| Title | Mindustry – Steam UID 1127400 |
| Platform: | Steam |
| Available on OS: | Windows |
| Genre: | Realtime strategy, builder, factory, factorio-like |
| Date completed: | January 2025 (“completed” used loosely) |
| Notes: | I played this in windowed mode. |
Summary review: I came up with the term “Factorio-like” to describe this. I enjoy the combination of tower defense, RTS and Factorio. I’m medium on the learning curve and dislike the seemingly purposefully complex controls and functionalities.
Graphics: I would describe the graphics as “basic”. This could be to maintain the FPS when the things get extremely complex later in the game. Or maybe the developers just wanted to use simple graphics for clarity.
Music: The sound track is serviceable but I would much rather bring my own soundtrack.
Controls: Keyboard and mouse and nothing else.
Replayability: To give you an idea, I’m actually writing this review before uninstalling the game. I’m uninstalling the game because I’m afraid I’ll never get anything done again if I don’t. Since it has this ability to turn “5 minutes” into “3 hours”.
Total score: 98 / 100 – This game doesn’t do anything wrong. If the idea of a Factorio-like is appealing to you then you will like this game. I can’t think of any real flaws with it besides the intuitiveness of some mechanics. Even that could be countered with my reading a wiki.
Introduction
Much like Factorio, this game involves conveyer belts moving resources from sources of natural resources to other sources of natural resources to a device that combines them. Also like Factorio the game slowly ups the complexity and difficulty with text prompts on the screen.
Keeping in mind it’s been a few years since I last tried to play Factorio, this game is a much smaller scale and the “game loop” just different enough this game is unique.
For those who may not be familiar with this genre: start mining resources like sand and graphite and combine those two things to make silicon. Silicon can then be sent alongside other sources to another machine that builds combat units like tanks, ships or mechs — or into other things like power plants or a building to upgrade tanks.
It turns into a “builder” similar to Factorio while at the same time a base builder and a real time strategy game.
Planet Hopping
The main interface is actually a globe with hexagons representing each map. Actually, the game has two planets: one that was there from the time the game was released and a second one more recently added. The play styles seem to be a little different, like the developers didn’t want to force existing players to abandon what they were accustomed to but still wanted to offer a more friendly version of the game for new players. I’ve played the second planet about 95% of the time up to now.
Some maps offer a break from the combat and seem to just to exist to demonstrate some new ability or thing you can build (a device that can apparently shotgun resources from side of the map to other being one example).
As a wise man once said, “Here’s your sign”
Over the course of my ~60 hours play time, I started to feel like this was just the start of the game. Just here too train me on the mechanics for before the real game began. This was further made clear, I think, when some of the maps started to have something of a puzzle vibe to them.
I should perhaps clarify at a ~60 hours play time I don’t think I’ve learned even 10% of the total game. I could play this for another 1,000 hours and maybe feel like I could maybe play this game effectively.
The mechanics themselves aren’t always intuitive, but the game also provides some on-screen text introducing new mechanics.
One example: there’s a population limit to units that can be produced but I have no idea if I can purposefully destroy them if I need to. I could go to a wiki and figure this out. Or the game could make selecting units and pushing “delete” self-destruct units.
Addictive Personality
I’ve probably commented on this before with other games: I have the “wrong” personality for games like this and I think I know it. This is the kind of game I can sit down to play for a few minutes and easily lose track of time and realize it’s been 3 hours. Actually one of the more recent maps it took several attempts to capture the first of five enemy bases. Keeping in mind each attempt was taking me some where between 2 and 4 hours to fail. I kept trying over and over again until I finally captured two bases at which point my base was blown up and the remaining enemy destroyed every thing.
So several attempts later I built up a large enough force and had an idea where the remaining enemy bases were located: I overwhelmed and destroyed the enemy. The final attempt took about 4 hours to complete. I’m not saying it should have taken four hours. I’m sure a real expert in RTS games would have completed on this on first try is less than two hours.
What I’m trying to say is…if you have trouble stopping things there’s a good chance this game will be extremely high time sync.
Now some negatives…
Some people might say learning curves and games that don’t “hold your hand” are not a bad thing. There’s a fine line between that and just being obtuse on purpose. And those details are the things I found annoying.
Using the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ as controls is not exactly intuitive and not something I’d guess in a million years. Those are the keys for picking up and dropping things as the “player character” (a little drone). The game mentions this details at some point but it would have been useful sooner. I mean outside of looking at the mapped controls or skimming over a wiki. If the game was going to mention it could have mentioned it sooner.
There’s also other things – like that “shotgun” transporter for moving sources between areas of the map – that are not clear at all on how they work. Some people prefer this but I’m starting to just find it annoying. Which again, feel free to say “just look at a wiki”.
Conclusion
You could compare this to Factorio, but this is more of the in-the-genre of Factorio then a clone of Factorio. It’s a very well made game with relatively small system requirements. At a 60 hour play time total I may still be in the tutorial. In other words if the idea of a 70+ hour tutorial doesn’t sound appealing for some reason this may not be the game for you.
On the other hand if you love Factorio and want to play a more SC2/RTS like version of it, I think you will feel immediately at home.
Metadata
| Method of control used | Keyboard/mouse | ||
| Controllable via both one analog stick or digital four-way (“HAT”) | n/a | ||
| Hardware requirements: | Potato at least at start | ||
| Supports 21:9 aspect ratio screens? | yes | ||
| Device(s) tried on | AlienWare Laptop | ||
| TV | n/a | ||
| Initial setup required | None | ||
| Sound setup | Noise cancelling headphones | ||
| Total time to completion for campaign | ~60 hours (I lost track) | ||
| difficulty level | default | ||
| Steam UID | 1127400 |
Tildes on the side 