The Factory is a first-person, factory sim game with machine purchasing, upgrading, and building expansion. Use income from crafted products to buy and upgrade tools and buildings. Upgrade your factory layout to gain infinite wealth while trying not to lose money from damaging products.
Like the other commenter mentioned, there needs to be a clear reason to progress, and some npc telling to you should progress simply isn’t enough of a motivation. I should need to want to progress myself. This can definately be done through pve like factorio, but I don’t think that’s the only thing. I usually play without enemies in factorio because I feel it becomes more of a tower defence game in the end, than an automation game. I’m not entirely sure what makes me WANT to progress in factorio though. Maybe just my own imagination that has this whole big cool factory figured out? Kinda like for most people in Minecraft, their imagination and creativity is the motivation.
Either way, none of that looks to be present in the game in the post. I can’t imagine a great, big, cool, automated, efficient factory when I’m stuck in a warehouse. Coupled with everything by default seems to be messy. The floor looks like shit, the walls look like shit, the machines look tiny and unimpressive, the materials on the belt are just thrown unto it, instead of being placed neatly, the lighting looks depressing and shit. It removes every part of me that wants to think “impressive factory”, when the default is “Crackhouse assembly room”. The result is that my motivation is: “welcome to your depressing job, now work slave”
An automation game also shouldn’t have any more mechanics than are needed for the gameplay (any game for that matter). The materials having weird physics doesn’t add anything to the game, in fact, it’s part of what makes it seem messy. Imagine if factorio had similar physics, where it seems like the materials are rolling off the belts everywhere.
I haven’t played the game, so I can’t comment on the progression, but this is the absolutely most important part of an automation game to me. You need to progress from “doing everything manually” to “complete automation” at a very precise pace. If you start by just plopping down a machine and it just magically gets ressources and starts assembling, you’re not feeling like you actually automated something. The first big dopamine hit you get in Factorio, is from getting your smelters, miners and boilers to work without you having to supply them with coal or wood. This is a very integral part of the progression, because you feel like you actually automated something. Before you had a list of things you absolutely had to do to keep the factory running, and now that list is shorter. Soon it’ll get longer again, and you now have something new you can try to automate.
Lastly. The game looks purely like a low effort assetflip, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the execution is incredibly bad. The workstation in the pictures looks like something from Rust. It doesn’t fit the overall theme of a highly efficient factory.
So to sum up. What I absolutely need in an automation game at a minimum is:
Being motivated to WANT to build a good factory, instead of being told to.
Surroundings that motivates creativity.
An overall coherent mechanical and artistic theme.
Manual tasks to automate.
Now if you’ll excuse me. I’ve accidentally motived myself to spend the rest of the day playing Factorio…
Like the other commenter mentioned, there needs to be a clear reason to progress, and some npc telling to you should progress simply isn’t enough of a motivation. I should need to want to progress myself. This can definately be done through pve like factorio, but I don’t think that’s the only thing. I usually play without enemies in factorio because I feel it becomes more of a tower defence game in the end, than an automation game. I’m not entirely sure what makes me WANT to progress in factorio though. Maybe just my own imagination that has this whole big cool factory figured out? Kinda like for most people in Minecraft, their imagination and creativity is the motivation.
Either way, none of that looks to be present in the game in the post. I can’t imagine a great, big, cool, automated, efficient factory when I’m stuck in a warehouse. Coupled with everything by default seems to be messy. The floor looks like shit, the walls look like shit, the machines look tiny and unimpressive, the materials on the belt are just thrown unto it, instead of being placed neatly, the lighting looks depressing and shit. It removes every part of me that wants to think “impressive factory”, when the default is “Crackhouse assembly room”. The result is that my motivation is: “welcome to your depressing job, now work slave”
An automation game also shouldn’t have any more mechanics than are needed for the gameplay (any game for that matter). The materials having weird physics doesn’t add anything to the game, in fact, it’s part of what makes it seem messy. Imagine if factorio had similar physics, where it seems like the materials are rolling off the belts everywhere.
I haven’t played the game, so I can’t comment on the progression, but this is the absolutely most important part of an automation game to me. You need to progress from “doing everything manually” to “complete automation” at a very precise pace. If you start by just plopping down a machine and it just magically gets ressources and starts assembling, you’re not feeling like you actually automated something. The first big dopamine hit you get in Factorio, is from getting your smelters, miners and boilers to work without you having to supply them with coal or wood. This is a very integral part of the progression, because you feel like you actually automated something. Before you had a list of things you absolutely had to do to keep the factory running, and now that list is shorter. Soon it’ll get longer again, and you now have something new you can try to automate.
Lastly. The game looks purely like a low effort assetflip, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the execution is incredibly bad. The workstation in the pictures looks like something from Rust. It doesn’t fit the overall theme of a highly efficient factory.
So to sum up. What I absolutely need in an automation game at a minimum is:
Now if you’ll excuse me. I’ve accidentally motived myself to spend the rest of the day playing Factorio…