Factor-iffic

The recent Steam Holiday Sale proved to be a fruitful endeavor--I ventured into the ocean depths in the two Subnautica games and had a grand time.  Then, I decided that I was enjoying the open world ventures so I gave my wishlist a gander.  There was one game with "overwhelmingly positive" reviews but that sat in a genre that I'm not very familiar with--the factory management/building genre.  That game, Satisfactory, has managed to simultaneously frustrate and enthrall me.  I haven't totally completed it (in fact, I'm getting the impression that I'm far from that), but with my playtime, I have a good sense of it, so I'm offering up my review with that caveat.

What is it?

An open world, first-person factory management/building game.  You play a nameless, faceless "builder" character who is plopped onto a random alien planet and are given a checklist of items needed for a mysterious crisis facing humanity.  Your job is to explore the planet to find the resources needed to build the items and to cobble together the machinery necessary to produce an increasingly complicated array of items.

How much playtime/replayability can you expect?

This number greatly depends on a variety of factors--if you have the skills to build an efficient monster factory, I'm sure you could plow through the various objectives much, much faster than I am.  I think even with those leet skills you're probably looking at a lot of playtime (100 hours or more.  This is my completely baseless estimation).  If you're totally incompetent (like me), much, much more.  My factory is neither efficient or aesthetically pleasing (but this isn't a problem...which I'll explain in my pros/cons).  You're getting plenty of bang for your buck, that's the big takeaway here.

A scenic view of my space elevator.

Pros:

+Looks great, runs great.  My poor, poor ancient PC (it's 5+ years old now) has managed to run it with basically no problems.  The graphics are nice (yes, my GPU takes a little while to load up all the textures and what not, but it gets done) and there are a variety of settings that can be tweaked.  Even if you're on an older machine, like me, you can still run it.

+ Frequent autosaving.  This is a great feature--especially if you're prone to doing really dumb things like accidentally driving off the side of the map into the great unknown (and being unable to retrieve either your items or your vehicle).

+ Flexible game mechanics that aren't punishing.  Once you've gathered materials to build the various machines/vehicles/factory infrastructure you can easily alter things with no penalty.  With one click you can tear something down and have ALL the materials refunded.  In fact, this is one of the almost necessary abilities as you are constantly trying to streamline and change production.

+ It's challenging.  Ultimately your goal is to make the most efficient factory that you can--to be pumping out the needed items at the fastest pace.  Actually getting to that point is a challenge for players of all skill levels.  I'm an absolute rookie and my main goal is just to produce the items needed...efficiency is not at peak.  This is a bit of a mixed bag--in general, achieving the production goals for the needed items takes longer than it would if my factory was set up better.  The upside of my slow production means I can spend time doing other activities like exploring the planet to find resources or gathering materials for research projects that unlock new items.  Either way, it's fun.

+ Big, beautiful world to explore.  The map is HUGE!  Certain areas are difficult to reach (and seemingly gated until I do some research/unlock some better items) and there's always somewhere new to go.  One feature I love is the fact that you can add customized markers to the map yourself (and you can add up to 250!).  Each marker can include a description, a stamp/symbol of choice, and a customizable color.  I'm mostly using this feature to mark out resource nodes and wreckage (you can discover crashed ships scattered around the planet.  These ships contain various factory resources as well as the coveted hard drives that can be researched to unlock new recipes for certain items).

+ Customizable character.  Yes, it's first-person so you can't see your character (except for when you die...then you get to witness the tragedy of your sad rag doll tumbling to its demise), but you can make them unique with different helmet designs and color palettes for your clothing.  There's also some silly "charms" that can be attached to certain items.  It's fun.

+ Figuring things out is the best part.  There's definitely an aspect of problem solving that is well...very satisfactory.  It feels good to get everything working or to make things slightly more efficient.  (*here's where I would say that ideally, I think it's best to avoid guides/videos--unless you're totally stuck.  There are tons of videos from people who make these big, mega-factories...but personally, I just want to figure things out on my own--it doesn't matter that my production is sluggishly slow.  However...you do you and play how it makes you happy).

A lizard doggo friend (in holiday attire).

+ You can pet the doggos!  Well, they're actually lizard doggos, but you can tame and pet them!  They'll occasionally bring you random items.  The downside--they disappear easily (if you leave to explore or log out).  There are always more doggos out there to find though.

+ Research projects to unlock new/improved items.  These projects involve gathering certain materials and are one way that you can spend your time while you are producing main mission items.  As you progress through the tree the items get more complicated and require numerous (or complicated) parts.

+ Co-op play.  You can build with a friend (or maybe multiple friends).

+ My favorite feature so far has been the truck stations.  Once you've unlocked the technology you can build vehicles and stations that allow you to autonomously move goods between your various factory areas (needed resources are scattered all over the place--linking them all together is one part of figuring things out).  I was a bit blown away when I was able to program a route into my cute lil' tractor and then watch it (mostly) seamlessly navigate the route and haul items back and forth.  As a child of the 1980's whose computing experiences include being excited about a midi-keyboard that could make speech-like noises, I found this to be weirdly impressive.  How far we've come!

+ A fun, snarky AI that guides you.  Who doesn't love a somewhat hostile robot guide?

+ Mysterious alien stuff that seems to be gradually explained as you discover certain alien items.  It's intriguing and a bit creepy. (CONSUME)

+ A photo mode with plenty of options for snapping pics.

Cons:

- If you're someone who's hoping for some ultra-realistic kind of experience...there are aspects of non-realism that might bug you.  For example--you can build foundation items basically anywhere (like in midair) and can utilize these items in ways that are definitely not based in physical reality.  You can clip conveyor belts and power wires through items (although it is picky if you try to clip them through other items).  It's a minor thing for me, but I know there are people out there who want that realism.

- Having things go wrong can be frustrating--and things will go wrong at some point.  I struggled to set up fuel power despite looking up information about how many/how much prerequisite materials were needed.  I eventually figured it out, but holy cow did it take awhile.  Then, eventually I ran into problems again when my generator was consuming more fuel than I could produce (helpful tip: build a fluid buffer first and let your generator fill completely up with fuel before you start it).  I had to completely shut down production while I problem solved the issue (something that took awhile).  The joy is in figuring it out though.

- You've gotta do the ol' corpse run when you die.  This is especially annoying if you die in a particularly hard to reach or hazardous area.  I stupidly died in a cave filled with gas (I had not discovered the gas mask research yet) and spent an annoying amount of time (*which, honestly I should have just re-loaded) trying to recover enough health to run in and grab my death chest (with all my items) and get out.  Luckily, you are not penalized for dying and don't lose items.

- There are some bugs (but not many).  The main one that I ran into was losing my vehicle when I parked it in the aforementioned death/gas cave.  Apparently this is a known issue and you should not park vehicles in caves/tunnels--they have a tendency to disappear through the map.  Annoyingly, their symbol will still show up on your map.

Recommendation:

I'm new to the this whole factory management genre, but Satisfactory has been absolutely great.  The gameplay is very forgiving and challenges you in fun ways.  Even if your factory feels like an absolute disaster you'll still have a good time.  Features like co-op play make it attractive to those who want something chill, but fun to play with a friend/significant other.  I'd highly recommend Satisfactory (and at full price--it's worth it).