SoylentNews

stretch611 [soylentnews.org] writes:

After 8.5 years and countless delays for "refinement" Factorio has finally released today [factorio.com].

If you are asking what is Factorio, you must either not be a gamer, or live in some hole in the ground (or parent's basement) and only think you are a gamer.

Factorio is a very successful indie game. (A few months back, it hit 2 million sales.) It is a base builder. The premise is that your spaceship crash lands on an alien planet, you are left with next to nothing and from there you build a gigantic factory so that you can build a new spaceship and get off the planet. You start off gathering basic materials and researching the basics until you rise to the level of advanced materials and spaceship construction. Your factory will continue to grow as you advance and as it grows it will create pollution. The pollution will cause the local alien life to stir and eventually attack your base; so you will need to set up defenses while advancing.

It is very addictive. Probably the most addictive thing for me is that often you need to do multiple things, and must prioritize. As your base grows, you will need to expand your power production, at the same time you need to explore and find a source of oil so that you can unlock the next level of research, at the same time, aliens are attacking the other side of the base and need to be killed... then you need to rebuild... add defenses... clear alien hives that are too close... add more ammo production... add even more power... expand your resource harvesting before the current iron patch is completely mined... and so on. and so on...

I personally have played Factorio for 1500 hours over the last 4 years... Over that time it has gone through some major changes such as the addition of Nuclear Power, Massive Network games (over 100 people have played coop in a single game,) high definition graphic overhaul, and regular performance tuning. While the 1.0 release is here, the devs have promised continued bug fixes and already annouced that 1.1 will be coming.

Factorio supports Linux, Mac, and that microsoft os.

Related Links:
Factorio Home Page [factorio.com]
Factorio Steam Page [steampowered.com] (though you can buy directly from their home page to give the devs a few cents more.)
Submitter's Steam Review [steamcommunity.com] (shameless self-promotion that provides no actual value.)

Original Submission