''Factorio'' is a
construction and management simulation
Construction and management simulation (CMS),
sometimes also called management sim or building sim, is a subgenre of simulation game in which players build, expand or manage fictional communities or projects with limited resources. Strategy vid ...
game developed by the
Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus'
Places
* Czech, ...
studio Wube Software. The game was announced via an
Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in 2013 and released for
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...
,
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
, and
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
on 14 August 2020 following a four-year long
early access
Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release development cycles, such as pre-alph ...
phase to positive reviews. The game was released on
Nintendo Switch on 28 October 2022.
The game follows an engineer who crash-lands on an alien planet and must harvest
resources
Resource refers to all the materials available in our environment which are technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and wants. Resources can broadly be classified upon their av ...
and create
industry
Industry may refer to:
Economics
* Industry (economics), a generally categorized branch of economic activity
* Industry (manufacturing), a specific branch of economic activity, typically in factories with machinery
* The wider industrial sector ...
to build a
rocket
A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...
; however, as a
sandbox game
A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that provides players a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or alternatively with a goal that the players set for themselves. Such games may ...
, players can continue the game past the end of the storyline. The game features both
single-player and
multiplayer
A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system ( couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...
modes.
Gameplay
''Factorio'' is a construction and management simulation game focused on resource-gathering with
real-time strategy
Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to p ...
and
survival
Survival, or the act of surviving, is the propensity of something to continue existing, particularly when this is done despite conditions that might kill or destroy it. The concept can be applied to humans and other living things (or, hypotheti ...
elements and influences from the ''BuildCraft'' and ''IndustrialCraft''
mods for the video game ''
Minecraft
''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java (programming language), Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made pub ...
''.
The player survives by locating and harvesting resources to craft various tools and machines, which in turn create more advanced materials that allow for the progression to more sophisticated
technologies
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
and machines. The game progresses as the player continues to build and manage their
automated
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...
factory
A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. ...
-style system, which automates the mining, transportation, processing, and assembly of resources and products. Players research advanced technologies that allow them to create new structures, items, and upgrades, starting with basic automation and eventually leading to oil refining, robots, and powered exoskeletons.
The game features a blueprint system, which allows for players to create reusable blueprints for factory parts. The blueprints consist of a baseline for construction, allowing for the copying of factory systems or entire factories, and subsequent construction.
The game is formally "won" by launching a rocket, although choosing to ignore this goal and instead continue building a factory is possible, as ''Factorio'' is an
open world game. Constructing a rocket requires a massive amount of resources, motivating the player to set up a sizeable, effective factory in order to achieve this goal.
Combat
The player is tasked with defending themselves and their factory from the planet's
indigenous
Indigenous may refer to:
*Indigenous peoples
*Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention
*Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band
*Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
fauna, known as 'Biters', 'Spitters', and 'Worms', who become increasingly hostile as
pollutant
A pollutant or novel entity is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired effects, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource. These can be both naturally forming (i.e. minerals or extracted compounds like o ...
emissions created by the player's factory increase, necessitating consideration of the balance between the player's production and the enemy's aggressiveness. The player can utilize defensive turrets, tanks, and other weapons to eliminate enemies.
As the game progresses, enemies evolve and become harder to defeat.
Players may also elect to set the planet's fauna to "peaceful," during the start of the game. The fauna will still spawn, but will only attack the player and factory in retaliation from direct physical damage on themselves or a neighboring unit.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer mode allows people to play together cooperatively or versus one another both
locally In mathematics, a mathematical object is said to satisfy a property locally, if the property is satisfied on some limited, immediate portions of the object (e.g., on some ''sufficiently small'' or ''arbitrarily small'' neighborhoods of points).
P ...
and via the Internet.
Factorio supports both
dedicated servers as well as player-hosted
listen servers. In the past, the game used
peer-to-peer connectivity, however this was removed as more robust options were developed. Saved world files can be seamlessly loaded in either single- or multiplayer. By default, all players on a server share technologies, unless a system of multiple teams has been instituted by the server host.
Friendly fire
In military terminology, friendly fire or fratricide is an attack by belligerent or neutral forces on friendly troops while attempting to attack enemy/hostile targets. Examples include misidentifying the target as hostile, cross-fire while en ...
is present. While the hard limit for number of players is 65,535 due to limitations of the
SOCKET protocol, this number has never been reached; the most popular servers were able to successfully handle several hundred players at once. Players can share construction
blueprint
A blueprint is a reproduction of a technical drawing or engineering drawing using a contact print process on light-sensitive sheets. Introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1842, the process allowed rapid and accurate production of an unlimited number ...
s with other players on their server, via a public blueprint library.
Modding
''Factorio'' is designed to be customisable via
mods to create additional content, such as modifications to gameplay or re-texturing of visual elements. The developers offer an online portal on the ''Factorio'' website for mod developers to host their content. To help support the modding community, there is an in-game mod manager that allows players to quickly download them. Mods are written in
Lua
Lua or LUA may refer to:
Science and technology
* Lua (programming language)
* Latvia University of Agriculture
* Last universal ancestor, in evolution
Ethnicity and language
* Lua people, of Laos
* Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...
