I generally have a rule against buying Early Access games, but this one looked interesting enough that I picked it up anyway. Made it about to the aluminum stage before I fizzled out.

When I saw it was released I gave it another shot, and actually finished this time. It's much more chill than other automation games I've tried - the critters stay away from your machines so there's no tower-defense minigame to deal with, and the resource nodes never run dry so you can focus on efficiency and optimization rather than resource management. (The only non-renewable resource is the plants you use for burner power early on, but once you get to coal power that becomes irrelevant.) This means that even if your factory is an inefficient mess of spaghetti, you can still get to the end with enough patience.

There's also a huge world to explore, with lots of collectibles and hidden caves scattered around... and more dangerous wildlife as you venture further from the starting zone. So, even though you can be waiting hours to finish up the production for the next Project Assembly phase, between exploring the world, tweaking your factory, and progressing the research tree you'll never get bored. I very frequently found myself with "one more turn" syndrome, where I was just gonna take care of this little one thing before bedtime and finally quit 2 hours later.

The first-person perspective is both good and bad. It's great for exploring the beautifully weird world, but it's awkward for factory building. Fortunately you get the ability to fly and hover later on, which greatly helps with managing complex layouts.

So, if you're new to factory-automation games, or just want to tackle one from a different perspective, definitely give this one a try.

I generally have a rule against buying Early Access games, but this one looked interesting enough that I picked it up anyway. Made it about to the aluminum stage before I fizzled out. When I saw it was released I gave it another shot, and actually finished this time. It's much more chill than other automation games I've tried - the critters stay away from your machines so there's no tower-defense minigame to deal with, and the resource nodes never run dry so you can focus on efficiency and optimization rather than resource management. (The only non-renewable resource is the plants you use for burner power early on, but once you get to coal power that becomes irrelevant.) This means that even if your factory is an inefficient mess of spaghetti, you can still get to the end with enough patience. There's also a huge world to explore, with lots of collectibles and hidden caves scattered around... and more dangerous wildlife as you venture further from the starting zone. So, even though you can be waiting hours to finish up the production for the next Project Assembly phase, between exploring the world, tweaking your factory, and progressing the research tree you'll never get bored. I very frequently found myself with "one more turn" syndrome, where I was just gonna take care of this little one thing before bedtime and finally quit 2 hours later. The first-person perspective is both good and bad. It's great for exploring the beautifully weird world, but it's awkward for factory building. Fortunately you get the ability to fly and hover later on, which greatly helps with managing complex layouts. So, if you're new to factory-automation games, or just want to tackle one from a different perspective, definitely give this one a try.