Wube is such a unique game studio. They do a lot of very solid technical work and look like they have fun doing it. I particularly appreciated their recent post about porting Factorio to ARM64. They had a business reason to do it but it's clear the team was mostly just curious about whether ARM64 was a viable gaming platform now. And then shared the results with us. They seem like fun hacker guys.

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-446

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twiclo 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've never played a game where it was more obvious that the developers really played and enjoyed their game. It's just brimming with QoL features.

	▲	duskwuff 11 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		IIRC, a number of the team members started as players.
	▲	nerusskyhigh 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The modern doom saga gives me the same vibes. The team really poured their hearth in it!
	▲	pphysch an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Factorio is in that top-tier. I just tried Core Keeper and had the same feeling, gushing with QoL and thoughtful design. Refreshing to play sandbox-y games where mods don't feel mandatory.
	▲	ainiriand 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]

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JMiao 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It helps they don’t have a publisher to confuse them with quantitative and qualitative pattern matching. Just make the game you play and judge it honestly. Of course, the second part is a rare ability.

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sandworm101 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes but they have fallen into a success trap. I have seen the same trend with Mincraft, KSP and Subnautica. An indi developer starts with a great concept and a true open world game. The player can progress through the tech tree how they choose but doing so requires exploration. All is good. Then the developer starts to tighten the reigns. The tech tree become more rigid. Exploration must happen in a more specific order. And then the graphics department takes over, adding more and more objects until a previously huge and open world is a tightly cluttered mess.

Think of how subnautica moved. The second game was very literally denser to the point that they slowed down movement to preserve any sense of space. And each step inthe tech tree required specific tools from a specific place. No more free explorations. No more alternatives. The player lost control over the story. Subnautica 3 is now so dense and linear I gave up after a week. It is more a decorated fishtank than open world.

I still play factorio (1000x) but I do not play the new planets. That whole rocket process is so locked down that there is little for me to enjoy. I get bored whenever there is only one way to do a thing and no room for a player to invent alternatives.

	▲	sneurlax 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Do you play Space Age just on Nauvis or are you playing without Space Age entirely?

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AceJohnny2 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is what being very successful (but still focused) gets you.