Factorio

Factorio is a construction and management simulation game focused on resource-gathering with real-time strategy and survival elements. The player advances by locating and harvesting resources to craft various tools and machines, which in turn create more advanced materials that allow for the progression to more sophisticated technologies and machines. Players progress by expanding and managing their factory, which automates the mining, transportation, processing, and assembly of resources and products. Progression incentivizes the player to design and create their factories in ways that allow for larger scales of production and automation.

Players research advanced technologies that allow them to create new structures, items, and upgrades, starting with basic automation and eventually leading to oil refining, robots, and the ability to launch a rocket. The game features a blueprint system, which allows players to create reusable blueprints for factory parts or entire factories. The circuit system allows for the creation of complex networks that widen the range of actions one can automate.

The game has been developed by a team of developers from Prague, Czech Republic, since mid-2012. The development team originally consisted of a single person, but has grown larger. Wube Software was created in September 2014 by Michal Kovařík and Tomáš Kozelek in Prague. The development team began an Indiegogo campaign, which started on 31 January 2013 and concluded on 3 March 2013, to fund the development of the game.

The campaign raised €21,626, exceeding its €17,000 goal. Following the crowdfunding success, Wube sold early access editions of the game to raise further funds. The developer credits the April 2014 release of the game's trailer as a significant driver of those sales. As of February 2024, the team consists of 31 members.

Factorio received positive reception from critics while still in early access. By the beginning of 2020, the game had sold two million copies, by the beginning of 2021, the developers reported over two and a half million sold copies, and by its sixth anniversary in February 2022, the game had passed 3.1 million copies sold. In December 2022 the developers confirmed 3.5 million copies sold in total and around 500,000 copies sold per year up to that point.

Upon its release in 2020, Factorio received positive reviews. Rick Lane of PC Gamer praised Factorio, calling it "a manufacturing masterpiece". Nicolas Perez of Paste praised the game's use of early access, stating that "Factorio has set an example of what the Early Access system is truly capable of." It was named IndieGameReviewer.com's Indie Game of the Year of 2020. In 2021 Rock Paper Shotgun ranked Factorio the 7th best management game for the PC.

Neobuthus factorio is a species of scorpion from the family Buthidae found in Somaliland. It was named after the game by one of the researchers who first described the species, František Kovařík, who is the father of the game's lead designer, Michal Kovařík.