I consider this the best game I've ever played. I am autistic programmer, so this game is literally for me.
So to actually give review, let me put in words what I adore about Cracktorio:
The game has great gameplay loop. You need to automate science packs to progress. To make these, the game is introducing new resources or products which acts as barrier of entry. You need to keep creating all previous science as well, so your previous setup is useful until you decide to up the speed of research.
Second best thing about this game is modularity design. You have in essence 5 types of buildings : Logistic (belts/rails/bot network) Storage (chests) Resource harvester (miners and pumps) and Production (assembler, refinery.). These are very simple building blocks with few rules. Once those rules are understood, you are free to design solution to the single puzzle game ask of you "Can you make this science?" The fun part is, this can be as efficient as you are bothered to make it. You can make factory that is 100% efficient, machines never stall, all belts are saturated exactly as much as factory needs.
Or you can make minimal viable product and move on to the next science.
The learning curve has high ceiling, but the curve itself isn't that steep. The game is teaching you via science. The first science needs only two things : smelted copper and product made of smelted iron.
Easy to automate, and teaches you how to smelt and automate. Second science teaches you how to put those two resources into slightly more complicated production chain. The third science requires you to extract and process oil. And next one is where I think many ppl give up, but is actually the best lesson.
It requires you to scale up things you already built. Specifically circuits. To have decent rate of some things in this tier, namely modules and blue chips, green and red chips you got so far will be extremely slow, or might eat up those chips that you still need elsewhere.
Which brings me to the next part of gameplay loop.
THE FACTORY MUST GROW
The map is procedural and practically infinite. If you are interested, there have been attempts to find edge, and it took irl hours of fastest possible travel to get there. Look it up..
This means that if you need space for buildings, or need more materials, there is always more to exploit.
But expansion has it's cost. Specifically the last part of the gameplay loop.
The cost is genocide. The planet has fauna that gets angrier and bigger the more pollution you make, and everything you do creates pollution. Once it reaches the bugs nests, they attack your base. You can prevent this by preemtive defense, also known as Manifest Destiny.
That's base game. There is also DLC which basically is 2x multiplier of things to do. You get 4 more planets to exploit, each with unique challanges and gameplay. On vulcanus for example, you have literally free and infinite iron from lava. Gleba requires you to consume everything you make, or it spoils, as it's only metal is from plants you farm. Also megafauna. Fulgora is all about doing factory backwards. You have two resources : Oil sea you can walk but not built on and scrap, which you recycle into high tier items, which you then recycle to get raw materials you can use for anything recycling doesn't give you.
And lastly Aquilo will ask of you to add another layer of space puzzle, as each building, belt and inserter needs to be heated via heatpipe.
This is enough to tell you what the game is about, and what it does well. Now let me talk about where it hasn't been outmatched yet : Logic. Factorio has actual logic system, with logic gates, math gates and most things can be enabled or disabled based on this logic.
To demonstrate this : You can check if all train station chests are empty enough to warrant train being sent there. You do this by connecting all relevant chest with green or red wire, then passing it through gate which compares chests contents with your logic (for example iron ore < 1000))) then you decide what this gate will output if it's logic output is true (which signal to send) Default for train limits is T but you can change it. so if the station chests have 650 iron ore, the gate will output T=1 signal to train station, which allows for one train to head there.
This level of control is not required to beat the basic game, while it might be needed to beat space age (although needed is strong word, and the depth you need is puddle). But people managed to make DOOM like engine in factorio using this. As I said, ceiling is very high.
Personally, I think if you like to plan and build, this game while not exactly impressive graphically is outmatched by it's mechanics and complexity it allows, but doesn't require.
Not to mention, unless you use other's blueprints (you can literally copypaste them from browser to game.
Since the game is very modular, and you actually design the factory, everything is your fault. If it works, it's your design that proved correct. If something breaks, it's your mistake or oversight that you will then fix. No two factories will be the same, and not because each map is unique. But as every engineer will tell you "if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid". Build how you want, be as effecient as you care to be.
And as parting words : If you learn this game, and especially if you go big, you will naturally learn real life engineering principles. For example different ways to scale up. Again, this has good video on youtbe bringing attention to this. If you decide this game might be for you, have fun, and remember :
THE FACTORY MUST GROW
