Factorio

I've recently started playing Factorio again, it's the kind of game where you don't notice that you've played for 6 hours, a time machine of a game.

It follows many other resource gathering and crafting games where you hunt out and find resources to make them in to the tools and other resources you need.

The story, like so many other games in the genre, where you crash-land on an alien planet and your ultimate goal is to launch yourself in to space and get home.

Over time on your crafting journey you make intricate automated factories to produce your tools and resources you need to acheive your goal.

In some games this can be a tedious endeavor, but in Factorio just as soon as something get tedious you can almost always find a way to automate that task. This step progression is really well done, with requirements for research scaling up with where the size of your factory should be and the level of automation you’ve implemented.

With no cost to pickup and move items you can rearrange your factories as much as you want.

My problem this game, and all other games of this type, though is that because saves can be started and stopped quickly that I don't feel a sense of permanence across saves, like I haven’t done anything for the whole time I've been playing.

That also makes it easy for me to give up a save if something creates a big hurdle, like the environments enemies suddenly start attacking in earnest when before they were fairly benign.

Sticking with it can be rewarding as there’s always multiple solutions and strategies to tackle any problem.

The end game also includes spider tanks and artillery batteries so there is an incentive to keep going. I did recently discover the console commands and where to get the mods from so that will definitely extend my gameplay.

It’s a solid simple game with infinite possibilities.