Icaria

I recommend this game. It hands you programming tools without turning the whole experience into a coding bootcamp. Most automation games either dumb things down until they're barely programmable or throw you into the deep end with scripting languages. Icaria walks a different line entirely. The magic lives in how everything just... works. Drop a robot, give it basic instructions, watch it go. But then you start wondering... what if I need this thing to build ramps? Suddenly you're knee-deep in logic chains, grinning like an idiot when your contraption finally clicks. The game reveals its depth gradually, almost sneakily. The rough edges show up in unexpected places, though. Documentation feels more like scattered notes than a proper guide, you'll stumble through certain mechanics wondering if you're missing something obvious. Sometimes you are, sometimes the game just hasn't explained itself properly. But, half the fun is figuring it all out. But those belt splitters. Good grief, the belt splitters. They store items internally, which sounds harmless until you realize your entire factory has ground to a halt because some splitter somewhere is hoarding resources like a mechanical packrat. It's a million clicks to unstuck things. I've lost hours to debugging these things. I am begging the devs to make them pass-through only. Problem solved, sanity preserved. Even with its quirks, Icaria gets the fundamental equation right. It gives you powerful tools, interesting problems, and enough freedom to solve them your way. The learning curve feels earned rather than artificial. When something clicks, it's because you figured it out, not because you finally found the one solution the developers intended. The game respects your time and intelligence in ways that matter. Yes, you'll restart some factories. Yes, you'll curse at the documentation. But you'll also build things that surprise you with their elegance, solve problems that seemed impossible an hour ago, and find yourself thinking about optimization strategies in the shower. Icaria isn't perfect, but it's doing something special in the automation space. If you've ever looked at a factory game and wished for more programming depth without the tedium, this is your game.

I'm probably willing to switch my review to a positive one later, but right now it would be hard to recommend. The biggest problem is documentation. The programming aspect is very interesting and neat, but under-documented. When I tried to do something simple like have a printer switch between two recipes based on what the connected storage that holds the results has, it was very difficult and shouldn't have been. There are some values like "number of items in memory#/@" that just... aren't explained at all. You seem to need to have something search for the value and save it before hand in a # or @ memory location but I could only figure it out after a half hour trial and error, and still I'm not sure if I'm correct on that. There's a text based version of the visual language which is awesome in theory, but in practice it has so little docs as to be worthless. The docs that exist are sparse and don't talk about every method or if there's types invovled. The text editor has no auto-complete or really syntax checking at all. As a programmer, it's like writing in notepad without an API reference. Also saving scripts works fine with a role, but there doesn't seem to be like a universal script respository so you could copy or reuse scripts between different (but similar) roles. It's just.. so much friction that I don't want to play anymore. Which is a shame. I think it could be a really interesting game but the lack of documentation and the friction of the main selling point: programming your factory; just makes it lean towards frustrating rather than fun. I'm totally willing to change this opinion if they smooth out that onboarding and make proper docs and ideally an editor that helps you (or external editor support), but right now, I'd rather play something like The Farmer Was Replaced for a programming game or Factorio for a factory game.

