Introducing Factory Fields

Exciting news here at casa secretGeek. You're excited, Mrs secretGeek is excited, the little secretGeek kids are excited too. For the first time in a long time, I've released a new game!

I've put a free demo online at factory.secretgeek.net and you can buy the desktop version at itch.io

Factory fields is what the academics call a factory construction game, and it's based on food. It was inspired by "builderment", a factory game that has stolen so many of my hours. I know other people get hooked on "factorio" which is more famous, and in the same category.

The joy of factory fields is not what it adds to the genre, but what it takes away.

I've attempted to constrain the entire idea right down to the barest essentials.

As a result, we have a "1.5 dimensional" game. Conveyor belts can only convey cargo downwards and/or to the right, never upwards or to the left. As such you can never construct loops, only directed-acyclic-graphs (DAGs). It helps you think like a compiler.

Another unique aspect of the implementation is that when cargo encounters a fork in the road it will randomly choose one path or the other, rather than the solution seen in games like builderment, where items will alternate between choices one and two. This is quite a dastardly feature. You might wait a long time for an item to be created, hoping it will be sent down one path, only to see it randomly allocated to the other. Or you might witness five items in a row all sent the same way, which is one of those million to one possibilities that somehow pop up nine times out of ten.

What I originally wanted to build was something much more epic. I've read and re-read books like these:

• Guns, Germs and Steel — Jared Diamond
• Sapiens — Yuval Noah Harari
• The Dawn of Everything — David Graeber
• Debt: The First 5000 Years — David Graeber

...and listened to about a million episodes of "The rest is history" podcast, plus, read a lot of rollicking sagas like:

• Shogun (James Clavell)
• The Baroque Cycle (Neal Stephenson)

...and so forth.

Hence, I wanted to make a game about all of evolution, technology, culture, craft, and trade; from the dawn of time up to the space age.

Instead (drum roll) — go have fun making some food, won't ya. Tell me what you think.

👟Play Factory Fields (free demo!) 💸Buy Factory Fields (itch.io)

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I could write a bunch of things about the implementation; what was easy, what was hard, what technology choices were involved, etc. If you like those sort of things, ask me in the comments below.

My book "Choose Your First Product" is available now.

It gives you 4 easy steps to find and validate a humble product idea.

Learn more.