For those of you who like the factory-building aspect of factory games, but aren't so interested in the tower-defense or combat components, Factory Town is for you. There are no enemies and plenty of resources to get you started. Not too far into the game, all resources are renewable. If you decide that you don't like how you've laid our your town, buildings and paths (and even most resources) can easily be moved around.

The cute low-poly graphics belie the depth of the game. There are roughly 3 major types of transport (worker units, belts/pipes, rails) that are all good at different types of things. Building road access to buildings actually matters, so your town will look like a functional town and not just a mess of buildings wrapped up in spaghetti. There is a pretty powerful logic and control system for transport behavior that lets you add some additional intelligence to your transportation systems. There are various productivity boosts that can be applied to buildings and workers later in the game, at the cost of some late-game products. Town center bonuses encourage you to separate production into specialized zones that exchange goods with each other. The game is properly 3-dimensional, meaning that you can build your town vertically rather than horizontally, if you so choose.

The dev is incredibly responsive to player feedback, and communicates with the community often. Balance and UI/UX concerns raised by the players are taken very seriously. Bugs are typically fixed within a couple of days of being reported. Suggestions that the dev likes are acknowledged even if they're not able to be implemented right away.

This is a good game, and it will continue to be a good game.

As a bonus for all you penguins out there, the game runs on Proton so well that you can't tell that it's not Linux native.

It's a great automation game - let me give you some advice.

Do yourself a favour, once you've completed the first few campaign levels, leave the campaign and play a big sandbox.

The Campaign is clearly based on early access players playing one new level every time there's an update meaning every level is basically the same as the one before it but at the end there's an extra layer of complexity as new features are added.

What do I mean? The levels play like this:

Level 1
Level 2: do everything you just did in level 1 with a bit more at the end.
Level 3: do everything you did in level 1 and 2 in the same order but with a bit more at the end.
This goes on for seven levels, meaning you basically play level 1 seven times, level 2 six times and so on...

So don't do that. Play the first few levels to get the hang of it then jump to a full sandbox, it's much less repetition and more fun.

I've heard people (including my best friend) say "Why not just play Factorio?" My main reason was that I just liked the chill vibes of this game. I've learned I'm not very good at designing systems, but this game is like "That's okay, buddy. Take your time. There's nothing trying to kill you. If you mess up, just delete it and I'll give you the resources back." Very forgiving game. Biggest complaint is the "education" system point system in the game. I hope you're ready to produce millions of books. I felt like every level was a struggle to get the tech's I needed unlocked...

Took me close to 70hrs to complete the campaign mode and get the 100%, so there's plenty of game here. Honestly, even completing the campaign only scratches the surface of the "end game" buildings and tech. For me though...I just don't have any interest in designing a factory for the sake of seeing my numbers get bigger and bigger and bigger.. But maybe that is your thing?

I bought this game when it first came out in early access. It has been a superb game to play. During early access there has been loads of updates. Some are minor and some are major, but every single one of them has improved the game for the better. Some of the major changes have completely changed the way the game runs, but every single one of them improves the overall game. The community here for this game is very helpful as well. I have at times had questions or was struggling on a particular part of the game and there are plenty of other players who offer advice and/or information. A lot of the time Erik (Developer) answers the questions. He is very involved on the community and the Discord.

This is a family friendly game that everybody should easily be able to play.

This is a very chill game. I like that the only antagonist is my lack of organization. It's like a fun, friendly Factorio

I'm having lots of fun. I'm going to get copies for my kids, and when they want more I'll give them Factorio

TL;DR:
- A mix of elements from Anno, Factorio and Kingdoms and Castles
- It’s got that game loop in place: discover > improve > discover > improve. There’s always that one new thing you want to build or line you want to change
- Very active dev, daily responses in Discord and weekly updates
- Already a large amount of content, even in its current state you’ll get your money’s worth in playtime


Disclaimer:
I’m one of the early beta testers, probably the 3rd or 4th wave. So I did get the game for free (although I’ve since abundantly made up for it with feedback & bug reporting etc). I’ve also been bumped up to mod on the Discord (come say hi!). So you know, this is a sliiightly biased review ;)

You will probably hear a lot of people saying it is “another Factorio, but different”. I beg to differ: to me it starts off as a variation of Anno, where you set up production lines to provide goods for your town, which ever grows in size and complexity. The logistics in these production lines do have a lot of belts and rails, so that automation aspect and line balancing of Factorio is present as well. And it’s got an overall pleasant atmosphere that reminds me of Kingdoms and Castles.

I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t buy into early access based on promises of things yet to come, but instead based on what's currently on the table. As you can see, I have played it a lot so far. Steam says I’m currently at 450+. I'd say even if the development would stop now, in the current state you'd still get your money's worth in playtime. While actual gameplay time for myself is less, more in the range of 250 hours, that’s still a lot. The other 200 hours I had the game open while discussing things on the Discord, creating small test setups to help people with a design problem, working on stuff for the wiki, and I’ve even made a bloody calculator for the game. Yes, a production line ratio calculator. No, you don’t need it to play the game, but it becomes useful when you want to make fully optimized endgame production lines.

