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It's funny how divisive the graphics for Factorio tend to be. As someone who was a kid in that "golden age" of mid/late 90s isometric sprite based PC games, not only does the game have a nostalgic charm to it, but there's something about the the expressivity that the mostly-2D gamespace creates that makes it far more visually interesting than most AAA 3D games. A dense factory (and especially some of the animated gifs in the blog post) always feels alive in a way most game worlds never manage to touch.

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I stumbled upon Factorio only after the graphics and gameplay of Dyson Sphere Project hooked me! Both are fantastic games with similar mechanics but different challenges; DSP has modern quality of life conveniences (like cleaner/simpler use of pickers from conveyer belts), but Factorio has a ton of depth and great mods.

I don't mind the look of Factorio, personally, but being able to rotate stuff around and see different angles of the factory was very helpful for routing in DSP. Then of course you can take it to a first person view too, like Satisfactory, but then I spent too much time trying to move myself (the player) through my maze of conveyer belts.

Dyson Sphere is great for 3d. Or at least 2.5d bordering on 3d.

Satisfactory shows the pros/ cons of a full 3d world vs a 2d factorio.

I think a lot of it is that 2D gives you a lot more opportunities to dial in the precise "things are visually distinct" vs "visual clutter" trade-off that you want, and optimize practically every pixel. 3D has to deal with every possible angle instead of like 1-4, you just can't make it perfect all the time like you can 2D.

They are? Are you referring to anything from the post or the comments here? I’ve never really seen any complaints about the graphics that weren’t from people who effectively only play AAA games. I certainly wouldn’t call that divisive though.

No, definitely not the sentiment on HN, more so the gaming circles I find myself in on the broader web.

For what it's worth, I'm one of those people that you're looking for. Out of the 11 games I completed this year so far, the only AAA title I played is Tears of the Kingdom (and, if that counts as AAA, Satisfactory). Everything else is indies.

I got into Satisfactory really hard this year (450+ hours played) after seeing a friend play it. I previously tried Factorio based on a similar personal recommendation and a general sense of "I ought to like this", but put it down after 2 hours thinking mostly just "meh". In hindsight, I really do think it is the graphics.

I'm now somewhat "over" Satisfactory (at least until they add more stuff in the next updates) and thinking about how to explore the factory builder genre more. Factorio is still in my library, yet I feel no desire to go back to it, mostly based on visual appeal. If I want to see something that's just 90% grey and brown, I can just go see any DC or Marvel movie from the last decade, thank you very much. In fact, looking at the games I recently played, one of the connecting facets seems to be a vibrant color palette (Hollow Knight, Ori 1+2, Webbed, Bug Fables, A Short Hike, Fez, Chicory, to name a few).

Same reason why I don't plan on playing any of the From Software games, even though 250 hours of Hollow Knight confirms that I'm a glutton for punishment and thus in the main demographic for Dark Souls and friends. But if I'm going to die 100 times in one sitting, at least I want something pretty to look at as I do so.

Personally I like Factorio's graphics and I definitely know it's inspired by those old graphics but, having grown up after those were mainstream, I've always thought that the originals were too muddled by the low resolution and generally dark palettes

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