To say that Factorio: House Age throws out the rulebook is an understatement. It might be extra becoming to say it is someway automated the entire course of: an inserter plucked out the rulebook from my mind and deposited it in scorching magma, whereas a brand new rulebook was churned out in a close-by machine and plopped into my mind from the opposite aspect – just for that to be instantly plucked out and incinerated as nicely. With every new planet and every new part, House Age reinvents itself. I am battling hyperbole right here, however ah hell, I admit defeat. Factorio: House Age is a masterpiece, the ultimate type of maybe essentially the most well-crafted constructing recreation I will ever play.
House Age appears fully content material with the primary few hours, even the primary few dozen, being just about precisely the identical because it all the time was. Except for a handful of high quality of life adjustments, you principally simply play a brand new recreation of Factorio. Punch rocks and bushes. Place miners on iron and copper. Spin plates that maintain the whole lot manually fed till you’ve some boilers and steam engines up and working. Automate your first science packs. Analysis your first few techs so you are able to do the whole lot once more, however greater and higher. Should you by no means clicked with Factorio earlier than, House Age is unlikely to vary something for you, since you’re unlikely to hold round lengthy sufficient to see what House Age really has in retailer.
Me although, I’ve all the time been a manufacturing facility recreation addict. I blasted via the primary 40 automation-filled hours, and ultimately I reached the second the place the DLC really started. In House Age there are a number of new planets to discover, however first you’ll want to assemble ships able to getting you there (and ideally again) in a single piece. The second I began to craft my first rocket, my manufacturing ranges floor to a halt.
None of my earlier data helped me up there in alien territory. I needed to slowly piece collectively find out how to ship bits of basis and different objects as much as my ship to start out increasing it; find out how to place asteroid-grabbers on the perimeter after which filter the totally different asteroid varieties via specialised crushers to extract new sources like carbon and ice. The right way to then flip these into rocket gas, after which automate ammo manufacturing for my gun turrets so I may blast aside giant asteroid chunks earlier than they turned my creation right into a lonely, silent Hindenburg.
Like a pump positioned precisely as far down the pipeline as wanted to make sure throughput, House Age got here alongside at precisely the purpose in my playthrough the place I would ordinarily have began to really feel burnt out. Aboard my ship, it not solely felt like beginning a brand new recreation, it felt like studying Factorio once more. Goodbye, effectivity and cautious calculations. Greetings, countless bottlenecks, asteroid collisions, and gazing merchandise descriptions with out even a modicum of gorm. It sounds irritating, however I liked each second. If I ever acquired drained, I would just sit back and watch the beautiful animations on the spaceship. The foundations unfurling themselves little by little like chunky metallic origami. The Doc Ock tentacles of the asteroid collectors, yoinking close by chunks of metallic and carbon out of area. The animations have all the time been stellar in Factorio, however the brand new buildings are artworks.
Ultimately I acquired to my first new planet – Vulcanus. I jettisoned from my (fortunately nonetheless working) spaceship Hephaestus, and landed on a gorgeously hellish, lava-filled panorama. My stock needed to be fully empty to even begin a journey via area, so after I landed on Vulcanus, I used to be ranging from scratch. And the rulebook had as soon as once more been shredded.
Vulcanus feels really totally different. Not simply within the environment and panorama, however the processes themselves. Acquainted sources have been current, however the methods I acquired maintain of them have been fully totally different. There have been no iron or copper patches on the bottom. As an alternative, I needed to hit rocks to provide me iron, copper, stone, and a brand new useful resource known as Tungsten. Earlier than I may do something worthwhile, I wanted an influence supply. However what to make use of? I used to be near the solar, so solar energy was a robust choice, however I did not have the sources to construct a single battery, and I did not fancy my total manufacturing facility switching off each night. Steam energy sounded good, however how may I get water for steam on a lava planet?
