The absolute gold standard in factory games, standing out as the exemplar of smooth progression curves, options out the ears, gameplay that keeps the "one more turn" itch going and developers that care far beyond selling copies. To elevator pitch this one, "If you can do it, you can automate it."

To describe Factorio by only using games that preceded it feels like an exercise in futility. The concept was born from Minecraft mods, but it feels unfair to compare the two or make the Terraria reference (this, but in 2D). So, taken on its own, Factorio is a game where you play an engineer who is trying to escape the situation they are in by building a rocket. But since the refining and assembling of material components for that sort of thing is unfeasible by yourself, you must build a factory to automate the process. Along the way you must research concepts and upgrades for the planet you are on, mine resources and deal with the locals (in the form of giant insects).

What immediately stands out from this game is the sense of progression in scale. Never once in this game will you feel like the game went from comfortably in your reach to an impossible mountain. New technologies are deliberately paced as to never overwhelm the player into building something they do not know what to use for. On top of that the drip feed will have you building whatever is next while researching what comes after that. By the time you might finish expanding your factory to take advantage of something you just researched, you will likely have something new finished and can do it all over again. Rarely does the game come to an immediate halt for either waiting to research or trying to finish building an expansion.

Games should be more accessible to the people who want to play them and Factorio is absolutely excellent in this regard. World generation options are paramount for procedural generation and this game has them in spades. Want to start by landing on more resources than you will probably ever need? Do you like to sit back and relax without dealing with enemies? Do you love trains and want to deal with the logistics of directing them all? Or would you consider yourself a masochist by having scarce resources, more expensive recipes and enemies breathing down your neck from the word go? You can have any of these things in varying states giving you a truly customizable experience any time you want to play.

With that it is hard to deny the nature of the game feeling like you want to keep going. Not in the live service sort of keep going where you are constantly given daily objectives for a pittance, but in the everything you do unlocks something cool you want to do next. Related to the progression curve, the constant "I want that!" organically being available as you play keeps you going long after the game is turned off for the day. The Tetris effect is strong with this game.

Developers in games can feel ominously cut off from the players of their games, but Wube software shuns that with regular updates during development, public bug reports and known issues, while having some of the most incredible turnaround times in the business, where a bug could be reported for the first time and fixed for the next release within hours. Provided with that is an official wiki that would make Paradox blush and hiring on mod developers to join the team. All this from less than 30 people.

If I had a complaint, it is teaching the player. The tutorials are quite good at explaining how to build factories, research, explore, defend yourself and set up a train network. My problem is it does not quite teach the player how to build factories /well/. Concepts like bussing, sub-factories, block design and soforth are pretty well established in the community, but perhaps the founding principles (input:assembler:output ratios, for example) could be better explained to improve efficiency.

To pick what is the most outstanding for this game it is the community. From what feels like the ether, websites with blueprints and ideas are readily available, online calculators to fix that understanding of ratios (that I mentioned before) and most importantly, the modding community. The game is filled to bursting with mods to do all kinds of things from giving you some items that allow you to start the game sooner and automatic concrete placement to complete overhauls that change the very nature of how you harvest resources and turning enemies into an occasional nuisance to an omnipresent constant threat. There is something for absolutely everyone here, even if you want just the little things, or to extend the game out from a comfortable ~20 hour first rocket to possibly needing hundreds to get there, but it never at all feels like you need to go to a game extender of such challenge.

To bring this all home, 3,000 hours between the game itself and making my own mods is probably the most entertainment I ever got out of $30. If you think you might like this game, you owe it to yourself to try the demo and decide for yourself.

The factory must grow.