculous things get, with thousands of bots, insects, and machines working flawlessly on my few years old gaming laptop. The top down perspective seems the obvious most appealing choice for this type of gameplay.

I’m excited to check further into Satisfactory. I’ve messed around with it some, but it hasn’t captured my attention like Factorio. I’m sure I’ll check it out once I’ve done more with Factorio. Same with Dyson Sphere Project, after Factorio checked it out, was pretty cool same story, its no Factorio atm.

The fact the game is so mod friendly and there is so much more that can be done with the engine is awesome as well, as I know after I beat vanilla a few times there are other adventures to be had, made by those who love and understand the factorio formula.

And thefact im typing all this shit out, taking snapshots on my phone of my map to look at when I lay down to go to sleep to plan out what route I should take in advancing my factories and research the next day as smoothly and common sensibly as I can, AND still watching lets plays and tutorials 50 hours in is a testament to the games ability to captures ones mind and creativity and attention. In a world of tiktok and short attention spans, its nice to have something to bunker down and work on a project you have in mind for hours.

Factorio came about because I was needing a break between fast twitch intense competitive FPS sessions that both invigorate me and make me want to smash my desktop to pieces. And factorio fills that need perfectly. After a few games of PUBG or Halo Infinite Team Snipers, its oh some comfy to get up and have a cup of coffee in the den on the couch on my laptop and just build and plan shit out.

And when I say I’m inspired, Factorio has given me so many ideas for what can be done in gaming I hadn’t thought of. I almost don’t want to say it because its a genius idea, but there also aren’t alot of crossover fans between the genres, but I picture an amazingly fun and addictive game thats like a cross of PUBG/Apex Legends style open world FPS, and Factorio/Satisfactory style of crafting and resource management. Some tower defense thrown in (which Factorio also kinda coveres. Rust is the closest thing that is even in the same ballpark as what I am picturing. It’d have to be done just right, but the formulas are there, I know it would work.

Anybody bored and talented at game design get to work. (And maybe message so I can be some kind of help)

Aaand BOOM, just like that I’ve gone 3 miles on the treadmill. Didn’t even realize it getting lost in my bs. Aight hopefully you weren’t bored enough to read this shit. And if you did hopefully you relate. Take care bros happy manufacturing.

[CaptainSlide]

Interesting read young whipper snapper.

I've been playing computer games since 8086 processors were a thing. In those days and the following decade game play was what kept you playing and interested. There were no fancy graphics, you were lucky if you had basic beeps and boops. By the time the 386 came around graphics were acceptable but still rubbish and if you forked out for a Soundblaster card you could get music and even make a joystick work.

By the time the 486 came along with a whole 1MB of extended memory and 20MB hard drive we got genre defining games such as Star Wars Xwing (I spent hundreds of hours on that game), Doom, Civilization and the original C&C. Graphics were still bare bones by today's standards but game play was still where it was at. (By Game play I mean the ability to make the player come back for more, either via stories, replay ability, discovery or making one think.)

After that as graphics got better, game play became much shallower, development was put in to making things look flashy but game play became an after thought.

For me the next genre defining game of it's era was Homeworld. This even today is my most favorite and well remembered game. The Story, balance and ambiance of the game was all epic and whilst graphically it was pretty swish (for the time) it was a game that would keep me going until the sun came up.

Fast forward to Factorio and I think the developers have done a remarkable job in making the game a compelling thing to play and harking back to all those games that came before. It is without a doubt the genre (factory building) defining game of it's era and anything that follows will likely be a pale imitation. It will run well on potato hardware like mine or allow you to build megascale factories on the latest hardware. It looks good without relying on fantastic graphics that chew up valuable resources and makes your video card weep. But mostly it has brought back the sheer essence of gameplay, the ability to keep you up till the sun comes up and make you dream of better ways of doing something when you do finally get some sleep. There is more than one way to play and there is no one winning strategy like so many other games (which once you work that strategy out makes the game boring).

I'll admit I am a relative newcomer to Factorio. I tried the demo back in around 2014 and thought the game had potential but needed more development. I came back to it around the end of 2018 and was blown away. I now have nearly 7000 hours racked up according to steam and I am still learning new things.

Vanilla Factorio is brilliant, the community and modders here make it awesome, extending the life of the game a hundred fold and in ways that can suit or challenge you in equal measure. If Factorio doesn't join the ranks of legendary games like the ones I mentioned earlier it will be a tragedy.

[Khagan]

If Factorio doesn't join the ranks of legendary games like the ones I mentioned earlier it will be a tragedy.

It already has.

[Koub]

By the time the 486 came along with a whole 1MB of extended memory and 20MB hard drive we got genre defining games such as Star Wars Xwing (I spent hundreds of hours on that game), Doom, Civilization and the original C&C. Graphics were still bare bones by today's standards but game play was still where it was at. (By Game play I mean the ability to make the player come back for more, either via stories, replay ability, discovery or making one think.)

I think you got your chronology slightly off. The 1MB extended memory and 20 MB hard drives belong to the 8086 era (my dad's first computer was a 8086 with 1 total MB RAM and a 20 MB HDD - a luxury at that time). IIRC, the 80486 era CPU was usually found with close to 16 or 32 MB RAM, and in the 100MB order of magnitude hard drive.

To get back to topic, My point of view is that even if Factorio is a niche game - in that it will never sell in the tens of millions copies, or have the success of AAA games, it has already entered the legend as a game that created a new genre.

[CaptainSlide]

I think you got your chronology slightly off. The 1MB extended memory and 20 MB hard drives belong to the 8086 era (my dad's first computer was a 8086 with 1 total MB RAM and a 20 MB HDD - a luxury at that time). IIRC, the 80486 era CPU was usually found with close to 16 or 32 MB RAM, and in the 100MB order of magnitude hard drive.

Well it was almost 40 years ago and my memory is not what it was. That said I distinctly remember fighting with config.ini and extended memory settings in DOS for almost a week to get XWing to run, at all. I think it was a 386 at the time and even though it probably had 2Mb memory and a 40Mb HDD the game couldn't handle more than 1MB extended and needed about 600kB of the base 640kB to run. Anyway whatever, what the programmers did back then with so few resources make a lot of today's bloatware look sad.

[FuryoftheStars]

Ahh, talk about XWing and 486 computers brings back some memories. I remember playing some of those games to death.

[eris]

Ahh, talk about XWing and 486 computers brings back some memories. I remember playing some of those games to death.

X-wing vs Tie fighter was great you can still get it on GOG. I built my first computer 386DX just to play that and ultima underworld, had to have a soundblaster or no fun. Those were the days of dealing with a small amount of memory to run drivers for hardware, maybe the only great thing windows 98 did to get over that limitation.

Factorio is a rare gem that is for sure, there may be only 2 other games that I could compare to this awesome piece of work, that would be Warlords II, and civi5.

Don't think I would have found it if not for Covid the only good thing to come out of that mess. Lots of free time after getting laid off.

E