Thinky Games

The latest factory games

Factory games are a subgenre of engineering games in which players build a wide network of assembly lines. These games offer various tools to gradually improve extraction and transformation of resources, leading to the tentacular growth of production infrastructures across extensive worlds. Factory games usually define a number of goals to reach, but their core reward mostly resides in the slow and continuous process of furthering a grand automation project.

While these games often have modest beginnings focused on elementary resources and survival, immediate risks rapidly dissipate, and the gameplay shifts closer to an open-ended sandbox experience. Scaling up the automation process relies on successive technological upgrades, but wielding these powerful tools requires solving new logistics problems. Players may have to coordinate the extraction of distinct resources to combine them at an efficient pace, or rearrange an array of conveyor belts to reclaim additional production tiles.

High-profile factory games such as Satisfactory and Factorio include antagonistic fauna by default, while other games such as shapez 2 and Factory Town are completely combat-free. There are also very distinct tones to be found in the genre: some games use purely abstract visuals, like Beltmatic, while others fully embrace the turn-a-remote-place-into-a-serviceable-colony ethos. We published a longform feature about factory games if you want to read more about it!

The games listed below are the most recently released factory games in the Thinky Games database.

  • Atrio: The Dark Wild
    Windows
    Automate farming, foraging and crafting to keep your android-body alive.
  • Beltex
    Windows
    Extract, process and deliver numbers across a huge hex map.
  • Captain of Industry
    Windows
    Excavate the earth and control an armada of vehicles to create a mega-factory on an abandoned island.
  • Factory Town
    Windows
    MacOS
    Move your goods from production buildings to markets in order to expand a village in the wilderness.
  • Dyson Sphere Program
    Windows
    Create a galaxy-wide factory from scratch to harness the power of stars.
  • Factorio
    Windows
    Linux
    MacOS
    Nintendo Switch
    Build your factory empire from the simplest elements to the most convoluted infrastructures.
  • shapez
    Windows
    Linux
    MacOS
    iPad
    iPhone
    Android
    Build factories to construct complex shapes in an infinitely expanding map.
Jump to page:

Join our newsletter

Get a free thinky game to play and discuss, plus the latest thinky news and reviews, directly to your inbox every 2 weeks!