A Game Every Week is a new series I'm starting where I will take a look at a game every week. I'll try to find games that aren't that well known. This won't be an full review, just a general overview and my experience playing the game.If you want me to take a look at a game, put it in the comments below.
Factorio is a world-building game in which you are stranded on a planet. You start with simple materials, and build up your industry. It uses a minecraft-like block system, and procedurally generated terrain. Basically, this means that the environment is composed of blocks, and your starting environment is always different, even if you don't change the difficulty settings.
The game starts out with you with an axe and a few materials, in a procedurally-generated environment. In the beginning, you start out with collecting materials by hand, and eventually, you can create miners that dig the material for you. You then put the material in a furnace to create refined products that can then be used to create more products, which themselves can be used to create even more things, and so on.
Iron, Copper, Coal and Stone are the initial materials that you work with, and then you get other things like electricity and oil. The game also has a defense element, and the way it's implemented is pretty unique. Basically, the machines you have pollute the environment, which makes these little monsters called biters that you have to defend against. This gives you incentive to move to electricity, and in general, a cleaner environment.The game also has a research element, where you can research and unlock new technologies in labs. Again, you discover one thing, that can then be used to discover/research other things, and so on.
The game has increasing levels of automation and abstraction. For example, in the beginning you're collecting materials by hand. Then, you can use a miner to do it for you. You have to create the furnace and conveyor belts and other machinery needed to make finished product out of it. But later on, you can research the Assembly Machine, that can be used to create this machinery while you move on to other things. This is a great mechanic that allows for complex gameplay without making it boring.
I just went with the default difficulty settings,although you can customise them a lot. I was dropped in to a world that had lots of resources, but the main difficulty I had was that the water was too far away from everything else.
I found a neat trick by looking at tutorials online. As you can see in the screenshot above, you can feed both the coal miners into each other, so they never run out of fuel. Below them is a small iron mining operation with a conveyor belt to move iron from the miners to the furnace.
But really, my main advice for anyone trying to play this game is: Watch tutorials on Youtube before jumping in. This game is pretty complex. The first time I played it, I just jumped in, and I had no idea what I was doing. But after watching a few tutorials, it became much easier.
Eventually, I had a complex Iron and Copper Mining system set up, with multiple miners and furnaces:
I found that the furnaces couldn't keep up with the miners, so I had to put more furnaces than miners. Later on, I replaced all the coal-guzzling robot arms with electric ones. The amount of electricity you can produce with just a few parts is insane.
As I said before, this game consists of building stuff, then using that stuff to build even more stuff. Now, the one thing that makes this game really good is the fact that all dependencies for building something are automatically satisfied. For example, a miner requires iron plates, iron gears(that themselves require iron plates) and stone, and some other stuff. When you want to build a miner, the game doesn't look for iron plates and iron gears.It just checks whether you have enough iron plates to build the iron gears, and then some left over for the miner. If you do, it automatically creates the iron gears needed for the miner, then uses the gears and other material to build the miner. This is what allows the game to be both enjoyable and complex at the same time. It's like as if the game knows just the moment when you start getting bored with something,automates that thing and allows you to concentrate on other stuff.
Overall, I'd say that this game is for people who love strategy and world-building games. If you want to obsess over the position of every single item, if you like creating your own giant ecosystem of small things interacting with each other to create something big, this game is for you. I'm not exactly that kind of player, but I still loved playing it because it manages to not be tedious, while still being complex.
Thanks for reading this post.I intend to try out a game every week, and I want to find games that nobody else is talking about. If you like the idea of this series, please resteem this post so more people can see.
@malos10)