Let me preface this by saying that Factorio is fantastic. If you have even the slightest interest in games about management, construction, and most of all, production chains, jump on the nearest conveyor belt and pick up a copy of Factorio right now. Then buy another one for the most important person in your life. Because that person won't be seeing you for a while, and at least this way they will understand why.

Factorio begins, as all great fiction does, with a great explosion. It's your spaceship crashing on a remote alien planet, and the only way to escape from that distant rock is to build yourself a whole new rocket. Oops. Lucky for you, you are the most dexterous person in the universe and can build almost anything with just spit and elbow grease. Whether it's a stone kiln, a steam engine, or an oil refinery, give the little hero the materials and he'll put it together like a two-piece jigsaw puzzle.

But while the character can build most of the objects in the game himself, the sheer quantity required makes this method prohibitive. It is not only rockets that need to be built. Everything needed to design, manufacture, adjust, and refuel the rocket needs to be made as well. As a simple example (by Factorio's standards), electronics need to be manufactured. This means that the ability to mine and smelt metals, especially iron and copper, is necessary. To do this, facilities are needed to mine and smelt the metals. Copper ore must be smelted into copper plates, copper plates into copper wire, and copper wire and iron plates must be combined to make basic electronic circuits.

In the world of Factorio, every object requires similar processing, each more complex and complicated than the last. The solution to this enormous problem is automation, and that is the core of Factorio's play. Instead of building the tools and structures yourself, you instead build the process, establishing the production chain and assembly line, and all the hard work is done for you.

There are many ways to do this with Factorio, but the core of the assembly line requires three key functions: the transport belt, the assembler, and the inserter. The assembler assembles items from component parts, and the inserter connects the two, feeding resources into the assembler or returning new items from the assembler to the conveyor belt. (Inserters do much more than this, but let's keep it simple for now.)

Returning to the electronic circuit example, there are several ways to make and assemble copper wire and iron sheets. One could create a closed system that assembles those resources exclusively for circuits, complete with a custom-built furnace for smelting copper and iron ores into iron sheets and a second assembly machine for copper wire. Alternatively, a separate production chain dedicated to those components could be created before transporting them to the assembler that manufactures the circuit.

In this way, Factorio's elaborate, open-ended, and utterly engrossing puzzle begins to spin a spider web of steel inside your skull. Once you have established a general-purpose conveyor (known in the community as a "bus") that carries basic resources throughout the plant, you need to figure out how to get the specific items each assembly line needs out of that bus, while at the same time ensuring a consistent flow of resources to all assembly lines You need to ensure a consistent flow of resources to all assembly lines. Remember, every item in the game can and probably should be automated for production, including the items needed to create the assembly line in the first place. I was hooked on Factorio in less than five minutes, but the moment that really "clicked" was when I established an assembly line dedicated to making assemblers.

And this barely scrapes the surface of Factorio's chasm-like depth. Many mid-level objects require water as part of their construction, so pipelines and conveyors to the assemblage need to be built. Oil processing is a game unto itself, requiring finding deposits on the map and building refineries to break down the crude oil into liquids. Raw materials are limited and will eventually run out. This means that new deposits must be found, factories must be expanded to take advantage of them, and new means of transportation, such as trains and drones, must be introduced to obtain them more efficiently.

Factorio goes on and on, and you become a mechanical Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole of automation. Eventually, the factory will become so elaborate that you will forget what half of the assembly line is making; Factorio may sound very complicated, but its complexity is stacked in such a way that you will become comfortable with it, and like me, you will be able to decorate the picture straight It never feels impenetrable or off-putting, even to someone who can't do it. At some point, when you zoom out and look more closely at the land, you will think, "Wait, I made this."

Factorio has been around for four years since early access, so most wrinkles have been improved. There are some minor flaws. It is not the most visually exciting game, favoring beige and brown, for example. The top-down perspective sometimes obscures potential obstacles, such as a missing conveyor belt or an inserter pointing in the wrong direction.

While not a problem in itself, there is one aspect of Factorio that I am less enthusiastic about: the tower defense elements in Factorio, where the factory is attacked by an ever-growing horde of alien bugs. All you have to do is press the spacebar and keep firing your equipped weapon until the aliens turn into purple puddles of goo and fall over. Part of me simply doesn't like the idea of combat in Factorio. I don't want an oversized beetle coming along and ruining what I've spent years building up an elaborate assembly line.

Over time, however, I have come to understand why Factorio includes combat. First, there are many offensive and defensive weapons that can be manufactured, from shotguns and auto turrets to flamethrowers and atomic bombs, which contribute greatly to the base-building component. Thus, Factorio requires a balance between logistics and efficiency and defense. After the first bug attack, I built a northern border wall lined with automatic turrets and designed a conveyor belt behind that wall to automatically supply the turrets with ammunition. The battle may not be satisfying, but it will certainly be automated.

But the reason Factorio's combat fascinated me was not so much its features as the reason the bugs attacked. Vast factories producing goods and gadgets are delightful to you, but not so thrilling to the inhabitants of the earth. Burning coal and drilling for oil causes pollution, carbonizing the atmosphere makes the planet's inhabitants hostile, and Factorio acknowledges the environmental impact of mass production projects, not through a melodramatic narrative arc, but through a system of topical and relevant I like the way the themes are offered naturally. Bug attacks may be annoying, but they are also a reminder that your actions can be both creative and destructive.

This is the thematic icing on Factorio's stupefyingly complex mechanical cake: has there ever been a game that swallowed my brain whole like Factorio did? For most of the time I've been writing this review, I've been fighting the urge to interrupt and play more. I even dreamed about it. When I close my eyes, I can see the conveyor belt. It's the best management game I've played, a manufacturing masterpiece.