For such a small development team, Icaria is a real gem and I genuinely hope to see it continue to grow. While I understand why some players have raised concerns about the UI, tutorial, and general quality-of-life features, none of it feels game-breaking. Like most factory-style games, once you’ve spent a bit of time with it, you quickly get used to the quirks. Some mechanics — like T-junctions not snapping together as expected — do take a bit of practice to master, but they’re easy enough to work around once you’ve got the hang of it. What really sets Icaria apart is its scripting system, which I found far more approachable than Desynced’s (another great title). There’s something genuinely satisfying about spending five minutes writing a simple script, hitting play, and watching your drones spring into action using logic you wrote yourself. It adds a whole new layer of engagement and creativity to the gameplay. I wouldn’t be surprised if a community script-sharing site pops up before long. That said, you’re not forced to dive deep into scripting if it’s not your thing. Much like in Desynced, you can set bots to travel between specific buildings and manage tasks with a bit more hands-on control if you prefer a more manual style. Alternatively, you can lean into the automation side by defining roles and behaviours for different entity types. The game supports both approaches, which makes it really flexible depending on how you like to play though it definitely leans into the scripting to give you more control over how units do things, far beyond your typical factory game or old RTS-style mechanics. There are so many ways to define how far you want a drone to dig, for instance. The overall feel of the game is distinct from others like Factorio, Satisfactory or Desynced. Part of that is the pacing, but also because you’re encouraged to think differently. You wouldn’t build a classic Factorio-style megabus here. Instead, there’s a real emphasis on doing more with less — one well-planned conveyor and some clever routing can go a long way. And for those who enjoy complexity, the signalling system provides plenty of depth for more advanced setups. Another thing that sets it apart is the landscaping. It reminds me more of Captain of Industry than the usual factory games, though it still needs a bit of work to feel truly satisfying. The cranes and drones in Icaria don’t yet match the heavy, tactile feel of Captain of Industry’s trucks, which really capture that destructive and constructive punch. But the groundwork is there, and it’s clear there’s a lot of potential to build on. If you’re into the factory sim genre and can afford it, Icaria is well worth a shot. There’s already a lot to enjoy, and even more to look forward to I hope.

Really cool and fun - pretty great game! **Edit** Neat, but developed at a snail's pace. EA is for games in active development - not side-project tech demos.

This is like playing an RTS but you have to write the workers' logic yourself. But, that's about it. You can't program them to level an area to build buildings on or anything like that. It has loops, but not enough instructions to do anything meaningful.

This is a very interesting game. In some ways similar to [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1450900/Desynced/]Desynced[/url] but much more focused and eager to showcase the automation. The tone is relaxed and cool, with plenty of Blindsight references all over the place (though, obligatory question to any Peter Watts enjoyer, including me I guess: are you [i]okay[/i]?). Graphics are very [i]clear[/i], and the mechanics seem to be quite well thought-out, including the visual scripting language (I haven't tested the text-based language yet). The game definitely deserves more attention. Oh, also, the game seems to quite like trees.

There aren't many automation with programming games out there. But this is the best of them, and it keeps getting better with very active and supportive developers. Play the demo and give it a try. It can take a few hours to really click, but as it does it is a lot of fun. I don't like comparing games to each other as you may not have played the other games. But in this case, think of Desynced but with programming that's much less complex. With Desynced even the simplest tasks take too much work and end up as complicated messes. Think of Craftomation 101 but with a richer language, vast world, and a focus on automation. You have to use conveyors in Icaria along with the drones.

I really like the *idea* of this game. But I really hate the reality of it. The UI feels really inconsistent and unpolished. Where you can do what is confusing. What has context menus or not is confusing. The way roles display and interact across different entity types is very poorly shown. So many things feel like you should be able to do 'a' from 'b', but instead there's some single arcane specific way (for example, just let me put roles in role groups on creation! Why do I need some bizarre second menu with drag and drop mechanics?). It goes on and on. Just feels like the game was designed for aliens and fights intuition every step of the way. It's exhausting for me to process and interact with - and this is coming from someone who programs professionally. I kept hoping some time would make it 'click' but after spending multiple hours with it I'm getting more and more annoyed over time not less.

Very confusing scripting. Some roles need very detailed moves and actions, other is a one key thing. Not sure what I do wrong, but assembler bots cannot seem to be able to pick anything from printers to finish a construction. Quite a steep learning curve.

Scroll wheel is super-awful. Camera in general is abysmal. Working through the tutorials and I want to love it, but by god, trying to see what you want to see is just a mess. edit: Jesus Christ. I just alt-tabbed back into it after writing this, and it's even worse than I described. Seriously. The camera is an abject piece of ess aitch one tee. Gameplay and general concept is effing awesome though. Also, it says steam deck playable. That is a lie. Trying to play this on the deck would cause psychosis.