Factorio is a construction and management simulation video game in development by Wube Software. It has been available as an early-access game since 2014. Development of Factorio, based in Prague, began in 2012, and there has been crowdfunding to support it since 2013. An Indiegogo campaign raised more than its goal, and early-access versions have been sold on Steam and other distributors to raise further funds.
The game follows a person who crash-landed on an alien planet and must harvest resources and create industry to build a rocket; however, as an open-world game, players can continue the game past the end of the storyline. The game has both single-player and multiplayer modes.
Gameplay
Factorio is a construction and management game focused on resource-gathering with real-time strategy and survival elements, with influences from the BuildCraft and IndustrialCraft mods for the Minecraft video game. The player survives by locating and harvesting resources to craft various tools and machines, which in turn create more advanced materials that allow for the progression to more sophisticated technologies and machines. The game progresses as the player continues to build and manage their automated factory-style system, which automates the mining, transportation, processing, and assembly of resources and products. Players research advanced technologies that allow them to create new structures, items, and upgrades, starting with basic automation and eventually leading to oil refining, robots, and power armor.
The current version of the game is formally "won" by launching a rocket, although choosing to ignore this goal and instead continue building a factory is possible, as Factorio is an open world game. Construction of a rocket requires massive amounts of resources, motivating the player to set up a sizable, effective factory in order to achieve this goal.
Combat
The player is concerned with defending themselves and their factory from the planet's indigenous fauna, known as 'Biters', 'Spitters', and 'Worms', who become increasingly more hostile as pollutant emissions created by the player's factory increase, necessitating consideration of the balance between the player's production and the enemy's aggressiveness. The player can utilize defensive turrets, tanks, and other weapons to eliminate enemies. As the game progresses, enemies become more evolved and harder to defeat.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer mode allows people to play together cooperatively or versus one another both locally and via the internet.better source needed Factorio supports both dedicated servers as well as player-hosted listen servers. In the past, the game used peer-to-peer connectivity, however this was removed as more robust options were developed. Saved world files can be seamlessly loaded in either single- or multiplayer. By default, all players on a server share technologies, unless a system of multiple teams has been instituted by the server host. Friendly fire is present. While the hard limit for players is 65,535, the most popular servers were able to handle a couple hundreds of players. Players can share construction blueprints with other players on their server, via a public blueprint library.
User-made modifications
Factorio is designed to be customisable via mods to create additional content, such as modifications to gameplay or re-texturing of visual elements. The developers offer an online portal on the Factorio website for mod developers to host their content. To help support the modding community, there is an in-game mod manager that allows players to quickly download mods hosted on the Factorio website. Modifications to the game are written in Lua.
Development
The game has been developed by a team of developers from Prague since mid 2012. The development team originally consisted of a single person, but has grown larger. Wube Software was created in September 2014 by Michal Kovařík and Tomáš Kozelek in Prague, Czech Republic. To fund the game the development team began an Indiegogo campaign, which started on 31 January 2013 and concluded on 3 March 2013. The campaign raised €21,626 of the €17,000 goal. Following the crowdfunding success, Wube sold early access editions of the game to raise further funds. The developer credits the April 2014 release of the game's trailer as a significant driver of those sales. As of July 2017, the team consists of 15 members.
Kovařík, the game's initial creator, cited the "IndustrialCraft" and "BuildCraft" Minecraft mods for inspiration during the game's development.
The game was released on Steam Early Access on 25 February 2016, and its developers aimed for a full release in summer 2018. Near the end of 2018, the developers estimated that 1.0 would release near the end of 2019.
