I can only assume Factorio exists in some sort of a magical time bubble. Every single time I sat down to play the new Space Age expansion I'd spend an hour tinkering with my space ship or exploring a new planet, only to then get up for a drink and realize an entire day has passed, it's now 5am, and I need to wake up for work in an hour!
If you're curious about what exactly makes Space Age so addicting, as well as what sort of challenges you'll have to brave in order to start an interstellar empire, all me to share with you my thoughts after spending way, way too much time playing Factorio this past week.
Video version of this review (~15 minutes)
All you need is space bricks
While the majority of Space Age's focus is on exploring new worlds, there are also a couple of notable changes to life on Nauvis. Fluids are now a lot easier to handle and require less fiddly pipework, train networks are significantly smoother to set up thanks to raised railways, and some technologies have been shuffled around to make progression a bit more straightforward, as well as to force players to learn tricks they'll need in space before giving them full access to the power of automated bots.
Most importantly of all, launching rockets is now a lot lower on the tech tree, and a lot cheaper in terms of resources. This means that, if you're so inclined, you can start going to space very early in a playthrough. However, in order to compensate for the reduced price you'll need to send a lot of rockets into space in order to construct and outfit your space platforms since each rocket can only carry a small amount of cargo.
10 turrets are 200kg, while 25 ammo for them is somehow a full ton
Funnily enough, this is where my main gripe with Space Age lies - on the ground! Every time I went to expand my space platform, or tried to build another one to serve as a cargo freighter, I would be forced to sit around watching rocket after rocket after rocket after rocket launch into space carrying a minuscule amount of resources. Factorio is full of small annoyances like this, but they're usually intentional and serve as a teaching tool before you unlock something bigger and more efficient, with the contrast between the two making you appreciate the improved version even more. Yet for whatever reason there is no way to expand the rocket capacity, and I can't help but feel like that was a mistake since it only really makes things more tedious, not challenging.
The reason this tickled me the wrong way was because I really found myself loving the space platforms. They are essentially automated factories that you have to create remotely with the ingredients you send up into orbit, after which you can leave them to fend for themselves. Once properly kitted out they'll be able to gather resources by breaking down and capturing asteroid fragments, create ammo, fuel and other components right there in space, and even transport precious cargo between planets all on their own. And since you're the one that decides their shape and function, each one of mine ended up being a gorgeously ugly brick that barely functioned, yet somehow kept chugging along without a hitch! Needless to say, this made me fall in love with every single member of my masonry fleet!
This is USS Brick - the first and noblest of her kind
The forge world
Using these space platforms you'll be able to visit three unique planets in whichever order you want, after which you'll unlock a fourth and significantly more challenging world - a desolate frozen hellscape known as Aquilo. Before we get to that, let's explore the worlds in the order I did, starting with what would eventually become my forge world - Vulcanus.
True to its name, Vulcanus is a world that consists of rivers of lava, endless stretches of charred wastelands, and the occasional giant worm that loves to specifically snack on whatever equipment you value the most at any given time. How exactly they're able to judge that I have no idea, but I've come to both hate and respect them by the time I was done. With all of that in mind, why in the world would you even visit this... uh, world? Well, that would be because Vulcanus has a frankly absurd amount of resources to offer!
Once you wrap your head around the new mechanics and start utilizing foundries and big mining drills you'll be able to pump out such quantities of steel and other ingredients that you won't even know what to do with them! And after struggling for hours with getting my starter base on Nauvis up to scratch in order to finally launch into space, this was an absolute delight. This overabundance of resources is also what helped me construct my fleet of flying bricks, so despite being the most vanilla of the four worlds I had a great time getting my feet singed on Vulcanus.
True to their name, Demolishers loved to demolish all of my hopes and dreams
Strive for quality
This is where I also started experimenting with another big feature Space Age brought with it - quality. By inserting quality modules into buildings you have a chance to create items that range from uncommon to legendary in quality. It's often not a big chance, but considering how many items your factories can churn out every minute, even a humble 1% chance will very quickly make you flush with quality ingredients.
As you would expect, higher quality products are notably better than their basic versions. They can either operate faster, have more health, more reach, more slots, more damage and so forth. Because of this, quality is definitely something you'll want to dip your toes into as quickly as you can, if for no other reason than to create greatly improved versions of one-off items like the equipment you carry everywhere.
I also have to commend its design, because it's a very simple to understand system, yet also one that you can make incredibly complicated by trying to manufacture exclusively items of legendary quality. Either way, it's a solid addition to Factorio as it allows you to build your bases in a slightly different manner than before. Instead of creating sprawling factories that eventually start to span half of the planet, you can choose to go for a more complicated yet elegant design. Which one is more optimal? I have no idea, but what I do know is that I like having more toys to play around with!
Results after a short test. You don't get a lot of quality items, but it still adds up quickly
Recycling is hard
The next world I visited was Fulgora which was quite a shock to my system, both literally and figuratively. I say this because Fulgora is a seemingly endless graveyard of some lost civilization that is constantly, and I really do mean constantly, being hit by lightning strikes. You can't even move beyond the safety of your lightning rods without getting a firm reminder that you should probably play it safe while carrying around what might just be an actual ton of metal.