And that’s the part of the gameplay loop I like about the game. On the one hand, there’s a lot of discovery: a lot of research and base upgrades that slowly unlock the game and change your playstyle. When you researched belts, it’s quite a challenge to set up your first belt production line. Then: how does this affect all your other production lines? Do you remove the roads and wagons and replace them with these belts? What new stuff can you do with all these freed up workers? The same goes for logistic blocks, such as splitters and sorters, how can you use these to improve your lines? Do you rebuild things again once you unlock rails? By this time you’re really short on iron, so those starter lines really need to be improved and expanded. And so it goes on. There’s always something new to do, either trying to produce a new type of good, or changing something you already built. And no matter how you play, on your first map you will always end up with spaghetti lines. And ideas start brewing on how you can untangle this mess…

And I want to reiterate that the dev is very active. I got my key something like 8 months ago, and I’m really surprised by the content that has been added since then, especially for a single dev. He responds to questions and feedback on the Discord on a daily basis. The game is roughly weekly updated, sometimes a bit longer when it’s a large content update, after that multiple in week to address new bugs (important hotfixes in a few hours usually). And yes, of course there are still things missing from the game, but these are becoming smaller QoL things, like large scale deletion or copy/paste blueprints. But I’m confident all of this stuff will be added in (see the roadmap). Looking at the excitement around launch, I’m guessing he’s going to get a nice budget for all the stuff he still wants to add to the game. But again, even without all the planned additions, it has got hours and hours of gameplay in its current state.

Sheepy_Gorilla out!

This is Factorio's green little brother.
It is factorio, except:
* Inserters and other bots are replaced by peasant-looking pawns
* The factorio 'player' is omnipresent.
* Bridges for conveyor belt instead of underground.
* Science packs are coins.
* omnipresent player inventory is extended by barns.
* Power supply is fixed and can be upgraded by paying with a bunch of items. This game limits the number of workers you have, which is somewhat analogous to power use.
* Speed modules are automatically embedded everywhere, depending on the rate of science packs you manufacture. Sell items in markets to gain coins AND happiness, which is essentially an omnipresent speed module.

This game has some missed opportunities.
* Getting ahead in the game is easy. It lets you get ahead with cheap things to build. Imagine if Factorio would let you build the rocket part out of copper and iron plates and some wood.
* Building bridges is time consuming. Imagine if placing each underground belt tile takes you 1 minute. This is because you manually need to place each bridge part.

A production line game like Factorio, but with additional base-building/colony builder elements. The production automation isn't as in-depth as Factorio, but worker-based systems, 3D belt systems and population/happiness as core goals make it a meaningfully different game and give it a lot of potential.

As of writing this, it feels somewhat early in development but is progressing smoothly, and is a playable and enjoyable game as it is right now. The developer is active on Discord and elsewhere, and is committed to updating the game regularly.

I see that a lot of the reviews seem to find the game to be a simpler, more relaxing, easier to get into alternative to Factorio thanks to the lack of time or enemy induced pressure and simpler behaviour of belts and relative autonomy of workers and vehicles.

But under the cheerful and simple looks hides a level of depth (and raw complexity) that only compares to the most advanced and complex Factorio mods. Yes you can take it slow and steady and just do the minimum needed and you'll easily "win" (as in advance in tech and fulfill objectives) in a way the pressure of biters in Factorio will prevent you, but making full use of all available mechanics to maximise your production speeds and efficiency is on a whole other level (think launching one rocket in Factorio vs building a base for maximum launchs per time)

It's not just a matter having a good, easily retrofitted factory layout, enough mines and then just slapping in a few tech cards and upgrading your belts and inserters as you go until it is maximally productive, with the rail network design being the hardest to optimize. Here you have to take into account your factories being able to achieve exponential gains in production speed through various mechanics that will require you both to fit them within range and connected to your town centers and be able to supply inputs, extract outputs and carry items around the map at extreme throughputs.

Optimizing factory layouts is absolutely critical to ensure future connections needed by eventual upgrades will be able to be fitted without having to rebuild new factories all the time, and the logistical challenges that result from the combined quite long and complex production chains of advanced items and extreme production speeds that can be reached will require you to make use of every trick you know of. Warehouses, be they barns or train stations are your best tool to untangle knots, the slanted support is non-obstructing, and minecarts can be abused in ways they never were meant to. And you can never have enough coin if you (ab)use it for boosts.

This may look like a nice chill factory game but under the calm surface hides a challenge for only the most hardcore.

Factorio players: this is a fully-metastasized Transport Belt Madness scenario, gone 2.5D+ (there's bridges!) and with impassable resources you have to mine out, or bridge over but that can get spendy, and big, big maps. This is an engrossingly good design-puzzle game, the various transport methods and constraints endlessly recombine.

"No-biter factorio has an insane love-child with RollerCoaster Tycoon 2" -- don't let the cutesy graphics fool you, the puzzles are interesting and challenging and varied.

The happiness-boosts-productivity mechanic is worth mentioning, the temptation to eliminate redundancy to deliver maximum product variety (which maximizes happiness, which boosts productivity) is real — but failure cascades are possible. That would be as close to a complete loss as I think you can really get, so you can play as safe as you want but where's the glory in that?