Because of its name, I thought Infinifactory would be one of these games where you run a factory and need to expend infinitely in all directions, building more and more complex things in order to generate resources to unlock new technologies and all that. It’s not, instead I was faced with a neat puzzle game where you need to solve discrete problems by creating factory lines with blocks of various utilities. You can work to optimize the time necessary to solve them, the number of blocks and the space you take, but just solving each puzzle can be challenging while never feeling unfair, I really really liked Infinifactory!
After a neat little intro cutscene, you’re thrown into the thick of it, mostly learning about moving around and placing blocks, starting factories and what the game will expect of you in general. Moving is quite easy, you have a jetpack so you can navigate each puzzle with ease. I have to say that I wasn’t certain about the physicality of your character; Wouldn’t it work just the same if you had a god’s-eye view of the whole puzzle and would solve it only by placing blocks around without needing to move? Even if it meant having to physically move around to tweak my solutions, I quickly found this control scheme to work perfectly. It works really well with the story and the setting, delivered to you by a few cutscenes here and there and audiologs.
You select puzzles from a menu and they range from very simple to very strange. The first ones are simply to move blocks from drop points into specific areas and it gets up to building entire rooms with a floor, a TV and a bed. You get graded on how much time it takes to run the solution, on how much space you take and on how many blocks you use. There isn’t anything behind these numbers, so you just need to solve all puzzles to progress, which I like. I never felt compelled to improve my results, I always wanted to see the next thing, but putting the number against your Steam friends is a nice touch. In some later puzzles where my solutions took a long while to process, I kinda wish there was a second level of fast-forward that went faster.
There are many block types to use in Infinifactory; Conveyor belts that move things around, pushing blocks connected to sensors, blocks that rotate, drills and more. After a while you develop your own sub-systems that help with specific situations. You need to split some blocks? There’s a pattern for that! You need to stop something from moving while other blocks pile up? There’s a pattern for that! You learn tricks and reuse them from level to level and you’re never penalized for trying sloppy solutions. The game is also very good at telling you what doesn’t work with your inputs if you make a mistake, so this goes without friction.
I absolutely adored Infinifactory and probably will complete the remaining few puzzles I haven’t done at the time of this writing! I’m a bit curious to see how the story will end as well. Check it out if you like puzzle games! It’s great if you really enjoy optimizing as well!
