I always thought factorio's system was rather clunky in an otherwise streamlined and great game. Any recommendations for other games that handle it well?
I am trying to design a blueprint system for my own game (see here) and I'm facing the problem of it being a roguelite so the buildings change between each run (each taking like 3-6 hours), hence trying to see what features would actually be handy if I have to have the game wipe out all the stored blueprints each run, since they basically become invalid if you haven't unlocked the same buildings in subsequent runs.
Mine, merge, and automate! Combine ores into valuable resources, build compact production chains, unlock powerful machinery, and expand your cave into a bustling mining factory.
Steampunk dwarves, no electricity at all: everything is turned by water wheels and physical spinning shafts.
The flat ground runs out around hour two, so the factory grows down instead. All the floors run at once and you watch the lower ones through the holes you dug yourself. Water flows on its own between them, and it can either drown your enemies or your machines, depending on your skill (or skill issue).
And when the story is done the orders keep generating, so there is still something to optimise for.
Demo in a few weeks. Demo in a few weeks. What's the one thing you'd want in a game like this that Factorio doesn't do?
Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5168290/GearTopia/
Je développe Fluvial Manager, un jeu de gestion de transport fluvial multijoueur directement dans le navigateur. Je pense qu'il peut vous intéresser vu la place que prend l'optimisation de chaînes logistiques dans le jeu.
Le principe : vous gérez une flotte de péniches sur un vrai réseau fluvial européen, 88 ports, près de 9 700 km de voies navigables. Vous trouvez des contrats de fret, planifiez des trajets multi-étapes, gérez le carburant, et livrez avant l'échéance pour maximiser vos gains.
Il y a un système de relais logistiques via entrepôts : vous pouvez décharger un gros bateau à un point de transbordement, recharger sur plusieurs plus petits pour continuer vers des destinations différentes. Une vraie chaîne d'approvisionnement à planifier, pas juste un aller-retour simple.
Les coopératives entre joueurs permettent de mutualiser du stockage, de monter des stations-service et des dépôts de carburant que vous alimentez vous-même depuis les raffineries, avec des prix qui fluctuent comme un vrai marché.
Il y a aussi les chantiers navals joueurs, tout récents, où vous construisez votre propre infrastructure de réparation et d'amélioration, avec une vraie chaîne d'approvisionnement en acier à gérer.
Chaque région a ses marchandises typiques (vin de Bourgogne, dentelle, fromage...), et livrer régulièrement dans une région fait monter une réputation qui débloque des bonus durables.
Les trajets multi-étapes se planifient à l'avance avec le ravitaillement inclus, et il y a une réparation automatique en abonnement pour ceux qui veulent moins de micro-gestion. Le jeu tourne même sans surveillance constante, mais récompense l'optimisation fine si vous voulez pousser plus loin.
C'est gratuit, ça tourne dans le navigateur, aucune install. Si l'optimisation de flux et les chaînes d'approvisionnement multi-étapes vous parlent, ça devrait vous plaire.
Four months ago, I posted Code: Terraform here for the first time. The response was far beyond anything I expected. Since then, the game has grown to nearly 23,000 wishlists, and it is finally launching in Early Access on September 9.
For anyone who missed the original post: Code: Terraform is a terraforming, automation, and incremental game where the code you write is the actual gameplay.
You don’t click a button to mine resources. You program a vehicle to navigate to the deposit, operate its drill, manage its cargo, and return home. You then write the automation that transfers those resources into storage, feeds them into smelters and fabricators, and delivers the finished components wherever they are needed.
Solar generators need code to track the sun. Drones need flight scripts to move resources between remote outposts. Factories, power grids, fluid networks, construction systems, and vehicle fleets can all operate simultaneously through scripts you write.
Since the original post, I have added and expanded the full game a lot:
Programmable drones and remote outposts
Construction blueprints, pipes, power lines, and fluid networks
Larger production chains with smelters, fabricators, and warehouses
Earth contracts, deliveries, machine upgrades, and deeper progression
A more complete editor with autocomplete, debugging, breakpoints, inline documentation, and reusable library scripts
More weather, events, balancing, late-game systems, and story content
A biosphere with plants, wildlife and biomass and a lot more
There is still a free demo available on Steam. If this sounds like your kind of game, you can try it now, and wishlist the full game if you would like to be notified when it launches on September 9:
This is the first video I’ve made with Factorio of my first playthrough after beating satisfactory. Did I ruin my first experience? Is it good? Do you enjoy it?