.
Development
The game has been developed by a team of developers from
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...
, Czech Republic, since mid-2012. The development team originally consisted of a single person, but has grown larger. Wube Software was created in September 2014 by Michal Kovařík and Tomáš Kozelek in Prague. To fund the game the development team began an
Indiegogo campaign, which started on 31 January 2013 and concluded on 3 March 2013. The campaign raised €21,626 of the €17,000 goal.
Following the
crowdfunding success, Wube sold
early access
Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release development cycles, such as pre-alph ...
editions of the game to raise further funds. The developer credits the April 2014 release of the game's
trailer as a significant driver of those sales. As of March 2021, the team consists of 18 members.
Michal Kovařík, the game's lead designer, cited the ''IndustrialCraft'' and ''BuildCraft''
''Minecraft'' mods for inspiration during the game's development.
The game was released on
Steam as early access on 25 February 2016, but had been available to download fro
factorio.comsince early on in development. It was officially released out of early access on 14 August 2020. It was originally planned to be released on 25 September 2020, but was moved up a month as to not compete with the release of ''
Cyberpunk 2077
''Cyberpunk 2077'' is a 2020 action role-playing video game developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt. Set in Night City, an open world set in the ''Cyberpunk'' universe, players assume the role of a customisable mercenary kn ...
'', which, at the time, was scheduled to be released on 17 September 2020. In February 2021, the developers announced that 1.1 would be the final major update of the base game, and that a new expansion pack was being developed.
A port of the game to Nintendo Switch was released on 28 October 2022.
G2A Audit
Video game key reseller
G2A
G2A.COM Limited (commonly referred to as G2A) is a digital marketplace headquartered in the Netherlands, with offices in Poland and Hong Kong. The site specializes in the resale of gaming products by the use of redemption keys. Other product ...
was accused of selling stolen keys on their site, affecting developers of games, specifically in the indie scene. On 5 July 2019, G2A offered to pay the developers of a game ten times the worth of the stolen game keys if the problem could be proven via audit.
Wube was the only developer to call on this, stating "G2A - worse than
piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
" and emailed a list of 321 canceled Steam keys due to chargebacks. After over ten months, G2A confirmed 198 of those keys were sold on the platform and paid Wube Software $39,600 as part of the promise. Due to the sensitive nature of the investigation, the audit was instead done internally.
Reception
''Factorio'' received positive reception from critics while still in early access. In the 2018
Steam Awards
The Steam Awards are an annual user-voted award event for video games published on Valve's Steam service. Introduced in 2016, game nomination and voting periods are concurrent with Steam's annual autumn and winter holiday sales, centered around th ...
, ''Factorio'' was voted by Steam users as a runner-up in the "Most Fun with a Machine" category. By the beginning of 2020, the game had sold two million copies, by the beginning of 2021, the developers reported over two and a half million sold copies,
and by its sixth anniversary in February 2022, the game had just passed 3.1 million copies sold.
Upon its release in 2020, Factorio received positive reviews. Rick Lane of ''
PC Gamer
''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games m ...
'' praised Factorio, calling it "a manufacturing masterpiece".
Nicolas Perez of ''
Paste'' praised Factorio's use of early access, stating, "…''Factorio'' has set an example of what the Early Access system is truly capable of." It was named IndieGameReviewer.com's Indie Game of the Year, after also naming it one its most anticipated in 2013. In 2021 ''
Rock Paper Shotgun
''Rock Paper Shotgun'' (also rendered ''Rock, Paper, Shotgun''; short ''RPS'') is a UK-based website for reporting on video games, primarily for PC. Originally launched on 13 July 2007 as an independent site, ''Rock Paper Shotgun'' was acquir ...
'' ranked ''Factorio'' the 7th best management game for the PC.
Legacy
''
Neobuthus factorio'' is a species of
scorpion
Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the order Scorpiones. They have eight legs, and are easily recognized by a pair of grasping pincers and a narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back and always en ...
from the family
Buthidae
The Buthidae are the largest family of scorpions, containing about 100 genera and 1339 species as of 2022. A few very large genera (''Ananteris'', '' Centruroides'', '' Compsobuthus'', or '' Tityus'') are known, but a high number of species-poor ...
found in
Somaliland. It was named after the game by one of the researchers who first described the species, who is the father of the game's designer and co-director.
''
Satisfactory
''Satisfactory'' is a factory simulation game created by Swedish video game developer Coffee Stain Studios. It is a 3D first-person open world exploration and factory building game. The player, a pioneer, is dropped onto an alien planet with ...
'', a 2019 factory-building game by
Coffee Stain Studios, has been compared to ''Factorio'' and described as a
first-person, 3D interpretation of the game.
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
2020 video games
Action video games
Construction and management simulation games
Early access video games
Indie video games
Linux games
Lua (programming language)-scripted video games
MacOS games
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Real-time strategy video games
Science fiction video games
Video games developed in the Czech Republic
Video games set in the future
Video games with isometric graphics
Windows games
Dieselpunk video games