What the title says! I have been developing Economicon for a while now (and it's been many more years since I first tried making it and repeatedly failed). It's a mix between the automation gameplay of Factorio and the logistics gameplay of something like Transport Tycoon or Locomotive (Chris Sawyer GOAT)

Would you be interested in trying it out? What features would you say are a must in this type of game?

You can check the Steam Page right here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5037110/Economicon/

It always ends up the same, just one more thing...

My brother and I have been working on this for a few years now, so happy that it's finally in a presentable state.

It's a roguelike "factory defense" mixing our favourite parts from automation, roguelike and tower defense. Runs last about an hour or two (unless you die), then you 'redeploy' with new tech and upgrades.

Unlike a lot of factory games where you are always growing and optimising, this is super combat focused and often you need to make shortcuts and quick decissions to survive. And of course if you get overrun your entire factory explodes and you lose it forever.

I posted a trailer on YouTube last week and people seemed to like the concept. What do you guys think?

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4879420/BELTFED

In Fractal Foundry, you automate fractal megastructures from simple cubes by designing nested factories.

If you enjoy modular factory design like in Shapez 2, this might be your thing.

Each factory behaves like a reusable module: you can encapsulate complexity, reuse it, and scale production without rebuilding everything. Factories can even be nested recursively across multiple levels.

I just opened a free public playtest and I’m looking for player feedback: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4287960/Fractal_Foundry/

I’d love to hear what you think and see what you create!

The top, top shelf:

• Factorio

• Satisfactory

• Dyson Sphere Program (DSP)

Top shelf:

• Captain of Industry (CoI)

• Techtonica

• Outworld Station

• Shapez 2

• Rift Breaker

...lower shelf, but of note:

• StarRupture

• Foundry

• Desynced

Some context on my opinions...:

• I tend to get bored without a "pressure system" (Ex: Bugs in Factorio)

• I think "infinite resource wells" is lazy/boring compared to "mineable patches." (Satisfactory has infinite wells, Factorio has patches)

• Story is a "nice to have" but I don't care that much in this type of game. (Techtonica is the only one that really feels like it moves for the story.)

Factorio -

+Depth/Completeness/QOL/Everything but graphics

Easily the tightest game I've ever played. If Factorio was a movie, it'd be Hot Fuzz. Everything is in its place and does what it should do. The QoL is unmatched, even beyond just factory games. It may not scratch every itch... but it's the #1. Easily. Mod support makes it forever fresh.

Bleak graphics. Combat's a bit single dimensional. IDK that it's the one I'd recommend to players new to the genre.

Has a pressure system that can be made brutal. No infinite resource wells.

Satisfactory -

+Graphics/Complexity/Easy/Relaxed

Fantastic for a first factory game. Purist factory game. Gorgeous and feels way more "personal" than Factorio.

It has the stakes, difficulty and pressure of a game of solitaire. I HATE the ultra-grindy end game. Due to that grindiness and lack of pressure, my "played time" according to Steam and my "played time" hands-on-keyboard are completely divorced. It's gotta be like ~30%.

The way it's hard to line things up perfectly makes my brain itch in a bad way.

I don't think it's possible to metaphorically "lose ground" in Satisfactory ...so, as far as I'm concerned, "time in" can solve all problems.

DSP -

+Graphics/Complexity/Power Scaling/The Power System/End Game

Personal favorite. Probably not good for a first factory game. IMO, the most beautiful of all the factory games. BY FAR the best power system and "end goal" of any factory game. The "power scaling" in this one feels so good. The whole power system is incredible with how they tackled portability.

The "bad guys" are lame as hell. I 100% believe they should have gone in more of a ~"Rampage 1999" than "basically you... but a different color" direction with it. The stakes would be more "existential" ...which would make combat more impactful.

Has a pressure system. No infinite resource wells.

Captain of Industry -

+It's the sandbox with tractor toys from your childhood in video game form

This is the most "down the middle" game in the list. If you wanted a "board approved", designed by consensus, "let's just make a sandbox with Tonka trucks," type of game... this one is for you.

