Factory Town finally did achieve its Early-Access-Release and can now reach a huge audience on Steam. While the gameplay reminds me of Factorio or The Settlers, Erik Asmussen, the only developer behind the title, brings his very own style into the title.

It neither plays like Factorio, nor Satisfactory, nor any other similar game. Even though it seems super easy to compare these games, they only have the basics in common: Gather resources, craft items, research, craft better items and repeat. Still, the game is totally different.

The Gameplay

At the beginning the player only owns a base, which is the warehouse at the same time. The first production line for planks can be started with some available workers. In order to finally get more workers, to produce more goods, you need housing for your workers. Slowly a village is building up.

The different types of coins are essential to build factories and automation systems. You can earn coins by selling items to your markets and houses, of which they are in need. For example they need food, clothing, medicine and items from many more categories.

Factory Town: Vote for Future Features
To help shape the future of Factory Town, on the developer’s todo list can be voted for new features to determine which ones should be implemented next.

Not only coins will be gathered by selling items: If your markets are very well supplied with items, the happiness of all your workers will increase. This will directly lead to faster working villagers. Then it necessary to sustainably produce these items and bring them to the village via complex conveyor systems.

Base Level 1

Workers in Factory Town chop wood and bring it to the base.
Right-click on a resource and then right-click on a storage to gather resources.

Needed for Upgrade:

  • 20 Yellow Coins
  • 5 Planks
  • 5 Stones

At the beginning we cut a few trees. The wood is needed to build houses to hire additional workers. At the moment we have 4/4 workers and 0/4 houses. With each house we can hire two additional workers.

The mined wood is stored by the workers in the base. This currently offers our only storage facility with limited space.

I built houses with the wood in o12rder to hire more workers. The food market is currently the primary source of income for yellow coins. It must be placed near the houses and connected to them by a road. Now, grain can be delivered to the food market, which sells the grain to the houses.

Small village in Factory Town with market place, houses and sawmill.

Between the buildings I have built pathways on which the workers can walk faster. I placed a sawmill close to the base, which will supply boards needed for the upgrade.

The sawmill needs water in order to function. It either gets it by placing it directly next to a river, or by a worker who gets water from a river and carries it to the sawmill. It is important that the boards produced by the sawmill are brought to the base regularly because only items in the warehouse can be used for building or upgrading.

At the same time, it should be noted that a worker can only pursue one task at a time. This means that it is not possible for a worker to first bring wood to the sawmill and then store the finished boards in the base. For this, another worker is needed.

While two workers supply the sawmill with wood, two other workers take care of mining stones. The food market now supplies the required yellow coins and finally we can upgrade the base to level 2.

Base Level 2

Base Level 2 in Factory Town

Needed for Upgrade:

  • 50 Yellow Coins
  • 5 Wooden Wheels
  • 20 Stones

With the upgrade, you can also set up four additional houses. I have connected the new houses directly to the road network, so they are also supplied with grain by the food market.

The only new product needed for the upgrade is the wooden wheel. While stones and yellow coins are still being produced, we still have to take care of that.

For this I have built a second sawmill next to the existing one and have it provided by additional workers with wood. The produced boards are then brought to the new workshop, which then produces the essential wooden wheels. This will give you all resources for base level 3 quickly.

Base Level 3

Bird's eye view of Base Level 3 in Factory Town.

Needed for Upgrade:

  • 50 Red Coins
  • 10 Fabrics
  • 20 Bricks

With base level 3, I could now set up four more houses. In addition, it is possible to upgrade the houses to level 2 (which could have been done with base level 1). All you need is boards and some yellow coins. With the shortcut "U" the upgrade is done in seconds.

In order to get on with the base, we first take care of the required fabrics. They can be made either from sheep's wool or, as here, from cotton. I searched for the closest cotton field and set up a workshop next to it. If you select now the recipe cotton > cloth in the workshop , the raw material only needs to be brought to the building and then the production starts.

Worker brings paper to school in Factory Town.
At the school, all research of the game is done.

To get the bricks, the whole thing is a bit more complicated. These are made at the stone mason, which we have not yet unlocked. To research the stonemason, I built a school on the other side of the river. The raw materials needed for research can be found in the respective research recipe. The research Masonry unlocks the stone mason. So now we need the ingredients needed for research: paper and yellow coins. We receive the paper through an additional sawmill, which I placed next to the school. This way, the transport routes are not so far.

Factory Town: Customizing Your Hotbar
The Factory Town hotbar is used to quickly select frequently used tools and buildings. In this post you will find out how to customize your hotbar.

To increase coin production, I now provide the food market with flour instead of grain. This can be sold for more coins, which I urgently need for research. The flour is made in the grain mill.

Now that the research Masonry is complete, we can finally start producing bricks. We also need them to get red coins. A new building, the general store, serves us for this purpose. This works much like the food market and instead of food just sells goods, such as boards, bricks, fabrics and so on. This also means that this building must be connected with a path to our houses.

The sale of bricks will bring us red coins, which are also needed for the next base level. That's why I set up the stone mason twice: One will supply the general store with bricks for red coin production, the other will produce it for the warehouse. So we have all the raw materials we need and there's nothing standing in the way of base level 4.