As for the other kind of shock, that came when I realized what the gameplay loop was in Fulgora. Rather than fear the lightning, you actually have to harness it and store its power in batteries as that's what's going to be fueling all of your production. Similarly, if you want any amount of raw resources you'll have to first mine the ruins of whatever civilization occupied the planet before you and then process all of that junk in recyclers. Even this isn't particularly straightforward as the recyclers will spew out all sorts of nonsense at you, both useful and nearly worthless.
So if you want to get the cool mech armor or incredibly useful electromagnetic production plants, you'll need to develop a system to sort and recycle a massive amount of materials. It was a very different challenge than anything I ran into with Factorio thus far, and it was also a very entertaining one to solve even if it did, ironically enough, made me constantly recycle my own builds in order to make better versions.
The process of figuring out how to sort all of the recycled stuff was certainly an experience
Beauty and the beast
Whereas Vulcanus and Fulgora were generally quite desolate Gleba, the third and final of the starter planets, was absolutely teeming with both flora and fauna.
It was here that I realized that despite being very simple due to its focus on function over form, Space Age's presentation can be downright captivating with plenty of tiny details, environmental effects and background audio blending together to create a unique feel for each world. The music in particular plays an important part here as it only occasionally shows up to enhance the atmosphere of whatever world you're exploring, but without ever drawing your direct attention so you can still focus on whatever problem has your brain tied up in knots.
And let me tell you, there were a lot of knots to be found on Gleba! Instead of following any of the design principles you might be used to from vanilla Factorio, Gleba asks of you to create what is essentially a biological factory. What this means is that everything you do and everything you touch has a shelf life. Everything rots. Even the science you can produce there rots!
Nothing wakes you up in the morning like rotten brain-plant juice
As such, not only do you have to optimize your base so items don't just rot away on belts, but you also have to make 100% sure that you always have a contingency plan if rot does get into the system because even a little hiccup can very quickly lead to your entire factory collapsing. And once that happens, the only way to restart it is to clean it out by hand and kickstart the whole process all over again.
Doing this completely blind was one heck of a challenge, and I must admit I had to reload my save more times than I could count because I'd constantly mess up. Yet despite how much it hurt to restart over and over again, Gleba ended up being my favorite world!
There is just something uniquely satisfying about setting up an elaborate and highly interconnected machine and then watching it do its thing, fully knowing that you've painstakingly accounted for every possibility and that this time it won't break apart at the seams like the dozens of its predecessors. So to quote EA, it's the sort of ordeal that fills you with a "sense of pride and accomplishment"!
If you're too slow the alien eggs can hatch right on your assembly line!
There's always an ice level
Aquilo was the fourth and final planet I visited, and since it's very close to the end it was unsurprisingly a bit of a nightmare to deal with. The area I started on was a tiny, brutally cold hunk of ice stranded in vast sea of ammonia. In order to do anything I needed to construct heating towers and run heating pipes everywhere, as well as pave everything with concrete as the ice provided a terrible building surface. Combine this with the fact that Aquilo has very few natural resources and thus requires you to ship most goods to it, and you've got yourself a proper endgame challenge!
This is also where I unfortunately got myself stuck for the time being. Since I was more focused on exploration and experimentation, I didn't cross-pollinate my planets with new technologies or optimized production, which then meant that I couldn't simply request everything I need and have it delivered automatically. And so, despite being inches away from escaping the solar system and achieving victory, I'm probably looking at another 20-30 hours of flying around and reworking everything before I can rise triumphant.
That is by no means a complaint, however. It's my first time playing through Space Age so I knew from the very start that my lack of knowledge would eventually come to bite me and that I would need to rework everything from the ground up. After all, that's part of the fun with Factorio. You build something, realize it sucks, and then you rebuild it only to somehow make it even worse. But then, the third time, that's when you strike gold and create something magnificent, and those moments are what make all of the struggle worthwhile!
Closing thoughts
I'm sure this is going to come as a massive surprise to all of you, but Factorio: Space Age is essentially just a more advanced version of Factorio. The complexity level has been gradually raised, there's all sorts of new toys to mess around with that can greatly boost your productivity, and there's a plethora of new and uniquely satisfying challenges to overcome. Yet despite all of the additions, at its core Space Age is still good ol' Factorio and thus more addictive than hard drugs!
So if you love the idea of slowly chipping away at massive problems and watching your Rube Goldberg machine work its magic, then I can heartily recommend Space Age to you. Just don't expect to get a lot of sleep once it has its hooks in you! As for me, I had a blast playing it over the past week, and as soon as I'm done with this I'm going right back in as there's still so, so much that I want to do!
[Note]: I've also taken the opportunity to create a brief beginner's guide covering some of the most important concepts and tricks that will help you get started on the right foot. So if you'd like your time with Factorio: Space Age to be as nice and pleasant as single-handledly colonizing an entire star system can be, I'd welcome you to give it a look.