"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.
Incremental Factory offers a satisfying blend of factory management and incremental gameplay, engaging players with its mechanics and allowing for creative exploration.
The game has a minimalist design that runs well on various systems, making it accessible and enjoyable for players who appreciate a low-pressure gaming experience.
The active community and regular updates from the developers show a commitment to improving the game, providing players with a sense of involvement in its ongoing development.
The user interface is often described as clunky and unintuitive, leading to frustration during gameplay, especially with issues like lag and bugs.
Many players feel that the game lacks sufficient content and depth, leading to repetitive gameplay and a sense of stagnation after a certain point.
Performance issues, particularly on Linux systems, and the game's failure to run in the background as an idle game have been significant drawbacks for some users.
gameplay
64 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
44%
47%
9%
The gameplay is characterized by engaging mechanics that blend factory management with incremental elements, creating a satisfying and rewarding experience. Players appreciate the dynamic challenges and the addictive gameplay loop, although some find the user interface cumbersome and the progression mechanics frustrating. Overall, the game offers a mix of enjoyable features and fresh challenges, but it may feel repetitive as players advance.
“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.”
“This game nails that sweet spot between satisfying gameplay and low-pressure idle fun.”
“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.”
graphics
18 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
50%
17%
The graphics of the game are minimalist and simple, which some players appreciate for their functionality and ease of use on various systems. While the visuals are not impressive or detailed, they effectively support the engaging gameplay mechanics, proving that high-end graphics are not necessary for a compelling incremental or simulation experience. Overall, the graphics serve their purpose well, contributing to a laid-back and addictive gaming experience.
“Visuals are honestly decent for what it's supposed to be.”
“Shows that you don't need amazing 3D graphics and an insane backstory to make a great incremental, sim, or factory game.”
“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.”
“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.”
grinding
16 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the grinding aspect of the game to be overly tedious, often feeling more like a chore than a rewarding experience. The user interface complicates resource management and progression, making it difficult to navigate and maintain factories, which detracts from the overall enjoyment. While there are promising gameplay ideas, the current execution leads to frustration rather than engagement.
“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.”
optimization
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
17%
58%
25%
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, but 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.”
replayability
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
40%
40%
20%
The game offers solid replayability, rated 8/10, thanks to a rebirth mechanic that enhances depth and enjoyment. While the lack of spatial constraints may limit some aspects of replayability compared to other factory management games, players often find new surprises that keep the experience fresh.
“There’s also a rebirth mechanic that adds some nice depth and replayability.”
“Replayability: 8/10”
“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.”
stability
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's stability is severely criticized, with users reporting significant lag, frequent crashes, and a buggy user interface that hampers gameplay. Many players find it unplayable due to performance issues, including excessive CPU throttling and delayed input responses, leading to a strong recommendation against playing in its current state.
“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.”
“There were also other minor rendering glitches too.”
story
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The story aspect of the game emphasizes that compelling gameplay can thrive without the need for advanced graphics or complex narratives, proving that simplicity can be effective in incremental, simulation, or factory genres.
humor
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Users find humor in the stark contrast between the game's bare-bones interface and the polished visuals of the Steam store logo and intro screen, likening it to two different games. This discrepancy adds an amusing element to the overall experience.
“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.”