Game Analysis: Factorio

 

Summary
Factorio is a game about a crash-landed engineer on an alien planet who must build a rocket as their way out of there, one technology at a time. While upgrading his factory apparatus, they must also build defences to keep the hostile local wildlife at bay.

Character
The player character is represented by a small figure on screen. The player character can move around dry land and harvest materials or interact with objects close to them.

Camera
The camera is always centred on the player character, though the player can use the map view to observe areas covered by radar dishes remotely.

Controls
WASD keys are used to move the player character. The player can left click to place structures, and use right click to harvest resources or remove structures.
The player can drag and drop items into their grid-based inventory or hotbar at the bottom of the screen.

Core Mechanic
The player needs to build up more complicated machinery to get to the stage of creating a rocket to escape the planet and beat the game. This is done through building laboratories to research more complex technologies. Laboratories require science packs, which need to be fabricated through factory apparatus.

Most of the player’s time is spent upgrading and expanding their factory to facilitate the production of these science packs. The player uses a combination of conveyor belts (to move products), grabbers (to move items to and from conveyor belts or machines) and assembling machines to refine raw materials or other products into new products all while using power plants to keep their factory running.

Progression System
Players progress by researching more elaborate technologies which enable more useful factory functions. These could be simple upgrades to factory machinery such as faster grabbers or conveyor belts, or allow players to craft robots that can automate product deliveries to other parts of your factory.

The progression of the research leads to ultimate technology which is the rocket needed to beat the game.

Game developer website: https://www.factorio.com/

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Genre in Video Games

Video games are often divided up into different genres, much like film and television.  Much like in film and television, genre helps to compartmentalise and organise the market of games to make it easier for consumers to find games that appeal to them. Individuals gamers can find games from genres that they enjoy, while filtering out genres that don’t interest them as much. Gamers can also specialise further through subgenre, finding niche games that appeal to their tastes. Developers can also use genre to help them. By following trends in a specific genre, they can see what they might do in their own games to better perform in the market. While not hard-set definitions for what a game must be, genre should be used as a useful tool to guide players and developers towards a common ground for what type of game they want to play or make. For video games, many genres can be very broad, or very specific. Some may present a technical aspect of the game (eg. first person shoote...
Read more

Rules in Video Games

There are three main categories for organising rules in video games. While somewhat applicable to other analogue games, they are organised more with video games in mind. They are as follows: - Operational Rules: Obvious rules to the player, such as the limits of the player character’s abilities and controls. - Structural rules: Technical rules that dictate functional parts of the game that don’t readily need to be known to the player. These can be as trivial as how fast a player is allowed to move or how large a level is. - Implicit Rules: Good or intended player behaviour. Whether told to the player through in-game instruction or demonstrated through the player’s own trial and error. To demonstrate examples of these rules, we can break down a game like Team Fortress 2 . Team Fortress 2 (made in 2007) is a multiplayer team-based first-person shooter with many gameplay nuances and rules. - Operational Rules: In Team Fortress 2 the player has the choice of nine classes to p...
Read more