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Back in the protean stink of 2013, the beast we call Factorio sprouted in lowercase early access form and began its meticulous, ravenous conquest of the emerging factory sim genre. Some say that Factorio gave that genre life, though I’d point at Dwarf Fortress as one among many notable forebears. Today, the terrain of factory simming is hotly contested by rival piles of conveyor belt spaghetti. I’m not just talking about Satisfactory or Shapez – they’re even making philosophical factory sims these days. They have cosy factory sims now.
Accordingly, the immense, smoke-rimmed cyborg eye of Factorio has turned from the exhausted soil to the relatively untapped heavens. Somewhere up there, there is unspoilt territory. Somewhere, there is land that has never known the roar of a smelter – and in Factorio’s behemothic Space Age DLC, out today, you will find it.
Factorio Space Age – Steam page here – is being described as an effective sequel, which seems pretty fair given that it adds five new world types with their own mass of variables to the game. The first of these world types are space platforms, “flying factories that act as the means of transportation between planets”, which need to be equipped with turrets and thrusters. Sounds hazardous, but perhaps not as much as Vulcanus, a world blanketed in ash where you’ll craft unbreakable tungsten and dip your pipes in magma. Or Fulgora, a world of ancient technology where you’ll have to worry about nightly lightning storms (which can be harnessed to power your buildings).
On Gleba, meanwhile, there’s the opportunity to do a little biomechanical engineering by harvesting weird flora. Be sure to “cook, crush, and process your produce before they rot and turn to spoilage”. On Aquilo, finally, freezing conditions oblige you to build a monstrous central heating system to keep machines functioning. Those who do so successfully will “unlock the power of cryogenic technologies and fusion power”. As with base Factorio, each planet has its particular menagerie of indigenous species who won’t take kindly to your attempts to strip the habitat bare.
All this in addition to: over an hour of new orchestral music from Czech composer Petr Wajsar! Elevated railways, which let you lay tracks across oceans and set up finicky multi-level intersections! An appropriately hefty price tag! I don’t know exactly what the plan is for a Factorio Space Age review, but Ollie has been conspicuously absent this afternoon. Behind his door, I hear the screech and thunder of pistons. Through his keyhole spills a mad, dancing light, like the passage of comets. Either he’s working on a review for us or he’s having trouble with his crimping iron again.
If you don’t have the pocket money for Space Age right now, the good news is that it’s landing alongside a major overhaul for the base game, which adds a new fluid system and improvements for train controls and worker robot AI, amongst much else. Read more on the developer’s blog.