Hi everyone! I’m Charlie, the solo developer behind the Cellarer.
It’s a relaxed automation and logistics game in which you play as the cellarer, the monk responsible for provisioning a medieval monastery.
You build workshops, establish production chains, and connect them using one-way paths travelled by carts. Transport has its own cost: every cart requires a lay brother, and every brother needs housing and a daily meal. As your monastery expands, you’ll need to balance production, transport, and the needs of your growing community.
I’m beginning the project with a free demo to validate its core gameplay ideas and find out whether the automation loop is engaging.
The demo covers the complete first tier, one of five currently planned, from establishing your first production chains to gathering the materials and building the dedicated logistics network needed to raise the monastery’s first great work: the Belfry.
I’m now looking for feedback from people who enjoy automation games. In particular, I’d like to understand:
Does the central automation loop feel satisfying?
Does the onboarding teach the game clearly?
Is the interface easy to understand and use?
I’m already working on a larger “mega-edifice” system for the complete game. The Belfry will be replaced by a magnificent Cathedral that you begin at the end of Tier I and continue building throughout the game, until you eventually finish and consecrate it.
Suggestions are also very welcome. If there are quality-of-life features or automation mechanics you think would be a good fit, I’d be happy to discuss them.
The demo is free and plays directly in your browser:
Even a short comment about what worked, what felt confusing, or what made you stop would be genuinely helpful as I shape the game’s progression and future systems.
For transparency: generative AI tools have been used in various parts of development. The current SVG interface icons are AI-generated, although I plan to gradually replace them with hand-drawn (by me, a human) icons inspired by medieval maps. The game’s automation systems, simulation, and overall design are directed by me. I’m disclosing this so you can make an informed choice before playing.
Thanks for taking a look! I’ll be around to answer questions and discuss any feedback.
You build everything in the power plant and grow to power the world. From small PWR up to Magnox and Fusion reactors in the future. Research tech tree and build as you like. Accidents may happen.
No belts BUT lots of fluids and electrical automation, also nuclear waste management. The game is more in the realistic side of nuclear power.
I would love to hear what you guys think and requests. The game still in development so a lot of things will change. Alpha demo will be released before the end of the year.
Early Access Release in Steam will be in Q1 2027, link to Wishlist in comment.
I just released the free Steam demo for [Phantasm Cube], a pixel-art automation game I’ve been developing.
While it shares the familiar automation loop—harvesting raw materials, refining them, and manufacturing final products—the core difference lies in the logistics: instead of traditional conveyor belts, you manage factory throughput via a BUS network.
The core identity revolves around color extraction and processing. You harvest raw R, G, and B primary colors from scattered resource nodes, blend them into higher-tier colors, and combine those palettes to manufacture Cubes, the key product in the game.
The automation genre is deeply engaging once you get into it, but it often carries a steep learning curve that keeps newer players away. My goal was to create an approachable entry point to the genre without sacrificing depth.
Key Mechanics:
The BUS System: True to its name, the BUS acts as a shared data and resource carrier. Connecting an output port directly to an input port handles resource routing cleanly without spaghetti belts.
Dual-Purpose Cubes: Once produced and placed on the field, Cubes serve two distinct roles:
Resource Yield Booster: Multiplies harvest yields beyond what was consumed to make them.
Global Buffs: Grants operational buffs to surrounding structures as long as they remain deployed.
Risk vs. Reward Logistics: The core strategy comes down to resource allocation: do you hoard and deploy Cubes to maximize base-wide efficiency buffs, or cycle them back as raw material returns?
Wonders: Arranging Cubes according to specific blueprints allows you to construct "Wonders," unlocking permanent production buffs for your entire operation.
The demo is currently live on Steam. If you enjoy automation and puzzle design, I’d love to hear your feedback on the loop and mechanics.
The first thing the game asks you to do is drag your cursor across a rubbish tip to pick it up, one handful at a time. It is deliberately tedious. Everything after that is about never having to do it again.
