Factorio may be one of the scariest games ever created for PC, restricting gamers to their PC for hours at a time as they optimize their factories endlessly, ever eager to streamline their researches and weaponry as their belts zip supplies and resources from one area to another. Next thing you know, sunlight peeks through the trees outside and the morning birds interrupt your impeccable designing of your new automatic train delivery system.
There’s always another system to prepare, new resources to exploit, and segments of your production system that can be tweaked to get just the slightest bit more efficiency out of.
Perhaps we should be grateful, then, that developer Wube Software LTD has finally offered an official release date for the game that has been in early access since early 2016. They feel that the game has more than enough polish and content to justify a 1.0 release for their engineering-breakout title, and fans have unanimously agreed across the forums with this statement. The announced release date is September 25th, 2020.
Don’t be disheartened, though, as the developers have clearly stated intentions of continuing to develop content, polish mechanics, and otherwise support the factory-building simulator until well in the future. Include with that a longterm empathy the developers have with modders which allows fans to develop their own content for the game, map editors, and scripts, and Factorio clearly still has the best of its life ahead.
Even with the singular aim that the game gives you, to simply build a rocket to escape the planet, Factorio is mind-boggling in the infinite freedom of agency it offers. Players have made functioning circuits that plays other games while playing a game, tell the time in-game(not recommended, you don’t want to know), and even automate automated automation.
As players continue to use the resources found on the planet, generally laying waste to the natural minerals, the planetary inhabitants begin launching attacks on the players base. So then you have to encompass your automated factory in automated defenses, complete with supplying your turrets ammunition (that must be crafted before being sent) as your turrets lay waste to whatever ungodly hellspawn this planet used to have.
The layers continue to compound on each other naturally, leaving players to analyze multiple tasks for one thing to be automated, only for it to be done better six hours later once you’ve had yet another epiphany about automation. Factorio may be the only game where the end goal is to automate yourself out of needing to play at all, and it’s a surprisingly attainable goal.
All you need is a thousand hours or so.
