Satisfactory

Satisfactory is a factory simulation game created by Swedish video game developer Coffee Stain Studios. It is a 3D first-person open world exploration and factory building game. The player, an engineer, is dropped onto an alien planet with a handful of tools and must harvest the planet’s natural resources to construct increasingly complex factories for automating all resource needs. The initial goal is to build a Space Elevator and begin supplying the company the player works for (FICSIT Inc.) with increasingly numerous and complex components for their unknown purposes.

Satisfactory was made available for early access in 19 March 2019 on the Epic Games Store, and 8 June 2020 on Steam, with cross-platform multiplayer. The factory-building aspect of the game has been described as a first-person and 3D version of Factorio. Unlike most other sandbox games like Factorio, the Satisfactory world is pre-generated; every player’s map is identical. The game is set on an alien planet named “Massage-2(A-B)b” and the playable area of world is limited to 30 km2.

The player takes the role of an engineer who has been sent to the planet with orders to “colonize” it by building a factory complex for FICSIT. The player has a choice of four starting locations: the Grasslands, the Rocky Desert, the Dune Desert, or the Northern Forest. This choice affects the resources the player has access to in the early game and the amount of flat land available for easy building. However, the player can move to any other part of the map at any time. After landing, the player must salvage the landing pod for parts with which to construct the Hub, the main location from which most other construction will extend.

During a brief tutorial, the player learns how to mine and process basic ores such as iron and copper. With these materials, it is possible to construct a simple factory and to begin exploring the “Tier” system. As of May 2021, there are eight such tiers in the game, each of which grants access to increasingly complex and sophisticated materials and equipment. Tiers one and two are unlocked after completing the tutorial; subsequent tiers are unlocked by delivering certain parts to the Space Elevator.

As the player unlocks new equipment, it becomes possible to automate more complicated tasks. The ultimate goals of the game are to build a fully automated factory that can manufacture any item without requiring the player’s manual intervention and to deliver all required project parts to the Space Elevator. Higher-level machinery requires more power, so the player must research and build power systems including coal and gas generators, and eventually nuclear power plants.

Exploration and combat are secondary gameplay elements. The player must fight hostile alien life forms and conquer hazardous environments in order to find valuable resources in the wilderness. A limited number of weapons and vehicles are available to make exploration easier.