Seems, all you want is a few sulfuric acid, pumped in via geysers, and then you definitely feed it right into a chemical plant with a little bit of a brand new useful resource known as calcite, and that is sufficient to get oodles of super-heated steam. You may then cool the steam to provide water, earlier than feeding it into a well-known boiler and steam engine setup to provide steam at a decrease, extra helpful temperature. Hey presto, you’ve got acquired steam energy on Vulcanus! And what a pleasant technique of discovery it was. Course, I realised later that evening that I did not have to do any of that; all I wanted was to pump the unique super-heated steam into some generators for enormous quantities of vitality. However hey, now I do know for subsequent time.
The entire goal of going to Vulcanus is to provide the planet’s distinctive kind of science pack: Metallurgic Science. Every planet has its personal kind of science which you’ll want to automate if you wish to analysis the whole lot and get to the endgame. Regularly, I noticed potentialities. I may pipe magma into the brand new Foundry constructing for a limiteless provide of iron and copper; I may use sulfuric acid to liquify coal into oil to make plastic for circuit boards; I may enterprise out into the fog of struggle to search out some Tungsten deposits… Besides that the panorama was crawling with colossal worms known as demolishers which slaughtered me at a single contact and have been nearly inconceivable to kill. The primary time I noticed a (small) demolisher rumbling alongside the outskirts of my base, I truly laughed nervously on the display screen.
At the very least the demolishers have been passive. They will depart you alone except you disturb their territory with buildings, or shoot them within the bum with a tank shell. Conversely, I quickly found via repeated alerts that I would maybe left my residence planet Nauvis a little bit swiftly, as the whole lot continues to run in realtime all through the complete photo voltaic system irrespective of the place you might be. Up in orbit, my ship Hephaestus continued to be caressed by asteroids. And again on Nauvis, my turrets steadily ran out of ammo and have been being destroyed by Biter assaults. I may see all of it unfolding, however I could not do something about it till I discovered a approach off-planet. That was a brand new type of pressure I hadn’t felt earlier than in Factorio, and it was sensible.
Fortunately some quick, targeted work allowed me to cobble collectively a rocket and head again as much as Hephaestus. 15 hours of worms and lava was sufficient to make Hephaestus really feel fairly nostalgic. It was an actual second of triumph. After which, a couple of minutes later, that very same feeling was magnified as I returned to Nauvis, the place I would spend the subsequent a number of hours shoring up defences, changing depleted useful resource patches, and simply typically ensuring issues would extra adequately deal with my subsequent absence.
All the brand new interstellar programs and processes do remind me simply how lengthy it took to develop into even passably educated in Factorio. House Age does nothing to assist onboard new gamers and is as dense as ever. In all probability far more so. Fortunately, the DLC does come alongside the free 2.0 replace, which gives all gamers (of each House Age and the bottom recreation itself) with an enormous number of high quality of life enhancements, in addition to a few elementary adjustments. There are new (far less complicated and extra satisfying) fluid dynamics, glorious new terrain era, and a tonne of different tiny adjustments. Most of these adjustments would sound laughably inconsequential for non-addicts, however for automation husks like me, they’re music to my ears. And new options just like the Factoriopedia and a very good collection of ideas and methods (full with illustrative movies) out there at a click on do assist to chop the educational curve and make issues a bit extra intuitive. None of that stops Factorio from being one of the complicated, complicated, consuming video games I’ve performed. With House Age, the journey is longer and extra mind-boggling than ever, however there’s additionally no higher time to start out.
All of Wube’s signature depth and engineering high quality is current in almost each a part of House Age. There is a lightness of contact at work with all these new options and adjustments, a lessening of complexity in some areas and a heightening in others, all within the pursuit of enjoyable and fascination. I sadly have not seen any of the opposite planets on provide moreover Vulcanus, even after 100 hours in my save file. However a number of years of a few of the most satisfying, addictive, cerebral enjoyable I’ve ever had in a recreation has satisfied me that Wube actually know what they’re speaking about. And from the whole lot I’ve seen up to now, House Age is what Factorio was all the time meant to be.
Replace: since scripting this evaluation I’ve began work on Gleba, and good lord, if I assumed Vulcanus threw out the rulebook… You are in for a deal with right here, of us.
