Tweet
If you're happy to think of a conveyor belt as a unit of time, you're probably going to get on okay with Infinifactory. Actually, you're probably going to love it, because, grim and dehumanised as this follow-up to SpaceChem often is, it's also a profoundly loveable game. I love the squeal of victory that erupts when a solution suddenly presents itself, of course, but I also love the protracted groan when things go wrong in an unforeseen, hilarious, and yet entirely logical, manner. Most of all, I love the fact that my initial response to the unveiling of an impossible new puzzle - and they all look impossible at first - isn't that I want to lie down in another room and maybe eat a biscuit. It's that I want to start tinkering, because tinkering will get you going here, even in lieu of an actual plan.Infinifactory is all about building machines that allow you to piece together the specific objects you'll need to clear specific challenges - and then transport those objects from the point of manufacture to the goal. Often, there is no single point of manufacture, and you're essentially constructing a production line on which things take shape as they move.
So far, so SpaceChem. Here, though, you're working in three dimensions, and on a far more human scale than SpaceChem allowed for. Factories replace reactors, and squat little chunks of utilitarian hardware fill in for atoms and molecules, This isn't just about terminology, either. With this shift in focus comes an unexpected boon.
Read more…
More...