Writing this review has been difficult. Not because I’m at a loss for words, but rather because each time I go back into Satisfactory to verify a detail or look up an item name, I find myself taking a glance at how my workshop is doing, and before I know it, many hours have passed. That is the allure of this seemingly harmless but strangely seductive manufacturing simulator. Whether I’m escaping from extremely impolite aliens that spit fireballs or straining my hair out trying to fix an issue on the factory floor, every minute I’ve spent in this exquisitely complicated world has been fulfilling.
Satisfactory is not only the best game I’ve played this year but also my favorite automation game ever, combining the creativity and exploration of Minecraft with the spreadsheet-inducing planning and optimization of Factorio. After more than 130 hours, when I finally rejoiced amid a rat’s nest of machines after conquering the most difficult engineering demands, I felt a sense of achievement unlike any other. Even if you’re not a believer in incredibly detailed builders, this one is superior.
In the instantly gripping factory simulator Satisfactory, you and up to three pals are placed on an alien planet and instructed to build a base, manufacture progressively complex products, and then launch them into space to please your anonymous employer, FICSIT Inc. To do this, as you successfully expand your small headquarters into an expansive maze of moving parts, you’ll need to gather natural resources, create new technologies, and finally even become an expert in train operations and conveyor belts.
The thin veil of its “save humanity by building factories” idea served as sufficient justification to keep my head in production plans despite the lack of a strong plot. There are also a few funny asides, such as the way your AI helper keeps reminding you how disposable you are. As you advance, more and more is expected of you, and what begins as a straightforward process of gathering leaves and mining iron to make simple tools quickly becomes a complex web of manufacturing facilities, refineries, nuclear power grids, and even reality-bending alien technologies that will produce everything from interstellar storage containers to computer chips.
I can understand your perplexity if you’re asking how assembly line optimization might ever be enjoyable. But Satisfactory never stops giving you thrilling new reasons to keep playing, just like something like No Man’s Sky provides you with a ton of creative flexibility coupled with enticing goals to seek along the way. The amount of times I’ve convinced myself I’d log off after making one more tweak only to find myself still fiddling hours later is beyond words.
The next mountain to climb, such as building a gun and making ammunition out of the leftovers of those refineries, naturally follows each breakthrough moment, such as understanding how oil refineries operate to begin the creation of plastic. Before you know it, you realize you might have made a mistake as you hear the birds outside your window chirping in the morning.
You are gently prodded to take modest, achievable steps by Satisfactory, and it does it brilliantly.
It can be intimidating at times to manage increasingly complex factories, but Satisfactory does a fantastic job of encouraging you to take small, manageable steps with its to-do list. Before you know it, you and your friends are running expansive operations that seemed unimaginable at first. The first factory I constructed started as a few buildings strewn across the unspoiled wilderness, but it quickly spiraled out of control into an absurd and disorganized network of absurdly crisscrossing conveyor belts that resembled a bowl of wet noodles (I named the settlement Spaghettysburg, of course). Even though that clumsy anarchy is counterintuitive and subpar, it works, and I triumphantly gave my co-ops my eminent Spaghettysburg address as we launched the results of our labor into space amidst the chaos of mechanical pasta.
Later, the inventions made by my crew got more organized and productive. Examples include our railway system, which we suspended in the air for optimal orderliness, and our coastal oil refinery, which we named Gas Town. The real fun lies in seeing your little society grow as you work through increasingly challenging engineering problems, like growing and optimizing your power grid to power newly unlocked facilities that can produce more complex parts or doing the math on a mining rig’s ideal ore output to determine the most effective way to smelt it into ingots. It’s also not necessary to be as geeky about spreadsheets as I am or spend a lot of time on third-party wikis to just see a conveyor belt full of documents that are backed up and feel compelled to take action.
In a wide-open world, you’ll explore the globe, combat beasties, avoid poison gas and radioactive zones, locate secret treasures, and make friends with gross-looking lizard dogs who will be your devoted companions while you’re not juggling the hundreds of things to do with your manufacturing operations. Satisfactory’s map has a varied selection of regions with their own vibes and valuable resources to plunder that is awesome to explore and even better to colonize with your hungry machines. It chooses to focus on a single, impressively hand-crafted world rather than the more common procedurally generated areas found in some of its competitors.
You can explore with better equipment when you acquire more tools, which opens up even more regions for you to explore. For instance, developing a gas mask enables you to move through regions where deadly clouds are present, developing a jetpack enables you to scale precarious cliffs, and studying explosives enables you to blast through problematic rocks and enter caverns and other restricted areas. Every one of these innovations fundamentally alters what is feasible when you’re out in the field, which in turn enables you to obtain superior materials to bring back to your base, starting an endless cycle of exploration and construction.
Verdict
I can’t suggest Satisfactory enough; it’s the best automation game ever created. Building clumsy conveyor belt catastrophes and beautifully efficient factories took over 130 hours, but every minute of that time was hilarious, fascinating, and a whole lot of fun with friends. Even if there aren’t many generic aliens to shoot at during combat, exploring this exquisite, custom-built universe in quest of mysteries and resources is a great diversion from building production lines. Although recurrent technical annoyances are a drawback of Satisfactory’s ravenous desire for electronics, none of them are nearly as annoying as this exceptional factory constructor.
