A Video Game genre in which the player builds a factory or automated system that, on its own, is able to extract and process resources without further player input. The player then usually uses the processed resources to expand the factory to access more and new resources, produce new or more complex products, or to satisfy some other demand.
The gameplay in these games focuses on the building and optimization of the physical factory, with every machine, pipe and transport belt placed by the player, carefully arranged so that every resource ends up where it needs to. Instead of "buildings", players are given "building blocks" (e.g. pipes, belts, crafting machines), which are almost always only capable of one specific action, challenging the player to strategically combine them and create large-scale, multi-step manufacturing processes. This contrasts the genre with Construction and Management Games, where each step in the manufacturing process is usually a one-building affair.
The "building blocks" in these games will usually cover all possible actions that can be performed by the player (including resource extraction, crafting, and even the act of building itself), allowing the player to eventually offload all their work onto automated systems and optimize them.
The long-term dynamic of the genre is typically focused on infinite factory expansion; by having the factory building blocks be produced by the processes they enable, the factory's expansion will feed into itself, creating a feedback loop of factory expansion → increased productivity → factory expansion. This contrasts the genre with Puzzle Games featuring similar "mechanism building block"-styled gameplay, as puzzle games usually feature an upper limit to the player's resources, in order to challenge the player to find the solution to the setup.
In these games, the winning condition is usually creating a factory efficient enough to produce large amounts of high-cost and high-complexity objects that require many processes to make. These games usually also feature free play modes to let the player freely expand and optimize their factory to their heart's content.
For games set in a pre-existing factory building, see Eternal Engine.
Compare Construction and Management Game, Programming Game, Simulation Game, and 4X.
Examples:
- Advent Incremental (mostly an Idle Game, but Days 18 to 20 focus on building a factory to make toys and presents like a game in this genre)
- Autonauts is a mix between this and a Programming Game.
- Big Pharma
- Captain of Industry
- Cubic Factory
- Dyson Sphere Program
- Factorio (the Trope Maker and Trope Codifier)
- Factory idle (crossed with an Idle Game)
- Factory Coin Mining
- Factory Engineer
- Factory Town (crossed with a City Builder)
- Fortress Craft Evolved
- Industry Idle (crossed with an Idle Game)
- Infinifactory (crossed with a Puzzle Game)
- Learning Factory
- Mindustry (crossed with Tower Defense)
- Oxygen Not Included (crossed with a Colony Sim)
- This is a popular genre, referred to as "Tycoons", in Roblox.
- Sandship Crafting Factory
- Satisfactory
- Shapez
- Technic Pack, in particular BuildCraft. Notable for being the direct inspiration for Factorio.
