Summary
Any fan ofFactorioknows the extreme satisfaction of setting up an efficient and fully autonomous base that is able to do the hard work of producing scientific vials all by itself. It’s a feeling many base-building games have tried to reach, but few have. However, some are just as great, excelling in different and interesting ways.
Whether it’s a trip into history to establish a trading empire or leading a colony of beavers to brilliance, these games are all brilliant base-builders that any fan ofFactoriois bound to love.
Sometimes, it’s difficult to stand out from the crowd in the base-building genre, which is exactly whyTimerbornprobably took the unique aesthetic approach it did. Clearly inspired by the likes ofBanished,Timberbornhas the player control a colony of beavers working towards building a new home in the wilderness, making an approachable gamethat’s great for beginners.
It’s not just an aesthetic choice either. Beavers don’t need tools to cut down trees, and damming rivers is very important to producing all-important power. Believe it or not, the beaver status of the player’s citizenry is key to a lot of the mechanics, making it a quirky but mechanically rich alternative toFactorioin the base building space.
Banishedhas an important role in the base-building subgenre, not only revealing the desire for the genre in the indie space, but also taking up the mantle of base-building classics likeAnno 1602,The Settlers, andDwarf Fortress, and doing a modern spin on old mechanics in a game that feels like it came right out of the gate with the mechanics of a classic.
InBanished, players take control of a small cadre of banished survivors making a town for themselves in the wilderness. The game requires careful assignment of villagers to tasks, making sure the food supply is always sufficient, and everyone has shelter. It has had a clear and massive influence on base-builders ever since and is essential to play for anyone wanting to explore the subgenre more.
While base builders are well known for their mechanical depth, they’re less known for telling comparing narratives, and much less stories that are truly devastating. This is the space thatFrostpunkstrayed into and delivered one of the very best base-builders released in the past ten years.
In a variety of campaign scenarios, gamers play as leaders of post-apocalyptic communities in a world where global temperatures have plummeted, and survivors need to gather around giant heaters to survive. Pooling resources and figuring out how to keep as many people alive as possible is incredibly stressful, culminating in one of the most memorable narrative moments in strategy game history.
AfterBanished, survival base builders were all the rage in the late 2010s with many pretenders to the throne, but whereFrostpunkmay prevail in the narrative department,RimWorldis still going strong to this day because of its incredible generation engine and functionally endless permutations of its survival scenario (though,the community has rooted out some beautifully pre-determined seeds).
Players must help a small group of survivors in the wilderness of an alien planet thrive and survive in the midst of bandit attacks and many more environmental threats that are constantly thrown at them. With each character having distinct personalities and entire factional wars breaking out,RimWorldis perfect for base-building enthusiasts who don’t want their hand held.
4Farthest Frontier
Building From Nothing
Though still in early accessFarthest Frontierhas proven itself to be a worthy addition to games that came in the wake ofFactorioin picking up a wider audience, particularly as it blends the efficiency-led gameplay of the former with survival elements from the likes ofBanished.
InFarthest Frontier, players control a small community in the wilderness that must build itself up quickly enough to fend off bandit attacks. Though, unlike some strategy games, practicality is everything inFarthest Frontier, with placing key industries close to each other to increase efficiency and road blockages. It’s almost a puzzle game in the late game that requires careful management of the economy, space, and crop yields.
Though it may have enough DLC to make a new player desperately afraid of what to expect, it’s hard to deny just how brilliantAnno 1800is in crafting an addictive base-building gameplay loop that slowly but surely encourages the player to craft a globe-spanning empire through tenuous trade routes.
Players not only need to set up several islands with stable communities with their needs met, but those communities need to produce goods to ship across the world to enter factories on other islands with skilled workers. It’s a complex but addictive push and pull, made all the more complicated with wars from opposing empires with the exact same plans in mind.
In the world of base-builders, it’s hard to argue that a game is more prominent or important in the entire area thanDwarf Fortress. First released in 2006 with its infamous but distinct ASCII-based graphics,Dwarf Fortressbecame beloved for its incredibly in-depth emergent simulation and brutal difficulty, as well as being one of the biggest influences in the entire strategy game sphere.
Players take control of a small group of dwarves who must fend for themselves in a brutal world, creating complex underground lairs that need to facilitate every dwarf’s needs. Each dwarf has their own personality, wants, wishes, families, and more. The simulation is incredibly deep, meaning that no one playthrough will go like another, and with its incredible 2022 remaster, it’s now far more approachable for new players to try.
Though some base-building games may be better thanSatisfactory, in terms of games that are tailor-made for fans ofFactorio, it doesn’t get much better than this. To overly generalize,Satisfactoryis the logical conclusion of what would happen if someone decided to change the entire perspective of the game to first-person.
What results is a beautifully addictive game that captures the production line frenzy ofFactorioas well as the emergent threats, sense of discovery, and sprawling ever-persistent growth of a factory whose efficiency becomes a constant challenge to maintain. It’s a perfect game forFactoriofans to try, and it’s hard to think of anything that captures the magic better.
