Be it a story, a joke, or even just something happening in your life, good or bad, that you want to talk about. What’s going on?
Be it a story, a joke, or even just something happening in your life, good or bad, that you want to talk about. What’s going on?
I accidentally stayed up until 4am playing Factorio a few days ago. It sounds like a bad thing, but it’s good actually! I’ve been so stressed lately that I haven’t been able to get into my hobbies so I took this as a good sign that maybe I’m starting to recover
As a developer, will Factorio be a good experience or will it turn into a second job? Because I don’t quite have the energy for it. I’ve been hesitating to look into it for that reason.
I am trained as a software engineer, although I don’t do it very much in a professional capacity any more - so I’m coming from a similar perspective.
I think that the sort of people that enjoy programming would also enjoy Factorio. It can be played in quite a logical, problem-solving way, building up smaller factories that fit together much like functions in a program that are self-contained but fit as part of a cohesive whole. Because the game is based on a grid, I like to build tidy and symmetrical factories that look neat. It tickles my brain in a nice way (kinda like Dungeon Keeper 2 or Lego Rock Raiders I think)
As a long-time player, the base game doesn’t require too much thought any more because I always know what the next step is. The thing that’s interesting to me is making it look nice as well as being functional; slotting the next piece into my existing factory; playing with this particular world generation. As a new player, you may find there’s a bit more thinking involved and if you just want to sit down and turn your brain off after a long day at work it might not be the game for you. There tend to be maybe ten times in a single play-through (which will take around 40hours as a new player I’d guess) where you really have to sit and think. Most of the time the tasks are a lot simpler - expanding something you’ve already made, adding a new resource mine, combat.
I think it’s a really good game and it’s something that I can really get stuck into. I think there’s enough variety in any single playthrough that you can usually find a new task to do if you don’t feel like creating a thought-intensive design. I also think that there are enough different ways to play that you could have fun regardless - you don’t have to build a factory with the perfect ratio of ingredients to output where everything is laid out logically. Some people like to just slap things wherever and the challenge and fun is getting them all to line up at the end.
If you do try it, I wouldn’t buy the Space Age expansion. I didn’t like it as much and there are so many overhaul mods that you don’t really need the extra content