It’s out. It’s finally out. Most of 4 years since I bought the game in its Early Access state, 1000+ hours of time spent in it during that time, and here I am starting a fresh new save.

Not that there weren’t some hiccups at the start.

At 8am Pacific time the switch got flipped, and a couple of Steam client restarts later the download began. And… then after another restart it downloaded again, because the first download was somehow the Update 8 version. And… then it wouldn’t launch, claiming the executable was missing. Which it was because somehow it was saved with the wrong name (“FactoryGameSteam.exe”)

And… then after launch, the game griped at me about a problem with the specific version of the AMD graphics drivers I had on my computer at the time, so I lost a quarter hour to fiddling with that. And… then I had to tweak and fiddle with performance settings because the mouse input lag was atrocious.

But then I enjoyed 8 solid hours of gaming fun. Whew!

For the sake of getting all the updated new-user experience plus the new lines from “ADA” (the digital assistant which either assists or gaslights you depending on the situation) I started with the full tutorial mode, bare-bones Hub and all. The Mercer Spheres actually do something now! There’s a storyline (of sorts)! So much new stuff to enjoy.

By the end of 8 hours I had a working coal power plant, thus no longer am I forced to grab every leafy bit of plant matter I see on the ground to keep my meager “just getting started” factory running.

Oh, and the game reminds you to take snack breaks. (I did, in fact, take several breaks.)

All told, this is a marvelous release of a game I already loved. It’s good to be back.