Everyone should give this game a try!

It's so much fun and even though it's in Alpha, it's far better than most beta games out there.

Great game!

This week-end I looked for a Factorio thread on this forum, and I was surprised not to find one. I guess I didn't dig far enough...

So, Factorio is an indie game about building a factory. It was first funded by a crowdfunding campaign in Feb 2013 and has been in early access alpha since then. A free demo is available and the full game is sold 10 euros on dev's site (it will go up to 15 euros by June 1st). It is not available on Steam (it will be, but devs aren't decided about when to go for it).

The point of the game is automation. You can gather minerals and craft items manually, but you need a shitload of them. So you build some automated mines and a line of assembly machines crafting for you. As you unlock technologies, crafting recipes get more complicated and need more intermediate products. At this point, your factory becomes a complicated mess of crisscrossing robotic arms, conveyor belts, pipes, railways and hovering bots. Or maybe you're one of the few people who can design a neat and efficient factory...

One of the thing I like about Factorio is that both gamestyles are valid : you can draw on graph paper, crunch assembly speeds, and plan the perfect production line. Or you can go by trial and tweaking : build something more or less working and upgrade it as you can when you must. You can win both ways, but will build very different factories.

Another thing I like is that there is no repetitive farming. Actually, the point of the game is to not farm : if you need 100 of an item, you should build a production line. The player does not perform repetitive actions, his factory does in his stead. And even construction can be automated.

The game is in alpha state (it needs balancing and graphic upgrading), but already very addictive. I think most of early and mid game features are there. Devs are now working on multiplayer, and then they will work on end game features. They said the game could be finished around summer 2015.

I bought it yesterday. It's $13 until June. And my night disappeared like that. Don't let Alpha fool you there is more content in this than many finished products. Hell, there is more content in the demo than finished products.