Entering the top half of my list for 2020, we have a game that deserved to be on many best-of lists for whatever year it was finally released, and Factorio has officially hit 1.0 this year.
#5 Factorio
Factorio is a game much like Oxygen Not Included that won’t appeal to everyone, but for those that it does work for, this is one of those “stuck on an island and I need a game to play” games. It has been in development for easily over a decade and despite that time, little from a core gameplay loop perspective has changed. The reason is that Factorio’s core gameplay was very much perfected early on.
This is the ultimate optimization game, starting from manual drilling of resources, players can eventually build complex assembly lines of production, logistics, and taking over a map with the power of industry. Like Minecraft and Oxygen Not Included, while there is a “goal” for the player to achieve, this is very much a game that is about you building your own fun.
Do you want to rush to rockets and win the map? How about building a perfectly optimized factory? Or maybe just fill the entire map up with turrets, drills, and machinery. All this is possible thanks to the emergent gameplay that the developers have been working on for so long. Every new upgrade and part bring with it the possibility of integrating it into your routine… or tearing everything down and building it better.
You can play the game solo or coop alongside a multitude of custom mods and features by the community. Factorio is one of the best examples of emergent gameplay I’ve seen and is such a success that it has become its own genre qualifier much like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress before it. While the beginning may be a little rough for new players, and the onboarding could be a little better, the game’s progression model is such an effective hook.
Everything about the game is built on what you as the player can achieve. Nothing unlocks or is thrown at the player without proving they’re ready for it. It’s the perfect example of an organic tutorial because the game only moves at your pace. The main reason why it doesn’t rate higher on my list is that it’s not my favorite genre, much like Oxygen Not Included being on the lower side of last year’s list.
With that, we turn to #4 that is the textbook example of designing a proper sequel to a popular game
