Highlights

• Factory simulation games offer deep immersion and challenge through automation, logistics, and resource management.
• Building, automating, and optimizing factories in games like Dyson Sphere Program and Factorio provide hours of satisfying gameplay.
• From creating a Dyson Sphere in space to managing a brewery, players experience diverse industries and challenges in simulation games.

Simulators allow players to experience a different slice of life in the comfort of their own home. This category has a variety of sub-genres such as factory simulation, where players get to manage and create plants where they must successfully create products.

Commonly, these games are popular with fans of the feature known as automation. These factories are solely run by other machinery that players need to plan the placement of to have a functioning factory system. As a niche genre, there are only a few factory titles, but these are by far the best.

Updated May 12, 2024 by Rie Takumi: The best factory simulation games reward players for effective automation. Players maximize their efficiency for the greatest gains and to strike a sustainable economic loop. Sometimes, the loop itself is the reward for players.

These loops are some of the biggest reasons why people love factory simulation games. Solving problem after problem and creating a cool logistics network engage players for hours on end. Some liken it to real-life warehouse logistics and programming for how satisfying it is to see things work as they should.

Naturally, gamers who don't play factory simulation games may be confused about why this kind of gameplay is appealing. But a great factory simulation game can open them up to the joys of solving one problem after another.

18 Automachef

Design An Automated Restaurant In Resource Management Puzzle Game

Gamers who are also foodies would love Automachef, a resource management puzzle game where they’re tasked to automate a kitchen. Players design, build, and program restaurants restricted by resources and tricky scenarios. At their disposal are machines categorized as dispensers, transporters, transformers, and assemblers, among others, set on grids at optimized positions.

Programmers or gamers who love logic puzzles may find Automachef challenging. Half the fun is figuring out the game's logic. Finding out the relationship between income, efficiency, and power, as well as the use of newly unlocked machines, takes up a lot of game time.

17 Alan's Automation Workshop

Solve Client Pain Points By Programming Automatons

While not a factory in the traditional sense, Alan's Automation Workshop is a brilliant simulation combined with the puzzle genre. Players who enjoy the logical side of factory simulators must find new ways to solve the client's issues through automation.

Players will be encouraged to test out their new creations before attempting to sell them to the client. Naturally, new problems cause new solutions to be created, and as a novice engineer, the player should be sure to explore their creativity to make a profit while finding the answers.

16 Learning Factory

Machine Learning & Manufacturing Goods For Cats

Another great factory game straight off the assembly line is Learning Factory, a game that tasks the player with deploying conveyor belts in intricate ways to craft and sell an assortment of goods to adorable cats. As the title of the game suggests, players will need to keep learning new things if they hope to achieve catopia in one of the best factory games ever.

Learning Factory takes making a factory on Mars a step further as players can analyze their selling data to see what they could improve upon and make the factory more efficient. Above all else, this is a relaxing game as it takes the stress out of management.

15 Factory Town Idle

Automate To Create A Healthy Factory Town

Like an idle game title, Factory Town Idle allows players to play a game and make a profit while barely needing to click a single button. Unlike other idle titles, Factory Town combines multiple genres into one making it part clicker, part idle game, part builder, and part management title; giving players significantly more to get stuck into.

As a factory town, it is up to the player to build different production buildings as well as houses for their workers to expand their town into a brilliant industrial hub that will gradually bring in the big bucks for the player.

14 Techtonica

Roam A Rich Cave System To Hand-Build & Automate A Factory

First-person base building may seem strange, but Techtonica makes it work. Base building in Techtonica involves using the environment to automate resource gathering. Waterfalls can be used to power water wheels, wide floor spaces next to mineable areas are best suited for mining drills, and sorting plants can be automated via threshers.

Optimizing builds can help players create sustainable factories. Conveyor belts, inserters, and other schematics can help factories achieve full automation. Before that, however, players need to unlock schematics by fixing terminals around the map.

13 Beer Factory - Prologue

Manage A Brewery From Production Lines To Import/Export

Simulation titles tend to allow players to experience an alternate life for themselves and Beer Factory intends to allow players to do exactly that by learning how to manage their own beer business. As the name suggests in this business and management simulator players will be running a beer factory, from purchasing the necessary ingredients to finding a place to sell them.

Unfortunately, this is just the prologue to the full game that hasn't yet been released though even just the prologue of Beer Factory has impressed many players who look forward to running their factory that sells an assortment of beers.

12 Little Big Workshop

Grow A Small Factory Into A Manufacturing Giant

In this fantastical management game, players become the boss of a factory that they build from humble beginnings. Players must manage their workers and the stations they build all while attempting to create the best products available.

Players don't need to stress though, as even when the factory starts to expand with more stations to create products that will need far more workers, Little Big Workshop is still entertaining to play. Part of the fun is the freedom factory owners are given to take their company in a direction they will enjoy though it is important to make a living.

11 Production Line: Car Factory Simulation

Factory Building For Auto Enthusiasts

Owning a company; especially a car company, can be very competitive. Production Line: Car Factory Simulator pushes the entrepreneurship skills of the player to their limits in the hope of creating a successful car factory that beats the rest of the competition.

Automation is key in this title as players will want to strive to make an easy-flowing system that needs little intervention while also creating cars fast. Players will be constantly improving their factory designs from the beginning stages of their company which may move slowly to eventually a well-oiled system through hours of practice.

