The 13 Best Games Like 'Factorio'

The first selection on our list of the best games like Factorio should instantly resonate with you after you get a full idea of what it has to offer. Mindustry is a perfect marriage between tower defense, RTS, and factory-building mechanics. On the tower defense front, you'll defend your creations from incoming waves of disruptors. The RTS portion of this game lets you create assembly lines to construct armies of mechanized units that can take on enemy bases and capture more territory. Finally, the factory-building portion of this game lets you manufacture interconnected supply chains and units that handle the automatic management duties for your base.

Dyson Sphere Program shoots you off into space for an extensive adventure based on heavy exploration and factory automation elements. As a space engineer put in charge of a major project launched by the space alliance "COSMO," you'll need to build "Dyson Spheres" to power a supercomputer called the "CentreBrain." Those aforementioned Dyson Spheres are megastructures that come together through the production of automated facilities, which is where all the factory building mechanics of this game come in. Gathering essential minerals from neighboring planets, customizing mecha, and relying on them to defend your factories from the dreaded "Dark Fog" also come into play in Dyson Sphere Program.

After you and a crew of survivors end up on an abandoned island, you'll be tasked with making the best of your new situation by turning your new home into an industrial powerhouse. Captain of Industry will have you mining raw materials, growing food, building factories, and so much more to increase your chances of survival and financial prosperity. You'll end up making contact with the rest of the world, importing & exporting resources, and even finding a way to make your way into space. Captain of Industry should appeal to not only fans of Factorio but also other classic simulation games such as Cities: Skylines and Frostpunk.

The title of this game is pretty self-explanatory as it pertains to factory-building experiences that make for the best games like Factorio. Factory Town places you deep in the wilderness and lets you do everything needed to turn it into a thriving village. Building, automating, and optimizing a giant factory goes hand in hand with using conveyor belts, pipes, trains, and more to connect everything. Unlocking new technology that lets you improve your supply chains and building complex logical systems to send your precious resources to their destinations will make you feel like a genius as you see your town further come to life.

That signature Voxel-based 3D style of visuals has been attached to a bunch of games in the past couple of years. FortressCraft Evolved! adopts that visual template for its extensive space trek. After crash landing on a strange alien planet, you'll need to use your machines to help you mine resources, get all that raw material back to the "Smelter," and use assembly lines to better your mining operation. Building and tower-defense combat in a wonderfully animated voxel world should enrapture you once you dive deep into this latest pick on our list.

Development studio Zachtronics (the team behind the games SpaceChem and Infiniminer) applied their puzzle gaming expertise to create another mind-bending experience in Infinifactory. Players will get their brain gears working by making their presence felt in a sandbox world by building and managing factories. You'll need to do so to make sure your alien rulers are pleased, which means you'll need to optimize your assembly lines to near perfection. This straightforward puzzler is easy to wrap your head around at first yet difficult to master as your factory operation becomes more compounded.

What separates Techtonica from the previously mentioned picks on this list is its reliance on a first-person camera viewpoint. On your own with three other friends, you can peruse underneath the surface of an alien planet called "Calyx" and perform several engaging activities. Of course one of those activities is building factories, which happens to be in conjunction with constructing various machines that can be connected to your automation efforts. The sci-fi vibes are strong here and the sense of mystery at the heart of the game should keep you enthralled from start to finish.

Strategy, automation, and exploration are the main three pillars of Desynced: Autonomous Colony Simulator, another game that places you on a strange planet that has now become your home. With the assistance of ELAINE (your onboard AI), you'll research advanced forms of technology and use your knowledge to improve your skills across the areas of resource management, production chains, and automation. You and your friends will get a kick out of turning your new alien planet expanse into an industrial complex.

Once again, we have a game on our list of the best games like Factorio that will transport you to an alien planet that is rife with resources and plenty of room for you to turn your new home into a habitable plane of existence. From a third-person viewpoint, you'll take control of a robot that returns a planet to its prominent form, which entails cleaning, recycling, regrowing, building/managing factories, and so much more. JUNKPUNK can be played solo or with up to five other fellow bots who are fully prepared to terraform a massive alien planet.

Word Factori is super unique in how it puts forth its version of factory-building gameplay. When starting, the letter "i" is your only resource. Things quickly get more complex as you build and connect a series of factories that turn that letter into new letters and so on and so on. The acts of bending, merging, rotating, and reflecting go hand in hand with chaining factories, coming up with recipes for varied letters, and so much more.

Word Factori puts your factory-building skills to good use when it comes to birthing new letters. On the other side of the coin, shapez goes that same route by focusing on creating complex shapes. The automation of increasingly complex shapes will keep you busy as you're given a ton of real estate on your neverending map. What starts on a simple note soon grows into something infinitely more crazy as time goes on. Thankfully, this game never loses its sense of fun as your brain power gets put through its paces.

The cleverly titled Satisfactory adopts that signature first-person viewpoint that Techtonica implements into its gameplay loop. An alien planet becomes your new home base as you or three other inhabitants explore every nook and cranny. During the game's explorative sections, you'll come upon enemies that need to be quelled and all the free land you need to craft multi-story factories and use a ton of conveyor belts to create intricate webs of automation. All those gameplay elements and the inclusion of vehicles that make traveling an even more entertaining endeavor make Satisfactory a must-play.

Nova Lands has a bright and bubbly art style of games such as Stardew Valley and Terraria. If you find yourself adoring those sorts of cartoony presentations, then you'll gain an affinity for this game. Factory building, exploration, and island management mechanics come into play here as you make your living on a new planet that you've crash-landed on. Build & maintain your home base, put your helper bots to work, explore your new home, use your blaster to take out the opposition, and engage in the act of automation as much as you can!