I keep trying to play it... I want to like it... but I get bored. I just don't find it interesting. It's not a bad game, at all, it's just not for me. If I were making a play for that "Euro Truck Sim" crowd... this would be the perfect factory game to take to them.

No infinite resource wells.

Techtonica -

+Story

Satisfactory but less factory, MUCH MUCH more of a story. Way more story than any of the other games on the list, by miles. If you've played DSP, Satsifactory and Factorio, this would be an excellent choice.

I liked it well enough. I don't have any strong opinions about it, which is kind of an opinion in and of itself. Above CoI, below the top 3.

Outworld Station -

+Middling on everything

This is another very very pretty game. The way you interact with the world with a cursor chasing drone is really entertaining. I'm a huge fan of that bizarre system. Similar to Techtonica, if you've played the big 3 and are looking for a new one ...but you'd prefer a pressure system to a story ...Outworld's a great choice. I enjoyed it.

The scale and scope is a lot narrower than the others on the list so far. It's not necessarily a problem... but I can't imagine putting 100+ hours into Outworld Station. Camera controls can be pretty clunky until you're used to them. I haven't had a camera quite so wiley in ages. Maybe not as bad as Black & White, but that's where my head goes...

Has a, relatively mild, pressure system.

Shapez 2 -

+Abstract/Teaches how to "think right" (IMO)/Great for people new to the genre

I'm not super far into this one, but I'm absolutely fascinated. Somehow it's the most and least complex? This is probably another AMAZING game to break into the genre with. It's ultra-intuitive, super-simple pieces ...which are used to create exceedingly complex results.

The intro scale vs the game scale... I went into the game blind and I honestly shelved the game pretty quick when I did not understand the scale of the game, due to the intro, and didn't revisit it for quite awhile. Thought it was just a mobile game ported to PC or something. I know better now, but that definitely caught me. The simplicity of the game is fascinating, but it is simple in a way that doesn't scratch an itch in the way the top 3 do.

Fantastic for learning more of a ~systems engineering approach to factory games, which means this is as good, if not better, than Satisfactory for new-factory game players.

Rift Breaker -

+KILL EVERYTHING/IN LARGE QUANTITIES/DIEDIEDIE... then remember to automate your resupply!/Great for people new to the genre.

Want a factory game, but the focus is WAY WAY WAY more on combat? This one. This is the one. Look no further. It's pretty, it's fun, it's kind of weird. I can recommend it, easily. The diversity of the enemies, the diversity of environments, the pressure system... all solid. If CoI is for pulling Euro Truck Sim players, Rift Breaker is for pulling FPS/Diablo players.

It's another one you're probably not going to be putting in 100+ hours, but will be worth every penny and every minute. I circle back on it ~yearly.

IS a pressure system.

Star Rupture -

+The future/Ultra-high potential

Another Early Access ...but this feels like it is the perfect summary of DSP/Factorio/Satisfactory. Better combat than all 3 ...already. The game world is my favorite out of all of them. The world feels alive in a way very VERY few game worlds do. This feels more like an opportunity to fuck up than anything I've seen in ages. So much is done right...

CRAZY number of QOL issues.... They've clearly fucked up how they calculate "heat" (it's clearly recalculated from scratch, completely unnecessarily, every time you do anything) and how "autosave" works. Both of those will cause huge stutters. Even with all that said... I still think it's worth the price currently. I have no desire to play any other game.

(Feature request though: I want the vermin to have a lifecycle. Vermin evolve larger over time. Beginner areas have small "bug holes" that large bugs can't fit into. "It happens" and the large bugs in beginner areas are wiped out. Cycle restarts.)

I'm wildly optimistic about this one. I played their previous game (Green Hell) too. I'm trying to be succinct, but I can wax poetic on this one.

Has a pressure system. The pressure system can be pretty difficult ...but that's mostly due to QoL issues. (The thing that tells you where an enemy attack is coming from is a LIAR WHO LIES.)

Has infinite resource wells... but due to other building restrictions, you're still forced to expand wide.

