Total Factory

Total Factory puts you in the chassis of a robot dropped on an unknown planet by the CosmoDoc Corporation, with one job: automate resource production and keep it running. It's a familiar premise for anyone who's played Factorio, Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program, and that familiarity is both the game's pitch and, according to its own review corpus, its biggest problem. Reviewers keep reaching for those exact three names, and not always to Total Factory's benefit.

A complete release in a genre that rarely ships one

The first thing worth crediting is unusual for this space: Total Factory isn't in Early Access, and hasn't been. A March 2024 review makes the point directly, calling it one of "a very, very small pile of automation games that proclaims it is fully complete" — no Early Access label, a full achievement list, and, by that reviewer's account at 86.7 hours, no significant performance issues. For a genre where players have learned to expect years of unfinished builds, shipping complete is a real point of difference, whatever else the game gets right or wrong.

The developer's post-launch behaviour backs up the "finished, but still cared for" framing. A November 2022 review with 96.6 hours logged praises the developer as "outstanding," noting they were "constantly making improvements and alterations based on players comments and requests" — specifically calling out a newly added peaceful mode, without enemies, added within weeks of launch in direct response to player feedback. That's the kind of responsiveness genre fans notice and reward with continued attention.

Real automation depth, once you reach it

Strip away the comparisons and Total Factory has genuine substance: a large procedurally generated world spanning four biomes (Tundra, Meadow, Desert, Jungle), over 150 craftable items, six types of mineable ore, a full electrical grid system, and machines ranging from simple conveyor belts up to assembly lines. A Russian-language review from October 2022, 63.5 hours in, captures the appeal in genre-fan terms: "Every single time you start a new game, it's an entirely randomly generated world. You can play this game for weeks and still not discover all its secrets" — while also joking that the grind itself is "hell, pain and suffering, like my real job," and recommending it anyway. That's a familiar note for the genre: automation games are supposed to be a little punishing, and reviewers who came in expecting that generally aren't complaining about it.

What stands between the player and the factory

The trouble reviewers describe isn't the automation system itself — it's everything before it. A November 2022 review titled "First Impressions" is blunt: "Info dumps as a tutorial are not a very good way to do tutorials." Steam's own achievement data backs this up precisely: only 54.2% of buyers ever complete the tutorial achievement, meaning close to half never get a proper onboarding at all. A second November 2022 review describes spending three hours just traversing terrain and fighting off enemies with what they call "a terrible combat system" before reaching anything resembling the actual factory the title promises.

Controls draw the same complaint from multiple directions. A December 2022 review, having heard the game called "the new Factorio," compares that claim to Justin Bieber once calling himself the new "king of pop" — memorable, and pointed: "Controls are frustratingly un-intuitive," despite the developer's own note (quoted in the same review) that the game is "Not in early access, but still in active development." An October 2022 review — from a self-described 2,300-hour Factorio veteran who's also put nearly 1,000 hours into Dyson Sphere Program — goes further, calling Total Factory "a combination of Factorio, Satisfactory, and DSP and does everything worse than those games," specifically flagging tooltip and interface friction.

Reading the comparison fairly

It's worth being precise about what that comparison is and isn't measuring. Total Factory isn't trying to be a 2,300-hour Factorio replacement, and several of its positive reviews come from players who explicitly say they'd never gotten into the "big brother and sister" automation games and found this one more approachable — a January-2022-adjacent October 2022 review says exactly that, crediting the "huge amount of updates and news about the updates" for winning them over despite having no genre background. Read that way, the harsh Factorio-veteran review and the newcomer-friendly review aren't actually contradicting each other; they're describing two different audiences with two different bars, and Total Factory clears one more comfortably than the other.

The achievement curve supports that reading too. Tutorial completion sits at 54.2%, the first production tier at 58.3%, and by the middle tiers the numbers are already down to single digits — a steep drop consistent with a genre-standard shape (deep automation games are supposed to have a long tail) but steeper at the very start than it needs to be, exactly where reviewers say the tutorial and controls are costing the game its early audience.

One negative review from February 2024, describing the game as "literally unplayable" at 0.2 hours played, stands apart from the rest of the corpus and isn't corroborated by any other review — including several logged well past the 60-hour mark reporting a stable, functioning game. It's worth noting as a data point without treating it as representative.

Final verdict

Total Factory is a genuinely ambitious solo-developer effort that had the confidence to ship complete rather than disappear into years of Early Access, backed it up with real post-launch support, and built a factory-automation system with enough depth that dedicated players are still finding new things after 60-plus hours. What keeps it from competing with the genre giants its own reviewers keep naming is exactly the part that should be easiest to fix: the tutorial, the controls, and the combat standing between a new player and the good part. At NZ$21.99, genre fans willing to push through a rough opening will find real substance underneath. Anyone expecting Factorio-level polish from the first minute should adjust expectations before buying.