Factory Town Idle

Calling this an "idle game" does it a disservice. It is not like cookie clicker or adventure capitalist or that kind of thing where you are just spending resources to make numbers go up. This is a game about OPTIMIZATION. There are assembly lines, a trade network, several "towns" to manage, and each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. No matter how much number goes up, it could always go up FASTER, if you just tweak this one little thing....

basically it's an ADHD trap. Please send help.

Edit: It's been quite some time since this review, and a lot of rebalancing has been done. I still stand by everything I said, but it's even better now. You can really tell the dev cares about what they're making.

False Advertising, this isn't an idle game, you'll always find yourself optimising something. Which is what I like about this game.

I'm a big fan of all of Erik's games, Factory Town include, and playtested this game, so I'm a bit biased, but I think this one is something truly interesting!

"Idle" games have always been a weird concept. From the early days of games like Cookie Clicker, they were originally made as experimental or joke games. Then, mobile games happened... And the design of low-effort, high-feedback "addictive" games fit the over-abundant genre of games that exist solely to try to suck your wallet through your phone to feed your endless treadmill. There were a few standouts among them that tried to do something extra, games like Realm Grinder or Clicker Heroes, that added a bit more sense of progression, and maybe just a hint of strategy and management, but still seemed to be primarily focused on that addictive hook.

All that said, Factory Town Idle is something different, to the point that it is far more "management" than "idle". Though it follows the same exponential progression of an idle game, it's easy to spend hours staring at production lines, tweaking numbers, unlocking improvements, and constantly growing. You'll soon unlock the ability to make multiple towns (which are basically new game sessions) and trade between them, which means the likelihood of running out of things to do and needing to wait is extremely low. The only thing that's truly "idle" about the game is that you can (optionally) continue running things while the game is closed.

Which brings up another huge positive. At least at the time of writing this, there is NO way to progress in this game via microtransactions. I actually can't think of another idle game that does this, and the pace of Factory Town is designed around it, instead of putting up those brick walls to tempt you into an additional purchase.

However, this does mean that the game isn't for everyone, and, confusingly, it might not be right for the average idle game player; someone who wants short bursts of a thing they can check on now and then and play casually. It's designed more for number-crunching optimizers, who don't mind clicking through endless (yet entertaining) spreadsheets. It also seems like it could be a bit overwhelming at first for someone not familiar with Factory Town, since it's an abstraction of the same things you would do in that game: use workers to make goods, sell goods to houses, use coins to make upgrades, grow, plan, automate, repeat.

For me, though, this feels like the evolution of a genre, and I'd really like to see more small devs take on ideas like this; taking engaging concepts that have been abused in mobile games and making them back into properly enjoyable, lovingly designed games.

Very much recommended for anyone who looks at the screenshots and thinks it might be for them!