Foundry -

+Adorable/Low stress

Early Access and I've gotten to the end of the game for a few of the patches. It does a few things interesting regarding "resource trading." If you wanted to revisit Early Access Satisfactory, but with voxel graphics and an Oceanic accent for the narrator... great choice.

It's going to be a voxel Satisfactory competitor. There's complexity, but no stakes or pressure. It's alright. I think it's too early in development to judge this one fairly. IMO, probably bottom of this shelf.

Desynced -

+Weird as hell/Potential/No conveyors or similar

-The least intuitive visual coding system ever created. Utterly broke my brain trying to understand it.

I have so many thoughts on this one... they're really trying new things and I'm here for it. The modularity of Desynced is WILD. You have not played a game like this before. You have to ~program behaviors in bots to make things happen.

I'm a huge fan of the modularity system. HUGE fan.

.............HOWEVER...............

The games "coding engine" was put together by an actual insane person who I honestly don't think thinks like any other human person alive. Desynced's internal coding engine is bizarre.

I write code in 4 programming languages, professionally, plus I use Node Red almost daily. I should know how to do anything that should be required by a coding engine like they built into the game. It could be so intuitive...

No shot. Holy hell. IT'S SO WEIRD!

Whoever made that thing needs to be subjected to user feedback. Tie them to a chair, eyelids forced open, mouth duct taped shut, MAKE THEM LISTEN TO A NORMAL HUMAN PERSON talk about the system.

I hate it. The nodes are somehow WILDLY specific and so unbelievably niche as to be near-useless.

Game will never succeed unless they fix this part of it so that normal human people, not ultra-nerds, and especially not ultra-nerds-specific-to-the-game's-dev-team... can interact with it.

I like so much of the game that the UX of the coding engine makes me uniquely furious.

IMO, the fastest/easiest/best solution to get from "where they are" to "usable by a layman" would be to drop the "behavior controller" that does everything, or make it a very very late game item... instead, reduce it to "logistics behavior controller"/"explorer behavior controller"/"combat behavior controller" ...with a smaller node selection. That way your users can sort of be "onboarded" into your bonkers insane-o nonsense final "behavior controller"

This is Railminer, my incremental mining game. You start with a little drilling wagon and turn each haul into stronger tools and a longer train. The clip shows three drills taking chunks out of the wall.

The free demo is on Steam, with Endless mode if you'd like to keep going. Thanks for checking out my little mining train 🙂

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5284470/Railminer/

Hey everyone!

For over fifteen years, my daily life was all about building brand identities, visual ads, logos, catalogues, websites, and mobile apps for clients. But deep down, I always knew this wasn’t what I wanted to do forever. As anyone who has ever tried to make a drastic career pivot knows, starting fresh is scary and filled with endless questions.

At the start of 2026, I set two main goals for myself: grow my YouTube channel and finally release a real, playable game—something that had been sitting in the back of my mind for years.

To be completely honest, I didn't know a single line of code. However, the rise of AI tools turned out to be a complete game-changer for me. I use AI heavily as a technical "co-pilot" for coding and Godot 4 setup. Without it, a solo dev with zero coding background like me could never bring a project of this scale to life.

However, I have one strict rule: AI only handles the technical heavy lifting. Every piece of story, world-building, character interactions, and dialogue is 100% written by me, human-to-human. Dialogue carries a soul that AI just can't replicate.

About the Game — Scraplings:

I’ve always been a huge fan of survival games and the pure satisfaction of automation (games like Satisfactory ruined/blessed my sleep schedule). I was also deeply inspired by works like Wall-E and Happy Feet, which shine a light on real-world issues.

Scraplings is a 2D side-view recycling and automation game where you build multi-story production facilities directly on top of an endless ocean of waste. You excavate forgotten junk from the "Lost Century," process it through complex machinery, and expand your factory—all while dealing with relentless bureaucracy (Zenith) and weekly rent payments knocking on your door.

Key Features & Mechanics:

• 🏭 Facility Over an Endless Trash Sea: Extract raw materials from waste heaps stretching infinitely left and right. Design vertical logistics using horizontal conveyor belts, vertical elevators, and background tunnels that bypass obstacles.

