I have been avoiding this game like the plague due to its potential life-ending, productivity-destroying effects (at least for some people).
This is one of those games where it starts innocently enough, a few hundred hours of gameplay accrue, and the next thing you know you're wondering where the last two months went.
Part of the reason for this is related to the decline of the SimCity franchise over the years. Cities: Skylines was pretty, but it didn't really hit the same notes in terms of gameplay. The last real SimCity game was 2004, so it's been well over a decade of waiting for the next truly addictive builder/simulation fix to arrive. Based on the amount of people I know having sunk triple-digit hours into Factorio, it's the closest we've come to a real SimCity game since.
That said, it seems like a fantastic game and I look forward to playing it some day.
Kudos for waiting, but the game is in a very good state. I think it reflects on the ambitions of the devs that they're keeping it EA even at this point. It is certainly improving, but it's really solid.
Even with very big factories, the game performs well. The improvements to be made are really just related to the UI and some game mechanics that could be modified or extended. Generally, there are lots of mods that will hopefully make it into the base game (e.g. rail tanker cars), but good mod support is part of the game.
It's quite different from SimCity, but I agree that both games are enjoyed by a similar audience for similar reasons.
>It's quite different from SimCity, but I agree that both games are enjoyed by a similar audience for similar reasons.
Definitely. Factorio has a crafting system, so that's a major difference.
I'd say the "similar reasons" you mentioned above are twofold:
a) You design systems and observe how they behave. There's kind of an awe or wonderment associated with watching how living, breathing systems behave within a complex simulation.
b) There's also a feedback loop where the player attempts to make their systems more efficient. This kind of massages a specific part of the brain in people with OCD tendencies, generating huge amounts of pleasure.
as I watched the trailer I was thinking, gotta download this NOW. and then had this dreadful foresight of being glued to the simulator trying to squeeze out marginal productivity gains while my family says goodnight. life ending.
This is one of those games where it starts innocently enough, a few hundred hours of gameplay accrue, and the next thing you know you're wondering where the last two months went.
Part of the reason for this is related to the decline of the SimCity franchise over the years. Cities: Skylines was pretty, but it didn't really hit the same notes in terms of gameplay. The last real SimCity game was 2004, so it's been well over a decade of waiting for the next truly addictive builder/simulation fix to arrive. Based on the amount of people I know having sunk triple-digit hours into Factorio, it's the closest we've come to a real SimCity game since.
That said, it seems like a fantastic game and I look forward to playing it some day.