Top all-time · #222
Factorio
Company blog · factorio.com/bloggamesprogramming
Factorio is the company blog at factorio.com, writing about games and programming. Since 2013, 216 different Hacker News readers have linked it 384 times, most often “Factorio”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
The Factorio Friday Facts dev blog, which HN readers link for weekly posts on game design, optimisation and development history. Commenters call it insightful and open about design, full of micro-postmortems.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Factorio20 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2014-07-23
- /blog/post/fff-1768 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2017-07-21
- Factorio Friday Facts8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2017-05-12
- Friday Facts #366 – The only way to go fast, is to go well7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-06-18
- /blog/7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-12-18
- /7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2018-07-26
- Factorio – a game where you can automate basically anything5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-11-18
- New pathfinding algorithm5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-10-18
- Factorio: Space Age Is Here!4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-10-21
- The journey to Nintendo Switch4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-09-23
What Hacker News says?
Factorio (and also games like SimCity) are not actually pure CA rules, but they combine cellular automata techniques together with many other techniques like system dynamics, etc. Will Wright gave a great explanation of how simulation games combine different techniques together in three intersection dimensions: Topologies (agents, networks, and layers), dynamics (propagation, growth, grouping, order, allocation, map…
Comment linking /
on “Factorio 1.0”Submitted Factorio 1.0 as a story · 1878 points
HN discussionI think it's fairly well-known at this point, but I find it interesting that the game will never be on sale [0]: > We state it on our steam page, but people are still asking about it so I want to state it officially. We don't plan any Factorio sale. I'm aware, that the sale can make a lot of money in a short period of time, but I believe that it is not worth it in the long run, and since we are not in financial pres…
Comment linking /blog/post/fff-140
on “Factorio 1.0”Submitted Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch as a story · 744 points
HN discussionThis is an excellent answer. When you read their blog you realize that all those points have guided the current design of the game. There was multiple iteration of the tech tree to invite the player gently into the different "phases" of the game. (see https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-275 ). They carefully thought about the name of things, the cost of things to communicate clearly to a new player what he is sup…
Comment linking /blog/post/fff-275
on “Factorio 1.0”Submitted Factorio – a game where you can automate basically anything as a story · 582 points
HN discussionYou can look at the dev dayries https://factorio.com/blog/ They are very interresting, I've learnt a lot of technical things reading them. It's a well programmed game !
Comment linking /blog/
on “Factorio 1.0”Submitted Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok as a story · 543 points
HN discussionIt's kind of weird to see this posted in a thread for a game so similar to Factorio ? https://www.factorio.com/download
Comment linking /download
on “Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released”Submitted New pathfinding algorithm as a story · 478 points
HN discussion- Factorio (a great game for the HN audience): http://www.factorio.com/ - A Valley Without Wind (I like Valley 2): https://arcengames.com/a-valley-without-wind-1-2/ - Rimworld: http://rimworldgame.com/ - Starbound: http://playstarbound.com/
Comment linking /
on “Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has died [pdf]”Submitted Factorio 1.1 stable as a story · 468 points
HN discussionHere's hoping I don't have weird taste in games... A massively multiplayer RTS that is essentially a combination of Factorio [1], Rust [2] (the game), Planetary Annihilation [3], and Z [4]. Thematically what I've wanted is the persistent nature of Rust, with the logistic focus of Factorio, the scale of Planetary Annihilation, and a dash of the absurdity of Z (which I haven't played in a very long time so I might be…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?”Submitted TDD from the Factorio Team as a story · 457 points
HN discussionYou should give them a shot again with 2.0, they made a ton of improvements to the track building: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-377 , https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-389 , https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-403
Comment linking /blog/post/fff-403
on “Show HN: Factorio Learning Environment – Agents Build Factories”Submitted Factorio runs on Apple Silicon as a story · 381 points
HN discussionDo base your believe that Factorio is under-optimised on anything specific? The Factorio devs regularly put out blog posts on the optimisations they have done, like [1][2][3] (and many others), and they have done so for a long time. This gives me the opposite impression. [1] https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-322 [2] https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-281 [3] https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-209
Comment linking /blog/post/fff-209
on “Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch”Submitted The journey to Nintendo Switch as a story · 375 points
HN discussionThey have nine as of 2021. https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-366 They even have a chart of lines of code in Factorio over the years.
Comment linking /blog/post/fff-366
on “Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch”Submitted Factorio that you can touch as a story · 362 points
HN discussionMistake. The Factorio team is much bigger than a single developer https://www.factorio.com/game/about And multiple of those devs have posted blog updates about various optimizations they've done. So performance isn't one person either.
Comment linking /game/about
on “Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch”Submitted Factorio for Nintendo Switch is now available as a story · 307 points
HN discussionit is a reasonably small team but definitely more than one developer https://www.factorio.com/game/about
Comment linking /game/about
on “Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch”Submitted Factorio Future Plans as a story · 246 points
HN discussionI prefer rockets to elevators: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-353
Comment linking /blog/post/fff-353
on “Elevator.js – A “back to top” button that behaves like a real elevator”Submitted Factorio 1.1 is getting close as a story · 201 points
HN discussion>There's nothing "rare" and "very specific" about parallel processing, what's "rare, very specific" is the amount of software that's been rewritten/redesigned to take advantage of it so far. People have been banging their heads against the 'rewrite this software to take advantage of multiple cores' wall for decades. The lack of progress is telling. For a straightforward example, look at the second half of this Facto…
Comment linking /blog/post/fff-215
on “AMD Ryzen 3000 announced”Submitted Menu simulation, Spidertron, Ghost building, Confirm button as a story · 200 points
HN discussionNot solo but factorio: https://factorio.com/blog/ team has blog which is maintained every friday and very insightful
Comment linking /blog/
on “Ask HN: What are good solo developer blogs that you enjoy reading?”Submitted Space Age release date as a story · 199 points
HN discussion