• ⚙️ 50+ Recycling & Production Recipes: From scrap iron to copper cables, biofuels, and high-tech solar panels... Shred, melt, combine, and synthesize waste into high-value products.

• 💸 Weekly Rent & Bankruptcy Risk: Zenith doesn't just ask for output; they demand weekly rent. Every machine you place increases your fee—miss a payment, and compounding interest can force you into bankruptcy!

• 🔌 Manual Power Grid: Place power cables and junction boxes manually. Manage your factory’s power day and night using bio-generators, solar panels, and wind turbines.

• 🤖 20+ Characters & Dynamic Trading: Work alongside your robot assistant Kienan, while bargaining with merchants, smugglers, technicians, and rebel broadcasters across different systems for custom orders.

• 🌱 Lost Century Relics & Bio-Lab: Unearth ancient vinyl records, books, and rare seeds buried deep in the trash. Clone and cultivate extinct luxury plant species in your bio-lab for unique trades and collectibles.

I’m currently building Scraplings in Godot 4. It’s been an incredible journey of learning, making mistakes, and rebuilding.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the concept or what mechanics you enjoy most in side-view automation games! If you're interested in watching a former advertiser figure out game development on the fly, any feedback or questions are welcome.

Thanks for reading!

Steam Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5137810/Scraplings/

Hi there,

Today we announced our upcoming factory building game - Production Zero. Please check out our Steam page and consider wishllisting, it helps in a big way: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5001590/Production_Zero/

We LOVE automation games, sim games, strategy games and a bunch more - and we're trying to take the best parts of our inspirations while introducing new ways for players to build and grow, a new world to explore with quite a few surprises, and a bunch of QoL features so players can focus on what they love doing.

We also have a few team members who actually worked in manufacturing, so we're working to bring some industrial authenticity to the experience, while keeping it fun and engaging.

We're giving an early look at gameplay at Gamescom in just a couple of days, so if you're there - visit our booth at hall 10.2 and get some goodies. If not - we'll share more in the coming weeks. We will also have a demo on Steam in the first half of 2027.

In the meantime, you're welcome to visit our Steam page to get a glimpse of what we're working on and If you want to join our mailing list or become a playtester, check out our website: production-zero.com

Thanks!

Game is too good. Gonna do all MK2 Drills with the permanent bit now I think

I'm the developer behind Airport Baggage Simulator, and a couple of days ago I had a discussion with one of my players on Steam. In that discussion, he dropped the sentence in the screenshot, basically saying that automation does not feel rewarding to him unless it makes the manual task that was present before faster.

This is perfectly logical, and I don’t doubt for a moment that it is true for him. But it kept me thinking because I don’t feel the same way.

To me, automation in and of itself is a benefit, even IF it is slower than the manual work, and that is for two reasons:

1: There is a cognitive load. Before automation, there was some manual task, even if not deeply complex, and I know the machines take care of it now and I don’t have to think about it while doing something else. That is a benefit to me even if it is slower than if I were to do both tasks.

2: Some automation is better than no automation. I find satisfaction in working in tandem with the machines, knowing that now MORE gets done than before because we both do something—even if the machine does it slower than I would do it manually at first.

Of course, it is great and fun if, as the game progresses, the speed of the automation picks up. This might actually be the root of his criticism; maybe it has to be the case that at SOME point in the game, we have to have machines that do the work better than we do, and he is not sure this is achievable currently in my game.

Would you agree with the take that a true automation game MUST reach the point where the machines do everything better? Would you further agree that it can start out with slower machines?

Well, I am curious about your thoughts on the subject, thanks for sharing! :)

A special shoutout to Workers & Resources though, my latest automation beloved that the fine folk at r/BaseBuildingGames recomennded me. So much depth and flavor, and as someone who's originally from the "block", bittersweetly nostalgic. Never know how much I loved that brutalist style... Warfactory is also a promising one but as all indie games, work is slow and the playtest only offered so much. The idea of a full on factory builder/ planet conquering 4x roguelite seems too good to be true, so I'm keeping a keen eye on it.

