Best Factory 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.

Related

7 Simulation Games With The Most Replay Value

Simulation games have a lot of replay value because of how immersive it can be on a real-life activity, and these are some of the best examples

Posts

By  Chris Birsner

Updated January 28, 2025, by Rie Takumi: Factory simulation video games scratch a specific itch. Most games value mastery over how parts can optimize production lines to make the most of available resources. Others progress through clever solutions to logic puzzles built into factory sims and reward hardcore grinders with means to automate more mundane processes. And to some gamers, the process of creating map-spanning production systems is rewarding enough on its own. Games like Factorio allow players to focus on building factories, researching tech and infrastructures, and graduating to produce increasingly complex products. Players typically share their layouts and manufacturing solutions with fellow players online to help or find new ways of building their factories.

28 Automachef

Design An Automated Restaurant

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.

27 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.

26 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.

25 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.

24 The Farmer Was Replaced

Automate Agricultural Tasks To Grind Efficiently

The Farmer Was Replaced is a programming game that lets automation fans build their dream factory using drones. Gamers don’t need to go in with prerequisite coding knowledge thanks to a simple tutorial that teaches basic programming concepts and the game’s Python-like code.

It’s a forgiving game that allows the greenest programmer to get used to its simplest automation loops. Clearing challenges rewards players with better means of automation, as well as decent knowledge of basic algorithms and visual programming.

23 Bleentoro

Minimalist Factory Simulator With No Microtransactions

Bleentoro is a logic puzzle game that allows players to automate minimalist factories. Players start with blocks that produce materials, like cherries and lemons, and draw assembly lines with their fingers to combinators, converters, and other machines to create new materials.

Players are free to design their factory layout in sandbox and campaign mode, albeit with objective endpoints for the latter. Bleentoro even has a level editor for puzzle and factory automation fans who want to test their knowledge and make something fun.

22 Planet Crafter

Terraforming Planets Through Effective Base Building

Another entry in the terraforming genre is The Planet Crafter. Up to 10 players can collaborate on a world-spanning project to terraform an inhospitable planet via effective production lines. Since it’s a survival game, teams will need to do a fair bit of gathering, but the resulting factories make the grind worth it.

Like other base builders, the game starts with basic tools for gathering and crafting. Progressing through the tech tree helps players redirect water to their settlements, regrow plants for oxygen, and build increasingly complex machinery for more materials.

21 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.

Related

10 First Person Shooter Games That Are Better Than Their Metascore

The first person shooter genre is very oversaturated, so many titles go underrated. These particular FPS games are way better than their Metascore.

Posts

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.

20 Foundry

Create Conveyor Belt Production Lines To Automate Voxel World

Another Early Access game, Foundry puts players into the mecha shoes of robots tasked with building and programming automated mega-factories on alien worlds. Players start, after an intuitive tutorial, by gathering resources to create their first resource-gathering and processing bots.

Eventually, players can plan out elaborate production lines and systems. Ambitious players can create factories in different biomes and go deep underground for ores and other resources. If players want extra hands to build these factories, they can invite their friends over to their world.

19 Astro Colony

Automate The Final Frontier Colonies

Conveyor belts and pipes will help gamers create their dream space factories in Astro Colony. Players start like they would in a first-person survival game, where they mine asteroids for materials they’ll use to build their first factories. Actions like mining will also yield resources like science points.

Material and skill resources are needed to unlock and build bots and facilities. Clever pathing helps players get to the automation part of the game faster. The game also supports online co-op, which means parties can speed through universes and make mega factories faster.