10 Factory Town

Automate To Create A Healthy Factory Town

On the more unrealistic side, Factory Town relies on the player attempting to create a factory within a settlement that lives in the wilderness. With a combination of conveyor belts and steam-powered trains, players will eventually have enough stations set up to create a variety of resources to help their town thrive.

Similarly to Infinifactory, players can work through eight different maps in the campaign where they must complete a task. If they prefer the freedom to create their very own town, there is also a sandbox mode to enjoy.

9 The Captain Of Industry

Factory Automation Key To Surviving On Island

Captain of Industry is a factory simulator with survival elements. Landing on an abandoned island with a small crew, the player must build to survive. Planting fields of crops, establishing housing, and then finally creating efficient factories to refine these materials will not only help the players grow their settlement but also grow as an economic powerhouse.

Managing it all may seem difficult, but luckily players can start small before gradually expanding what products they produce. As Captain of Industry is currently in early access there is plenty more in store for players with each update of the game.

8 The Riftbreaker

Survival Action RPG & RTS Reliant On Factory Automation

Gamers looking for factory simulation games with a side of wave clearing can pick up The Riftbreaker. Players have direct control of a mech pilot they use to clear creatures that would try to destroy them or their factory. Building a well-built factory is essential to surviving even a night in-game, and so is finding resources for the factory.

Much like StarCraft, players must look for resources to power their factories. Protecting these stations is a must, especially when looking for resources deeper into the map. This may not be the game for players looking for a relaxing factory game, though players who want action with their automation fantasy have a lot to play with here.

7 Space Engineers

Sandbox Factory Construction In Space & On Planets

Space Engineers unleashes gamers on Earth-like planets to pioneer civilian and military tech. The vehicles, spaceships, space stations, and even war machines players build will seem familiar to NASA enthusiasts as in-game tech are extrapolations of current space technology. Furthering its realism is its volumetric-based physics engine wherein everything is fully destructible and persistent, with unique atmosphere, gravity, and climate zones.

For added challenges, players may opt for survival mode, where they need to manage resources and inventory. Creative mode gives full freedom and resources, in addition to instant building and no deaths. Players can even go through Scenarios and play unique campaigns building space stations with their friends.

6 Infinifactory

Construct Assembly Lines For Specific Products

Factory simulator meets puzzle game with Infinifactory as players build factories that assemble products needed by their alien masters. With its very own campaign, players can explore the wonders of automation while also living through an interesting story.

Players are building in the hope of solving their tasks to make products, and this leads to some rather wacky designs being created in the hope of making the systems work. Players can take this one step further with Infinifactory's sandbox mode which allows them to create freely and push the limits of the block system.

5 Shapez

Factory Automation Using Node System

Shapez is a casual factory simulator with a simplistic art style that challenges the player to produce shapes through automation. It combines the simulation genre perfectly with puzzle elements as players must use their heads to work out how to make complex shapes efficiently.

This also means that the game has set levels for the player to complete and as they progress, these levels will become more difficult with the simulator demanding more complex shapes to be completed. The map is described to be infinitely expanding, and therefore, these factories will gradually grow to make room for more complex shapes.

4 Mindustry

Factory Building With RTS & Tower Defense Elements

As mentioned, the enjoyment of factory games for many players is the possibility of making elaborate conveyor belt systems that test the player's capability of making creative routes for their factories to follow. In Mindustry, the player must use their mind to not only grow their factory in this open-ended management game but also defend it.

Mindustry is more than just a factory game as it also contains tower defense elements as the player must protect their conveyor belts from waves of enemies. Some of these assembly lines will be used to create the resources and units needed to defend the player's factory and therefore finding the quickest way to do it is part of the fun in Mindustry.

3 Dyson Sphere Program

Construct A Dyson Sphere In Space

Dyson Sphere Program allows players to live out the fantasy of bringing the classic sci-fi concept to life. The sci-fi sandbox construction game puts players in charge of automation to produce materials for the solar megastructure. Construction is grid-based, auto-aligns, and allows copy-pasting layouts to different locations.

Roaming the known universe is key to finding enough resources to build the megastructure. But getting to the Dyson Sphere isn't the endpoint. Players need to manage interstellar logistics to keep their operation going and create bespoke Dyson Spheres through the Dyson Shell.

2 Satisfactory

Mega Factory Building

Being able to walk along the conveyor belts of a player's hard work is something many fans of factory simulators have wanted in a game. Satisfactory allows this to happen with their rendition of what it means to be a factory simulator through a first-person experience.

Not only this but the open-world aspect of the game allows players to explore the planet for themselves to collect resources by hand first before designing complex conveyor systems to mine the ore from the ground. Better yet, players don't need to experience factory life alone as co-op is readily available in the early access to either compete or join forces to make the best factory possible.

1 Factorio

Survival Factory Building & Automation

Receiving an overwhelmingly positive reaction from fans of the genre, Factorio is exactly what players want for a factory simulator game. Although the game takes place using 2D graphics with a top-down view, the game still matches the complexity of other titles tasking the player with producing a wide variety of products and resources.

Besides creating the most efficient automated workforce of machinery, players will also need to consider how they will protect it as creatures will commonly appear to put a spanner in the works. This makes for an entertaining gaming experience that many can't get enough of.