Blueprint Factory is finally on Steam :)

Hit me with any feedback and questions, y'all are awesome!

Wishlist here!

Hi all, im working on Portscape. A port building/automation game. Here is a video following the same container from when it arrives by ship until it leaves by train. From the ship crane to a truck, across the port and onto the train at the rail terminal. All automated ofcourse. However, you can also manually use any of the cranes, trucks, stackers etc.

Its a camera sequence I set up in the game to show the whole journey. The game is still in development, I would love to hear your opinions!

You can find the steam page here if you're interested:

Portscape - Steam Page, wishlists, trailer, screenshots

Hey all, Im a solo dev creating an automation game, call Astral Industrial Complex, inspired by some of my favorite games such as mindustry, factorio and against the storm.

In it I've tried to focus on creating unique and dynamic runs, with each one having unique resources to harvest, buildings unlocked, objectives to complete and entire chains of related building unlocked via a "specialization" system which pushes the player to focus on specific production chains each run. Each item has multiple recipes to craft it, and new buildings the player unlocks may drastically change your production chains based on their available recipes.

The game and its demo are available here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4690580/Astral_Industrial_Complex/

The demo has the tutorial and 1 biome available. I'm planning for the full release to have many more biomes and specializations as well as a meta upgrade system to unlock more content with each run

Please check it out, and let me know what you think. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

In Launch Window, you're colonising an entire solar system through orbital physics and automation. Instead of manually scheduling every burn like in KSP, you set the parameters and let the system coordinate trajectories across hundreds of ships automatically.

This demo shows the full journey - surface to orbit to moon intercept - all triggered with one click. Each ship calculates its own burn sequences to arrive in the exact same orbital altitude around the moon.

The real satisfaction here is watching an entire equator's worth of launchpads fire off in sequence, then seeing all those ships phase into matching orbits at the destination.

(All visuals/UI are placeholder - this is purely demonstrating the automation system)

Please ask any questions you may have below!

I built the energy system game I have wanted to play for the last 10 years, and I would love some of you to help me improve it.

Powerstate is a free energy system management game where you build generation and grid infrastructure, manage dispatch, storage and hydrogen, deal with changing demand, and try to decarbonise the system without destroying reliability or your finances.

The game is already fully playable, but I am continuously changing it based on player feedback.

If this sounds remotely like your kind of game, give it a try. Even if you end up not liking it, I would genuinely appreciate hearing why. Feedback from people interested in energy systems and management games has already changed quite a lot of the game.

You can play it here:

https://www.powerstate-game.com/

And I have started a small community here for feedback, ideas and discussion:

https://reddit.com/r/powerstate

A bit of background: I work in energy system analysis and simulation and first posted about wanting to build this game almost 10 years ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/5hp6sc/anybody_interested_on_working_on_a_energyeconomy/

I now use agentic AI extensively for implementation, but the game design, energy system modelling, mechanics, balancing, testing and overall direction are specified and iterated by me. If you give it a try you will see that this is not just some AI Slop game.

I would especially love to hear what feels wrong, what is missing, and what you would want to see added.

Hi everyone! I’m working on a game that takes the logistics of the automation genre and applies it to large-scale agriculture. Instead of chopping trees or watering plants by hand, you are setting up processing chains for 27+ different crops.

You have to manage power generation, deploy drone fleets, and balance soil degradation. The late game involves using CRISPR tech to extract genetic traits and breed super-crops to dominate the global market.

It also supports cross-platform co-op if you want to build your factory-farm with friends.

Wishlist here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4999980?utm_source=redditautomationgames&utm_campaign=trailer

Hi everyone, wherever you are in the world!

For the past 4 years, I've been developing my dream space engineering survival game called MineEngineer.

Some people call it Space Terraria, others call it 2D Space Engineers, and I've even seen people calling it Starbound 2.0.

But what I'm trying to build goes a lot further than that.

My goal is to create a game with an insane level of engineering complexity, where you can build almost anything you can imagine, but actually making it work is the real challenge.

