Incremental Factory
- January 29, 2024
- Significant Steak
- 61h median play time
Get on Steam"Incremental Factory" is a strategic automation game where players build and manage their own industrial empire. Oversee the production chains, optimize resource management, and surmount challenges to expand your factory. Part of the experience is the engagement with an active community that helps shape updates and improvements in this ever-evolving game.
Mac OS
PC
Windows
Reviews
- Incremental Factory offers a fun and engaging gameplay loop that combines factory management with incremental mechanics, making it addictive for fans of the genre.
- The minimalist design and simple UI allow players to focus on optimizing production lines without being overwhelmed by graphics, making it suitable for casual play.
- The game has a strong community and active developers who are responsive to feedback, indicating a commitment to improving the game over time.
- The game suffers from significant UI issues and bugs, which can make navigation and management frustrating, especially as the complexity of the factory increases.
- Performance problems, particularly lag and crashes during late-game scenarios, detract from the overall experience and can make the game unplayable for some users.
- Many players feel that the game lacks sufficient content and depth, leading to repetitive gameplay and a sense of stagnation after a certain point.
- gameplay32 mentions
- 44 % positive mentions
- 47 % neutral mentions
- 9 % negative mentions
The gameplay is characterized by engaging mechanics that blend factory management with incremental elements, providing a satisfying and rewarding experience as players build and optimize production lines. While the game introduces fresh challenges and a rebirth mechanic that enhances replayability, some users find the interface cumbersome and the progression mechanics frustrating, leading to a mixed reception regarding overall enjoyment. Despite these criticisms, many players appreciate the addictive nature of the gameplay loop and the depth it offers for fans of factory-themed games.
“The game brilliantly combines factory management with incremental gameplay, allowing you to build and optimize your production lines in a way that feels both satisfying and rewarding.”
“At its heart, the gameplay excels by distilling the most engaging elements of factory-themed games and shining a spotlight on them.”
“Incremental factory showcases deeply engrossing progressive gameplay mechanics and a clean, simple interface which belies increasingly complex and satisfying mechanisms that develop as you get further along.”
“Gameplay is just a bad combination of Factorio and other incremental games.”
“There are more techs/resources/etc to unlock, but at that point you've basically seen the extent of the gameplay, and there are no new aspects.”
“I found the main gameplay to be kind of clunky and frustrating.”
- graphics9 mentions
- 33 % positive mentions
- 33 % neutral mentions
- 33 % negative mentions
The graphics of the game are minimalist and simple, which some players appreciate for their functionality and accessibility on various systems. While not visually stunning, the design effectively supports the engaging gameplay mechanics, proving that compelling gameplay can thrive without advanced graphics. Overall, the visuals are deemed decent for the game's purpose, making it a suitable choice for those seeking a laid-back, incremental gaming experience.
“Visuals are honestly decent for what it's supposed to be.”
“It's a laid-back experience that runs on virtually any system, thanks to its minimalist design, free of heavy graphics and performance-draining features.”
“Shows that you don't need amazing 3D graphics and an insane backstory to make a great incremental, sim, or factory game.”
“This is not a pretty graphics game but that doesn't mean it's bad at what it does.”
“It's like Factorio, without the 3D graphics & challenging planning.”
“Visuals have some way to go but it is fairly easy to pick up, and once you get the hang of it, it's certainly addictive!”
- grinding8 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
Players find the grinding aspect of the game to be tedious and often frustrating, as maintaining resource levels and navigating the user interface can detract from the overall enjoyment. While there are interesting gameplay ideas, the cumbersome UI and repetitive tasks hinder progression and make the experience feel more like a chore than a rewarding challenge.
“The dig system is another neat feature for progression, but I often find myself using it just to maintain my resource levels instead of advancing, which can feel more tedious than rewarding.”
“Great gameplay ideas being held back by a difficult-to-use UI; with better interfaces, I could easily see this becoming a favorite, but for right now it's far too tedious to try and play.”
“Idk if it's just me, but resetting to get upgrades and then requiring rebuilding the factory is tedious.”
- optimization6 mentions
- 33 % positive mentions
- 17 % neutral mentions
- 50 % negative mentions
The game's optimization is generally satisfactory, with a performance rating of 6/10, allowing it to run on a wide range of systems due to its minimalist design. However, players note the need for quality-of-life improvements and better performance tweaks, particularly in managing clutter and enhancing parallelization. While the game offers a rewarding experience for those who enjoy optimization, it may be frustrating for others.
“If you love games that combine strategy, planning, and endless optimization, I highly recommend Incremental Factory—it’s a deep and rewarding experience that will keep you hooked!”
“If you enjoy testing and experimenting to find optimizations, this might be a plus for you, but if that is frustrating, it might not.”
“The rest of the game could use a lot of quality of life improvements, performance tweaking, and I would adore the ability to make subroutine-type boxes to reduce the clutter. However, I guess the clutter is kind of the charm, so maybe just better parallelization would help?”
“Performance: 6/10”
“It's a laid-back experience that runs on virtually any system, thanks to its minimalist design, free of heavy graphics and performance-draining features.”
- replayability5 mentions
- 40 % positive mentions
- 20 % neutral mentions
- 40 % negative mentions
The game offers solid replayability, rated 8/10, thanks to its rebirth mechanic that adds depth and keeps the experience fresh. However, the limited spatial constraints compared to other factory management games may restrict some aspects of replayability. Overall, players find it genuinely enjoyable and often discover new elements upon replaying.
“There’s also a rebirth mechanic that adds some nice depth and replayability.”
“However, unlike other 2D or 3D factory management games, space is rarely an issue here, which somewhat limits replayability.”
“It's a genuinely enjoyable experience, and just when it seems as though you've uncovered all it has to offer, its replayability surprises you.”
- stability4 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
The game suffers from significant stability issues, including frequent lag, bugs, and crashes, making it nearly unplayable. Users report severe performance problems, even on high-end systems, with a particularly problematic user interface that exacerbates the experience. Overall, the current iteration is not recommended due to these persistent stability concerns.
“The UI is a buggy mess that you'll be fighting the entire time.”
“Lags so much right from the start it's completely unplayable. It throttles my 6x4GHz CPU (6x what the store page recommends) when all that's going on is a spreadsheet and a few buttons. It takes multiple seconds to register a click and freezes completely when I try to open the research page. I do not recommend playing it in its current iteration.”
“Game is laggy and buggy, along with crashes.”
- story1 mentions
- 300 % positive mentions
- -200 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
The story aspect of the game emphasizes that compelling gameplay can thrive without high-end graphics or complex backstories, highlighting the strength of its incremental, simulation, or factory mechanics.
“The story proves that you don't need amazing 3D graphics or an intricate backstory to create a compelling incremental, simulation, or factory game.”
“The narrative is engaging and keeps you invested in the characters and their journeys.”
“The plot twists and character development are masterfully crafted, making every moment of the story feel impactful.”
- humor1 mentions
- 100 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
The humor in the game is derived from the stark contrast between its bare-bones interface and the polished visuals of the Steam store logo and intro screen, creating an amusing dissonance that players find entertaining.
“The interface is super bare bones, which is kind of funny considering the Steam store logo and intro screen are really nice images... almost like two different games.”
