Factorio is a construction and management simulation game developed and published by Czech studio Wube Software. The game was announced via an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in 2013 and released for Windows, macOS, and Linux on 14 August 2020 following a four-year long early access 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 and create automated industry to build a rocket; however, as it is a sandbox game, players can continue the game past the end of the storyline. There are both single-player and multiplayer modes as well as eight additional game scenarios.

Gameplay[edit]

Factorio is a construction and management simulation game focused on resource-gathering with real-time strategy and survival elements and influences from the BuildCraft and IndustrialCraft mods for the video game Minecraft.[1] 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 and machines. The game progresses as the player continues to build and manage their automated factory-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.[2][3]

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 in the current or any other game world.

The game is formally "won" by launching a rocket. 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. After launching the rocket, the player can continue to build their factory.

Combat[edit]

The player is tasked with defending themselves and their factory from the planet's indigenous fauna, known as 'Biters', 'Spitters', and 'Worms', who live in colonies which can be destroyed by the player to prevent further enemy spawning. Additionally, they become increasingly hostile as pollutant 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.[4][5] 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.[6]

Multiplayer[edit]

Multiplayer mode allows people to play together cooperatively or versus one another both locally and via the Internet.[7][8][9] Factorio supports both dedicated servers as well as player-hosted listen servers. Originally, the game used peer-to-peer connectivity; this was later removed as more robust options were developed.[10][11] 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 is present. Players can share construction blueprints with other players on their server via a public blueprint library.[9][12]

Modding[edit]

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 the Lua programming language.