What makes this game fun?

[8faiNt ı♣ı]

It looks really archaic so Im curious why people think that this game is entertaining. Im thinking about buying it i would like to just hear about some opinions from people playing the game actively

[knighttemplar1960]

If you ever played "Mousetrap" or played with an erector set as a kid, that's the fun. Its just bigger, with more bits and pieces, and more possible combinations. Killing the bugs is like trapping the mice.

[PunCrathod]

Maybe try the demo? What others find fun is not necessarily fun for you but you might find other things about the game that make it fun for you.

[Fel]

If you played several games where you have to automate things, you probably ran into quite a few times where you thought "Why are the resources so limited?", "why is the map so small?" and so on.

This game gives you a set of simple tools and you are tasked to launch a rocket.
The map is virtually infinite, the resources are plentiful if you explore a bit and you have plenty of space to make your factory.

There is no "best way" to play the game and without extremely grindy steps or other arbitrary limitations (if you layed satisfactory, you probably found yourself limited by the power you were able to produce for example rather than the resources).

It's still the best game in this category due to the depth of the tools you have access to (even seemingly simple things like belts can be used in several ways once you understand them properly for example).
The 2D helps a lot to make everything much easier to understand what the factory is doing and what is clogging it and it also helps with the performances, allowing you to build fairly gigantic factories.

The train system is one of the best out there as well without going too far into the complexity so those that enjoy having trains going everywhere are usually pretty happy (I'm among those).

It also helps that the modding scene is very active so there are ways to tune the game to your tastes quite a bit (especially if you want more complex ratios and crafting chains, there is enough choice from fairly vanilla to complete nightmare for that).


You can always try the demo, it covers the tutorial through several maps of limited scope so it's not quite the same as the default mode but it gives you a taste of how the factory functions and what to expect.

[Kagora]

Well timed dopamine feedback loops

[GreenBeanN1]

Probably it is the sum of the urge to expand, create the perfect most efficient blueprint and staying alive.

And if you reach a limitation (the factory cannot grow bigger, enemies too easy, tech tree too short) you can use mods. And if you download a lot of different mods you can modify the mods and create your own to weld/script/weldscript/scriptweld (choose your preferred word) everything together.

There is no pitfall of a story that becomes boring or get the feeling the game becomes repetive. In factorio you use imagination and automate repetive tasks.

[Diesel]

When you get something to work.

The game doesn't give you a set way to do anything. It's up to you to make your own designs.

Some work better than others and when you first start your creations will be ♥♥♥♥, but they will work which is satisfying for new players.

Once you understand the game and start a new world you will build a better factory, things will be more organised and building a rocket isn't as big as a task as it once was, but now you want to launch a rocket every minute? That's a hard task to pull off and you learn that what you thought was 1000% more efficient than your first run is still not enough.

Eventually you build a mega base with everything you have learnt over your multiple runs through the game. Train signalling and the circuit network that were once a mystery to you are now second nature in your designs allowing way more versatility and efficiency.

You make a modular factory instead of a main bus factory and needs a lot more space so now having strong defences is important.

In the end it's like building something in real life, the gratification you get from making something and each time you retry or do something else the end result gets better and better

[Lunacy]

I'd say it's not really moment to moment fun but is incredibly engaging. It can be like a puzzle game sometimes, the problem created by your own terrible designs so you gotta go make new belt lines and improve old areas to fix it.
You get tired so you save&quit, but then your bedtime thoughts are filled with ideas to improve what you have in your current factory.
I didn't think I'd like it at first and then suddenly I have hundreds of hours in it.

Try the demo, though if you're more into 3D survival games I think Satisfactory might be more your speed.

[PotatoScav]

Originally posted by 8faiNt ı♣ı:

It looks really archaic so Im curious why people think that this game is entertaining. Im thinking about buying it i would like to just hear about some opinions from people playing the game actively

Its about achieving something for me ,
you made a factory , a production line , tank , railway cannon , rocket out of nothing but a hammer .
Yeah pretty much it with a random generated map system so you can re-play it many many times . with seed 0 to 10000000

[Drizzt]

definitely do try the demo - many of us were addicted from the first time we automated a supply line

if it's your thing then it is likely that you will be very quickly hooked

and the current demo is bigger than the one that many of us played - the final level is very big and is like a smaller, more limited version of the full game's freeplay mode (in which the maps are practically infinite in size, variety and configurability, and the tech tree is massive)

it has a limited size map and a much reduced tech tree - but it is still huge, and includes many (if not most) of the elements that people find fun in this game, including trains

so nothing to lose by playing the demo but time :-)

....and if you like the demo and buy the game - a lot of time ;-)

[Dunhill]

To keep it short, I'd say it's the maker's pride, along with problem-solving. Factorio is like a crossword; finding out what each word is, going back and correcting the mistakes, and then finally, feeling pride looking it all come together perfectly. Now imagine the crossword has multiple correct answers and introduces a new challenge witch each word you fill out. Factorio's complexity grows with scale; the crossword is never the same size, never with the same words and always has a better word combination than what you came up with the last time.

[stevej018]

I like to watch moving parts.
I have a "finished" map and I watch the trains move about like its a beautiful sunset.

[Chibi Life]

Fun? It's basically a sandbox where you have to think and plan and everything you do if you want to make it in late game. I've restarted my game 4 times cuz of botched builds late game and didn't feel like deconstructing half my base.

However I learned and improved and I decided I'm going to try a rail world with increased water coverage. Rail world was my ticket to improving, why? Because it taught me not to depend on a giant cluttered factory and to spread out and stop centralizing resources that end up getting eaten up over the course of their belt runs.

7 trains... and I don't regret any moment of it. My god this is fun.

What was the point of my rant? Well I just really wanted to show you how much of a blast this game is to me. I can't realistically seeing myself get bored for a long time.

[RedEssence]

Me personally I love how simple the games rules are, but it allows for such high complexity designs that the game builds its own dynamic puzzles that you have to solve to keep progressing

And once you finally get your next machine to work, whether its as simple as making an automatic basic belt maker or getting that complex item that required 20 steps to make, once it finally pushes that first completed item out without any help from the player

pure bliss

[TheRealRws]

if you ever played modded minecraft with AE2 or any sort of automation and enjoyed the automating part then you will enjoy this game.

[Danub]

Originally posted by TheRealRws:

if you ever played modded minecraft with AE2 or any sort of automation and enjoyed the automating part then you will enjoy this game.

I always though of Factorio as the logistics game and minecraft as the automation one. Black boxes vs using a combination of game mechanics to achieve what the black boxes simply do.

Factorio's a great deal though. Starts out being about the automation, but as you get the hang of everything, it revolves about the mind boggling complex task of setting up logistics for ever scaling production facilities. There's actually a big part of the game hidden beyond what just launching a rocket requires. Beyond what your average Joe would even what to poke at. This is THE GAME for the engineering oriented people out there.

On a not so side note, I just don't understand how people find the graphics bad, poor or plainly 'archaic' as you describe it. For a 2D game, this is top notch. Only 2 other 2D games I can think of that have better graphics and only one of them is all that new compared to Factorio.

Can't really compare Factorio to anything if you're new to the genre. Though it comes to personal preference, I find Factorio the best of the lot (Satisfactory, DSP, Factory Town, Shapez.io)