Factorio

So Factorio looks nerdy. It's one of those games where someone tells you the premise and you're like... "And this is supposed to be fun? How is this is a game?" except the roles are reversed and I'm explaining the premise to someone else and it's after 112 hours of playing it. It lures you in with it's enticing pixel art sprites and the promise of building a giant factory on an alien world, you start the game and it bombards you with complicated menu's over some demo footage of giant bugs storming a well-made factory and the ensuing war can go either way. But once you hit that "start game" button, that's it, you're invested now, at least I was.

Before we go any further, the basic story is that you've crashed your ship on this alien planet and need to build a rocket and leave, but... you start with pretty much nothing. Factorio begins like a lot of games, you chop some wood, mine some iron and set up camp, make a steam engine and wood burner and you've got electricity, it guides you through the opening stages of the industrial revolution like it's no big deal for an advanced offworlder like you, and seeing the lights come on, using a conveyer belt to guide iron ore to a smelter to make plates... the feeling of automation, it's amazing.

Not to mention mesmerising, when the factory is in full swing it's like a well oiled machine, you can zoom out and oversee your wonderous creation (or misshapen clusterf*ck) working it's magic. I am not an organised person and no matter what the game is, be it simcity or factorio, it always looks kind of a mess. But hey, it was a functioning mess! And that's when stuff goes wrong, besides the almost addicting feeling of automation there's the pang of disappointment when it doesn't work, oh look here we go again, there's too many copper plates in production and it's clogging up the conveyer belts, everything has come grinding to a halt. I have to fix it. This is pretty much the gameplay, it mimic's a factory to a fault which is what the player needs, they don't know it, but they do need it. If one machine is moving faster than another, you bet that'll be a problem later down the line and you need to automate so many different things thanks to the science packs.

Sadly you're offworlder brain really doesn't know how to create a nuclear power plant from memory and you're going to need to research things, which is where the science packs come in. The first one you need gives you access to the next one and then that one gives you access to the next one and so on and so forth, but the requirements of creating these science packs also increases each time until you're having to automate the procedure of creating some quite complicated machines to make science packs to create more complicated machines. The circle of strife. It's a house of cards and it's always just about to fall over. Some of the upgrades are incredibly cool though, like the spidertron, a giant spider-like machine that shoots lasers and fires rockets, I never personally got to try it but wow, it looked cool on the demo screen.

Life is full of little disappointments and factorio is full of them, either something has run out and stopped, or something is attacking your supply lines and now there's no oil going to the oil refinery which has caused the chemical plant to stop making plastic bars, which in turn has ceased production of circuit boards and now there's an overflow of copper wires which is clogging up various conveyer belts. But wait, what would possibly attack little old me on a hostile alien world?

So yeah, the bugs are jerks and they respond to pollution, which you are very much a part of, even trying to be green and using solar power you can't ignore that making hundreds of automation machines is probably bad for the environment, but in this case the environment's self defence is that it's trying to kill you. So now you're having to mass produce bullets to go in the various machine guns and hooking laser beams up to the nuclear power plant to try and stop these bugs that steadily increase in number and hostility. The number of times I'd go make a cup of coffee and return to find out one of the various parts of the factory had been completely destroyed by a bunch of bugs was frustrating, but again, the circle of strife. Without these things the game just wouldn't be the addicting experience it is, and it is very addicting.

It's a very long game and for a good majority of it I was having the time of my life staring at my wonderful machinations as they did their thing, it got to the point where I, their glorious creator just couldn't remember how half of it worked and was afraid to tamper with the fragile balance. As I drew closer to launching the rocket, it did start to drag. I had to butcher half of the factory and spend several real hours remaking it to now create rocket parts. I have to admit, seeing the rocket launch after my many tens of hours of hard work and dedication was a bit meh, but it's more about the journey than the destination. I didn't research everything, I didn't even use the quick item bar at the bottom of the screen, but I had fun. But I think that's enough for now.