Recent reviews by ixnayonthetimmay

The jankety gameplay mechanics can be resolved, I hope. Belts don't connect like you think they would, but once you figure it out, it's not so bad. But what I don't think can be resolved is the absolutely cringe dialogue in the intro segment between the bubba "good-ol-boy" boss of the lunar colony and the girlboss company asskicker.

Maybe the devs were going for busting the gender stereotypes, or some other DEI metric, I dunno. But that dialogue gets worse and worse as the session goes on. Coloring books and crayons? Seriously? And then you kill the poor bastard off with a meteor strike in the end anyways? I am left wanting this entire lunar enterprise to fail, just so that chalkboard-scratching encounter never has to play out again.

Did you ever play Starcraft and enjoy the construction and resource-management part of that game more than the unbridled combat part of that game? If so, Factorio is for you!

Here's the premise. You crash-land on an alien world and have to bootstrap your way off by digging up coal, rocks and ore, then crafting machines to do that work for you. Successive improvements mean you can unlock new technologies and even more effective machines until you eventually craft a rocket to take you off this God-forsaken hellscape. But that is just the nominal goal, because the game isn't done there.

There are many paths to victory, but some are faster than others. The meta-game settings allow you to configure the map you play to best match your desired gameplay experience - you can customize the resource availability, the variety of the terrain and even how many of the hostile native creatures will surround you, threatening to destroy your many hours of work, keeping you on your toes! Or just turn all that crap off, turn the resources up and design the most efficient layout for strip-mining this alien world of all of its resources!

Do you want to take it to the next level of perfectly curated madness? Use logic circuits and elements to control lights, actions and, if you're really dedicated, craft a functional computer system using in-game components! Control displays and coordinate to music videos. Do whatever your clever little brain can contemplate, because this game has so many elements that the permutations are endless!

All this and it's pretty light on computer resources. And the devs are constantly updating based on testing and community feedback. That's not to mention the always wonderful modding community. This game is not for everyone, however if you're of the right temperament, you will find yourself sacrificing sleep, a social life and any other nonsense game you were playing before to play Factorio and push your alien factory base just one step further.

Enjoy!