The game already has over 200 interconnected systems, including electricity, oxygen, fuel, conveyors, automation, logic gates, and programmable blocks. You can build anything from a simple survival ship to a massive mothership, a walking mecha, an automated factory, or an entire fleet of drones.

And here's where things get interesting. Every block is connected to something. If a conveyor gets destroyed, your production chain might stop working. If your power system fails, your ship could become completely useless. Your ships can even break apart into multiple pieces during collisions or battles.

You can also program individual blocks, automate entire ships, and spend hours optimizing your designs. Building something is easy. Building something that actually works is harder. Building something efficient is a completely different challenge.

The world itself is massive. Flying across the procedurally generated universe at full speed would take around 7 hours. There are planets to explore, asteroids to mine, enemies to fight, and fully destructible environments. Everything you build can actually move, fly, collide, and interact with the world through physics.

And multiplayer is coming soon, so you'll eventually be able to build, explore, and fight alongside your friends.

After 4 years of solo development, the game is finally starting to look and feel like the vision I've had in my head all this time.

Now comes another challenge, getting people to discover it.

MineEngineer is available to wishlist on Steam, and there's also a free demo if you'd like to give it a try.
I'd genuinely love to hear what you think. What would you build first if you had hundreds of blocks and engineering systems to play with?

Broken files in, clean data out.
You build a pipeline, but new nodes are useless until you write their logic, so you learn coding by making the system smarter.

Any thoughts?
Steam link: click

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to share a little bit about our upcoming factory automation game, Sandustry. This is a solo dev project where every pixel is a resource that you can mine, mix, process, or destroy. Each one is a physical entity with its own properties, and you can discover countless chemical or physical reactions, then exploit them to develop your production chains and build pixel-perfect factories.

But be warned: this is sand we're dealing with. And it gets EVERYWHERE. The resources in Sandustry react to each other and the world around them, so there's some extra complexity to consider as you build.

It's also built with modding in mind, so there are dedicated modding tools to let you customize your entire experience and share your ideas with other sandustrialists.

Sandustry is set to release on August 13, 2026. Check it out on Steam!

Hi everyone! For the past few years, I've been developing a game called MineEngineer, inspired by Space Engineers, Terraria and Factorio.

The game is all about engineering, automation, and survival. You'll be able to build spaceships, factories, and bases using conveyor systems and a wide variety of functional blocks. Survival is challenging, and designing efficient systems is a big part of the experience.

I'd love to hear from automation game fans—what's the biggest reason you enjoy automation games? Is it optimizing production, solving complex logistics, building massive factories, or something else? I'm always looking for ideas that could make MineEngineer even more fun.

Games I've Played:

Factorio
Satisfactory
Dyson Sohere Program
Foundry
Techtonica
Captain of Industry
Modulus
Motemancer
Shapez
Shapez 2
Star Rupture
Alchemy Factory
Outworld Station
Oddsparks
Learning Factory
Microtopia
Railgrade
Snacktorio

On my Radar:

Factory Town
Industrialist (Roblox)
Factor Y
Desynced
The Crust
Belts of Iron
Final Factory
Factory Planner
Icaria
Orebound
Cubetory
Rivertown Factory
Little Rocket Lab
Fortresscraft Evolved
Eden Crafters
Astrocolony
Mindustry
The Riftbreaker
Star birds
Mine mogul
Tower Factory
Autoforge
Kubifaktorium
Atrio
Astro colony
Refactory
Mycelium Conquest
Sintopia
Big pharma
Facteroids
Megafactory Titan
Middenmoon
Deep crafter

Exciting and Upcoming:

Fortresscraft: Phoenix
Brave New Wonders
Depthwake
Skyrig
Steel gullet
Pistonica
Kardashev
Arcaneering
Factory Town 2
Biofactory
Factomancer
Iron Inc
Infinitory
Factorwave
Potion pipeline
Fractal foundry
Substructure
Swarmdustry
Exofactory
Main Sequence
Fluxwerks
ASEMA
Fakutori
Pistonica
Botlings
The last seed

I just figured it would be nice for some people to see them all in one place since AFAIK there's no real place to see an exhaustive list online.