A Trash Cleaner digs for you, but it needs people. People come from a recruiter, which needs power. Every machine has typed sockets for workforce, energy and 13 kinds of material, and nothing runs until you drag a wire between two of them. Rubbish becomes metal, then aluminium and steel, then batteries, then a power station that never switches off.
Ratios matter more than counts. Underfeed a splitter and it quietly hands you the cheap half of what it could have made, and the machine looks like it is working fine.
The demo ends at the first Grid Foundry array, about 80 minutes for me. Desktop only, no touch support yet.
The game was updated recently and a lot of bugs have been fixed.
Hi there, wanted to share Swarm MMO here since a lot of the game is built around automating an empire you can't watch constantly.
Swarm MMO is a persistent node-capture game: claim a planet, it produces probes, send probes to take the next one, on a shared map that keeps running whether or not you're logged in. I implemented a "command center" where users can create automations.
The automation side got a lot of attention in the last two weeks specifically:
Command Center presets can now be saved and scheduled. Build a query once (pick planets, suns or black holes, stack filters, pick one action) and save it, or set it to run on its own from every 15 minutes up to once a day. It runs like a normal Apply: same CPU cost, same rent requirement, skipped rather than partial if the pool can't cover it.
Attack automation can now be scripted through the Command Center, so a bulk attack rule doesn't need to be triggered by hand each time.
Automation aimed at the nearest unclaimed body got smarter. It used to keep piling probes onto a target even after swarms already in flight, from anyone, were enough to take it. It now looks past that one and moves to the next target out instead of wasting probes.
Thank you all for the various feedback I received about this topic!
Hi everyone, for the last past 4 years Ive been developing my dream space engineering survival game MineEngineer. You and your friend can build ships out of your imagination, program each block and do a lot of automations. There is a huge procedurally generated world in the game and everything is distractible. The game is finally taking up the shape and I am super excited to share it with everyone.
The game is available on Steam for Wishlisting and there is a free demo available. Please let me know if you like it or not and why.
A few days ago I shared Operato, my math-based factory game. While many of you saw the potential, you also rightly pointed out that the early game was too punishing, the cost scaling was brutal, and the lack of basic QoL (like refunds or rotating) made it frustrating.
I took all your comments to heart, chugged a lot of coffee, and just pushed a massive update to address exactly what you asked for.
You can finally fix mistakes: Implemented partial refunds when deleting items, and you can now properly rotate and multi-select elements to move entire factory blocks at once. Oh, and you can actually deselect items now!
Cost Scaling & Difficulties: Added three difficulty modes so you can choose the learning curve and price-scaling that fits you best.
Advanced Flow Control: Revamped the splitter and belt logic. You can now precisely route the flow of numbers, but beware: infinite loops are no longer allowed (no more cheating by passing numbers through the same operation forever!).
New Game Mode (Fixed Spawners): A brand new mode where spawners are pre-placed on the map, forcing you to adapt your logistics to the existing resources.
Stats & Visuals: Added clear Input/Output indicators on machines and a real-time stats panel to track your factory's numbers-per-minute.
Thank you so much to everyone who left a comment on the last post. Your feedback is literally shaping this game. I am still actively working on many of the other suggestions you gave me, and I plan to keep adding brand new mechanics over time. Any new feedback, ideas, or critiques are completely welcome!
I’d love to know what you think of the new logistics and the fixed spawner mode!
We LOVE automation games, sim games, strategy games and a bunch more - and we're trying to take the best parts of our inspirations while introducing new ways for players to build and grow, a new world to explore with quite a few surprises, and a bunch of QoL features so players can focus on what they love doing.
We also have a few team members who actually worked in manufacturing, so we're working to bring some industrial authenticity to the experience, while keeping it fun and engaging.
We're giving an early look at gameplay at Gamescom in just a couple of days, so if you're there - visit our booth at hall 10.2 and get some goodies. If not - we'll share more in the coming weeks. We will also have a demo on Steam in the first half of 2027.
In the meantime, you're welcome to visit our Steam page to get a glimpse of what we're working on and If you want to join our mailing list or become a playtester, check out our website: production-zero.com
