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To celebrate Factorio's Version 2.0 update, this is Version 2.0 of this update! Check out the original here.

I still long for a true successor to SimCity 4, something that can get me close to what it did to me circa 2004-2005. I've previously written reviews for Cities: Skylines, once back in April 2020 and a later one on this page...and unfortunately Cities: Skylines II looks like an even worse title. Fortunately, there are, of course, a few games that come close. Back before Paradox got their mitts on it, I was a big fan of Prison Architect...and there is also Factorio. Factorio isn't exactly "SimFactory", as it focuses more on efficiency and planning than just expansion for the sake of expansion, and some critics have even called it an idle game, because in lack of defending your base from enemies (which can be turned off), the game can be set quite easily to win, but it's slow.

While it took a bit to get into and get the learning curve down, Factorio is easily one of the most addictive games I've played, and I've easily sunk 8+ solid hours into this game at one time, something that had never happened to me with any other game. If nothing else, it teaches you about logistics and how raw materials could be finished, usable products. The end products aren't sold as consumer items, but rather "science packs" to research new technologies and eventually launch a rocket. In the beginning of the game, you can do little more than make simple electronic circuit boards with just combining iron plates and copper wire. (Factorio is more realistic than other games but still highly abstracted). Soon, you'll "research" oil derricks, and begin making plastic bars out of petroleum. Eventually, you'll have so many things going on that when you discover a shortage, it's usually three or four stages deep. In one case (I may be paraphrasing this, so it's not the exact story), I noticed a shortage of "purple science", one of the "science packs" to research new technologies and eventually launch a rocket. At the plant that made the "production science pack", there were plenty of electric engine units in storage but no electric furnaces available. The electric furnaces were not being produced because of a shortage of advanced circuit boards. The advanced circuit boards were not being produced because of a shortage of plastic bars. The plastic bars were not being produced because of a shortage of petroleum gas. The petroleum gas was not being produced not because a shortage of crude oil, but the crude oil processing had run out of space for light oil and heavy oil. Once more storage units were added for them, production continued back to the "purple science" plant, with petroleum gas plastic bars could be produced, with plastic bars advanced circuits could be produced, with advanced circuits electric furnaces could be produced, and so on. Almost everything can be scaled up, and you can even get into having a circuit network that has logic gates so things aren't being over-produced in certain areas.

I've played around with some of the mods, and while they introduce some intriguing new byproducts, most of it is just additional busywork without introducing new depth. Plus, the most popular mods can't decide if they want to go with ultra-realism (with complete oil refinery byproducts) or fantasy (made-up ores, manufacturing products made from alien fungus, etc.), though that takes a backseat on based on how long it takes to get everything up and running. It is a testament to the game's excellence how solid the vanilla game is, though there a few quality-of-life mods that I use. (You can never mod yourself into a "good" game).

Factorio, however, IS a game where the wiki is required reading, and while it is helpful, there's no print guide or any real PDFs besides some quick-start guides made by Steam users. This seems more egregious since Version 1.0 was released in August 2020 and major changes to the game have already been made and settled with. When I started playing Factorio back in 2018 (version 0.16, I believe), all of the "science packs" had different recipes, creating a markedly different game build when it came what to focus on. Chemical science pack, popularly known as "blue science" and where the game takes a significant difficulty spike, used an advanced circuit, an engine unit, and an electric mining drill to make one pack (as opposed to the final's "3 advanced circuit, 2 engine units, 1 sulfur" to make two). Military science pack used a resource-intensive gun turret (resource-intensive in the context of the game's iron/copper/stone, not computing power) instead of stone walls, and so on.

In the previous version of the page, I wanted to discuss the DLC, which is more like an "expansion pack" because of its cost, but now I can. Space Age, released in October 2024, is a new campaign that makes it easier to launch your first rocket, but that's when the real fun (or, rather "fun") begins. There's four new planets to explore, each with their own unique science pack. The "default" planet Nauvis is really the easiest as there's four more, each with a gimmick.

In Vulcanus, giant, super-difficult worms traverse the territory, so unless you want to sacrifice a bunch of turrets to it (which you will) there's not much space to build on, especially as lava covers the land and won't let you put underground belts under it. There's also cliffs EVERYWHERE and that won't change until you research Cliff Explosives, which are now locked behind further research. The lava, however, can be processed into molten metals which can do fun things like produce steel directly, which is great. It's actually the easiest of the three planets you can go to.

In Fulgora, there are no enemies, and a sea of soft mushy heavy oil lets you walk on it but can't build much on there. There's also no resources, just scrap, which you mine and recycles as random items at various chances. Most of the challenge here involves mining enough scrap, sorting them out (including holmium ore), and recycling down to get what you need.

In Gleba, the science packs are based on agricultural items, which have a spoilage time. Spoilage is introduced on Nauvis where the fish you can pick up to recover HP now lasts about two real-time hours, after which it turns into the item "Spoilage" which is useless (it can be burned). In Gleba, it's a rush to harvest fruit and process it into nutrients and other ingredients.

Once you get all three science packs from all three planets, you'll go onto Aquilio, the ice planet, where you'll be needing heat pipes just to keep your stuff functional and the sea is liquid ammonia. However...it is a slog. You can build rockets fairly early on but would be a mistake if you rushed off without the "production science pack" or the "utility science pack" (an achievement will be rewarded for your actions, though this is far from recommended). To transport anything to space requires a space platform, which also needs to be refilled with ammo as asteroids will blast your space platform (each tile requires copper and steel) to smithereens and it will continue to hit them if you're in orbit to other planets...and after dumping some 20-30 hours I got burned out before I even got to Gleba, having first failed on an initial run when I realized how screwed I was.

You CANNOT build buses, the most effective way of moving and organizing things in Nauvis, you'll have to use a janky system of elevated rails (which are new, but the system of building rails changed so all the blueprints for rails are now entirely useless) and just tapping away at an endless project. It's really for the most pro players of the game and even then they'll be frustrated as you can't build out the same way. Post-game sure, but it's all a big mess and I wouldn't recommend it unless you really, REALLY like the main campaign and wanted something entirely new. (I didn't even mention the new Quality feature, that's another can of worms).

At least Version 2.0 has a lot of quality of life updates I'm generally happy with, so if you're still fence-sitting it's never a better time to play the game. One more thing, I made my own mod for Factorio (requires Space Age). For metrics reasons I won't host it here; check it out on the mod portal on the official site.

FINAL RATING:   

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