Computer Gaming Update
Well, I have now spent scores of hours playing Factorio and have almost completely ignored, so far, the excellent new Civ 6. I was about done with Factorio when I discovered Bob's Mods, a set of game mods that about triple the number of resources and chemical intermediaries and make the game one or two orders of magnitude even more complex.
This is going to have incredibly niche appeal, so be forewarned. If you spent most of your time in SimCity or City: Skylines trying to optimize road flow rather than making a pretty city, or if you like Space Engineers, this may be your game.
Chris Miles:
I'm hundreds and hundreds of hours in, the game has an insanely long skill curve, the way it re-invents itself as things scale up is just phenomenal.
December 22, 2016, 11:37 amGreat fun, I give it to people who are interested in programming as a test, I find it almost perfectly addresses all the core skills.
ben:
On the back of this post, I decided to look past the 2D graphics and take the plunge on Factorio. I spent 14 hours on it my first day. Yeah, Im hooked. Thanks Coyote!
December 27, 2016, 5:14 pmTym Stegner:
per YouTube, one way to liven up the game is to limit your map to only 'n' blocks high; i've seen 80, 50, and 100 on various playthroughs. Also, the ability to generate your own 'modded' game via setting game parameters can allow entirely different scenarios, without touching the published mods. For example, look for the YouTube "Bot World" for a jump-start directly into robots for the starting game phase, rather than when they'd show up mid-game-ish.
January 3, 2017, 1:20 pm