Factorio is the game equivalent of a page turner, something for me that's increasingly uncommon. The majority of the game revolves around the basic premise of taking various items and turning them into other items. It's almost a perfect example of emergent behaviour. You essentially have a handful of raw materials that you refine and combine in various ways. The gameplay loop is automating that by feeding outputs into inputs and balancing as best you can. It should be easy, but it's very difficult to get to a state that feels finished, particularly as the progression system, based around technological research, not only gives you new goals but upsets the balance of previously achieved goals.

The outcome of this emergent complexity is an endless stream of generated puzzles: finding flaws in the network and fixing them, improving efficiency, deciding whether to scrap an entire block to redo it, compartmentalising sections. It sounds on paper like a complete horror show but it's fantastic. The gameplay loop absolutely scratches the puzzle solving itch without frustration (mostly).

Graphics? I don't know, who cares. Are they a bit 8-bit? I honestly don't know. It's not gorgeous but I'd have to boot it up to see if it's ugly or not. It's not important, you just need to know what each bit does and if you arrange stuff neatly and efficiently it'll look gorgeous.

Music? I don't like the music, it terrifies me for some reason. Probably the association with the looming threat of aliens trying to destroy my plant because of the pollution I'm creating.

Replayability? Endless. It's one of those games some people will sink 1000 hours into. My goal was the game's goal of building an escape rocket, but I feel like that's less that 20% of the functionality on offer.

Story? It's a game. I'll just drop that in there because lots of developers forget about that nowadays and try to create some horrible mash-up of story and action that doesn't work. Factorio's story is minimal but you create the narrative as you play. Would I have liked more story? No.

Criticisms? I'd have liked more of a tower defence mechanism. The combat works well and serves its purpose, but I would've liked a more involved mechanism. Difficulty can be tweaked heavily, but it's 95% factory, 5% defences. I would like an option to allow strategic defence building. But, it's a minor issue.

it's a lot like a programming project in that when you start out it's a ton of fun and there are so many opportunities and so much promise but then 10 hours later you want to strangle your past self for the terrible design decisions you made at the start that are Fucking Up the entire damn thing. and in that sense it's also really like a programming project, because it's pretty hard to look at your factory past a certain point and say "i love this! this is something that i would love to finish :D"

(worth mentioning that both the art direction and music are stellar)

It's a lot like a STEM degree. It's fun recognizing problems, fixing them, optimizing your solutions, getting marketable skills, etc. However at a certain point the projects you're working on become more tedious than fun, especially when you start factoring in scale. Because you're spending so much time on something you find fundamentally draining, your interest in other hobbies decreases, you find doing actual life both too similar and too dissimilar from what the Factorio/STEM life is. And perhaps the biggest con, your social life takes a massive fucking hit--unless someone is also living the STEM/Factorio life, you're probably not gonna see them often.

Still though, in such a fundamentally unstable world, there's a definite appeal to being able to have a plan, follow through with that plan, and then see the fruits of that plan come to fruition. The industrial revolution happened for a reason right? We all need some rigidity, formality, and industriousness in the chaotic systems of our lives. I played the most Factorio when I was mentally rotting away at a bad coding job, physically isolated from my friends; in that period, the sandbox of problems and solutions was a perfect mental escape. Not to say that Factorio is only appealing when you're suffering from sadness (though this is very much a "breakup-game" if there was one), but that there's something distinct about the appeal that can really hit at certain points of life.

But IDK maybe I'm just projecting.

I am not usually into these types of games, but I must say that Factorio is executed very well. It's a shame that I am not in the mindset to binge this, otherwise I would not do anything else for a couple of weeks.

Factorio offers you endless possibilities to improve your base, and your own freedom to find out how. Besides the tutorials (which were, in my opinion, a tad too long and grueling for people who want to jump into the game and get their own base started), you can just f*ck around until something works. After a while, you notice that a part of your production is weak, so you invent a new way to produce, and so on and so on. Along the way, you have to defend yourself from the locals, which actually requires your full attention. These high stakes make it more interesting, but can feel devastating if your base is destroyed and you have to virtually start over.

Graphics are fitting, music is too (but I wish there was more variety in it). Controls are fine, nothing to complain about.

Great game! Will pick it up again later, for sure.