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This game is fantastic, and ate ~20 hours of a business trip earlier in its development lifecycle. I have one warning to you which I am not aware of seeing els
by patio11 11y ago
This game is fantastic, and ate ~20 hours of a business trip earlier in its development lifecycle.
I have one warning to you which I am not aware of seeing elsewhere for it: something about the color palette gives me severe eye strain, to the point of "physically painful to play", in a way I have never experienced before or since.
There exist several other games on Steam these days with the same core build-a-(semi-)autonomous-factory mechanic. My favorite of those that I've played so far is Big Pharma. It's substantially less advanced in terms of factory mechanics than Factorio [+], but the strategy is very, very deep, much deeper than you'd expect from looking it it. (For spoilers on that score, see my Steam review, which is the topmost one on the page. Capsule non-spoiler summary: best $20 I spent last year.)
[ + ] A fairly key skill for Factorio, which is present in Big Pharma but not relevant except at the highest levels of play, is timing the production of multiple subcomponents (which might happen in different quantities, at different rates, at variable distance from where they are consumed) such that one's production line never starves, blocks, or overproduces. It's Totoya Factory Simulator 2016 in this respect. When you get it right you get visual feedback (absence of congestion on your production line as e.g. coal stacks up because your furnaces aren't burning it because they're blocking on insufficient supplies of ore because you have insufficient electrical capacity because...). It feels like you're playing a symphony of borglike capitalist efficiency.
- hobs 11y agoHave you tried Infinifactory (3d FPS ala Portal + assembly lines)? I loved Big Pharma and its not exactly the same, but it felt like the same parts of my brain were working on it.
- patio11 11y agoI have not yet, but will put it on my list for after Lent. Thanks for the recommendation.
- knowaveragejoe 11y agoYou would enjoy pretty much all of the games by Zachtronics, including Infinifactory. They're all puzzle-oriented though, as far as I know, rather than sandbox.
- archimedespi 11y agoSeconding Zachtronics; TIS-100 is an amazing game.
- sbierwagen 11y agoIt's hard to call TIS-100 a "game", it's more "fictional, slightly gamified IDE"
- simoncion 11y agoPotato, potato. :)
- Terr_ 11y agoHmm, it might not be "full sandbox", but they are... flexible puzzles, which can be solved in various ways with different tradeoffs or optimizations. I think that distinguishes them from other kinds of puzzle-games where you're hunting for "The One Predefined Secret" to make your solution.
- andywood 11y agoI think Infinifactory is mind-blowingly amazing on many levels - an epic triumph of game design. The components are few and simple, but provide enormous combinatorial possibilities. There's a logic-language and aesthetic that emerges, that includes the very things patio11 mentions: input ratios, timing, and pipeline issues. The puzzles are sequenced so that each level is initially shocking, but gradually yields to the player's contemplation and experimentation. I think I've had more pure delight from this game than from any other. I liked TIS-100 a lot too, and Infinifactory is kind of like a visuospacial, high-production version of it.
- zedadex 11y ago> The components are few and simple, but provide enormous combinatorial possibilities. Zachtronics in general seems to be pretty great with this.
- jeffjefferies 11y agoI remember playing 'KOHCTPYKTOP - Engineer of the People' years ago, and loving it. I've also really enjoyed SpaceChem, Infinifactory, and TIS-100. All around very interesting and challenging games.
- taneq 11y agoCurrently working my way through this and it's awesome. The simplified 'transistors'are more like relays but since I want to build a relay computer some day, that's perfect. :D
- carlob 11y ago> [+] … Von Neumann model? Von Neumann J 1945 Rev. Econ. Studies 13 1 Can't find the full text at the moment, sorry.
- jbob2000 11y agoI will second Big Pharma, I liked it much more than Factorio. Factorio was challenging because it has elements of frustration, whereas Big Pharma was challenging because it has tough puzzles. Factorio is pretty technical, which I found too tiring for evening gameplay.
- karlkatzke 11y agoCheck out Banished as well -- it's in a similar vein but without conveyor belts.