Factorio Early Access Preview

When a game hits Early Access on Steam, you expect that title to be a work in progress. There’s likely a handful of bugs, incomplete features and the general consensus that it’s not going to be entirely smooth sailing. And yet that’s nothing like what you get with Factorio.

The game has been in active development since 2012, and only just hit Early Access quite recently, with their goal to release the final game within about 8-12 months. What you get for that amount of development time, is an already well polished resource management game, with a bit of real-time strategy thrown in.

Starting small...

Factorio has you building up factories and researching technology, with the (current) primary goal being to launch a rocket into space. In order to get there though, you need to become efficient at automating the production of items so that you’re not crafting them manually. To start, you’re given the basics of a stone furnace and a mining drill. With just enough iron to craft a pick-axe that lets you hand-mine some coal to use as fuel. From there, you move onto getting power and bigger, better machines that let you automate more efficiently.

And it’s in the creation of those factories that the game hooks you in. You start to obsess over whether the conveyor belts are pushing enough resources to your smelters to cope with the demand of your assemblers. This in turn leads to you questioning whether your assemblers are putting out enough of whatever they’re creating to satisfy the demands of where that product is going. It’s the constant iteration of these elements that makes you strive for the perfect automation set-up and as an end result, question where the last few hours have gone when you only started playing five minutes ago.

It soon builds up...

It’s already quite a sizeable game, and getting to the win condition will take quite some time. However, if that wasn't enough, you can use mods to further extend or change the game to expand it in numerous different ways. You can choose to make certain aspects of the game easier or more convenient. Alternatively, if you really hate yourself you could choose to install mods that make the game much more difficult than it starts out, with harder enemies and crafting needing more complex recipes to create items.

With support for multiplayer and dedicated servers already, it’s great fun to play with friends too, though it does add an extra level of depth having to coordinate between who is doing what task. Someone could be in charge of building the factory, whilst others are sent out to clear the Biter bases that surround your own providing an added level of threat to your paradise of automation.

And then ... MEGA FACTORY!

If you’ve ever enjoyed playing games like Transport Tycoon or thoroughly enjoyed the Buildcraft mod for Minecraft then Factorio should already be on your radar. It’s not entirely surprising if it’s not, as it hasn't been largely advertised, even if its appearance on Steam has done wonders for the player base.