Comic Strips

BTW, it's okay to ignore the story on Stardew Valley. Never let anyone tell you you're playing it wrong. There's no such thing.

Cracktorio

My friend are planning to start a co-op run to get "There is no Spoon" and "Express Delivery". I've never launched a rocket and he's launched more than Kerbal Space Agency.

Wish us luck.

Oxygen not included - more evil than factorico - at least for me.

I am genuinely convinced that the difference between female autism and male autism just literally is the difference between Stardew Valley and Factorio/Satisfactory.

There are lots of stories like Last Starfighter where someone is recruited through video games for some fantastical job and some General or something is like “You have the highest score ever, only you can save us!” Always seemed pretty far fetched to me.

But if we were going to another galaxy and they wanted someone to lay out production infrastructure? I could totally see recruiting based on most playtime on steam for Satisfactory.

I like my idea for a Factorio movie.

An engineer crash lands on a planet during a corporate visitation to another planet. Desperate, he finds his company’s schematic drive on factory creation. He builds his way up to a satellite, which is preprogrammed to beam his SOS home. Relieved, he hits the button to launch it, watches it go up.

Then, looks down at everything he got to build on his own, with no oversight, no managerial correction, all his own efficiency. He’s even made his own greenhouses to make his own food. Automated a logistics bot to attempt a new mix of coffee each morning, warmed by residual nuclear reactor heat.

Something stirs in him, and he “accidentally” veers the satellite 8 degrees off course. It sheers against the atmosphere and burns to a crisp, its wreckage destroying his semiconductor production (which is then rebuilt automatically within the hour). The engineer resumes his next project.

From there, eventually a passing ship does a scan of the planet, curiously finding it inhabited and very industrialized. They send a lander to the surface to investigate. It’s shot down by a fleet of hundreds of missiles.

The issue goes to Earth’s military command. They have no idea who is on this planet but need to take the threat seriously. Another scouting contingent is deployed, able to land on a safer side of the planet, but on the way down, they spot a “city” in which buildings are arranged in the words “GO AWAY”.

Landing, the scouts work out that the nearby bots are from the corp’s schematics, and slowly work out what happened. They attempt a few more efforts to extract the engineer, now as a prisoner for shooting down a craft, but the “war” continues.

Eventually, a psychologist is able to ask the engineer about his feelings of loneliness on the planet. He replies that he’s been alone for far longer than his space flight, and even on Earth no one connected with him - machines just made sense. He curses his company’s greed for infinite growth, and declares the planet is off limits.

The psychologist accepts his terms - but also ridicules him, since his factory exhibits the same pointless growth as his company. And so, he remains, a prisoner of his own planet.

I love Factorio but I had the polar opposite problem with Stardew Valley. I prioritized the dungeon, fishing, foraging, and the missable heart events, then when I ran out of other content I had to start slogging my way through daily back to back farming, selling, and gifting preserves in order to monotonously grind levels and hearts because all of the good buildable stuff is locked behind that wall.

Oh no, poor soul. Just lost thousands of hours of their life.

Having way too much time in both, I view stardew as a gateway drug. It hooks you with cozy vibes but for sure rewards min/maxing. At least you don't have to worry about UPS limitations!

...and Dyson Sphere Program.

It's been a while since I did a factorio run.....

See, if you were playing a real game like Elin, you could actually lick it for a taste. Can lick anything with the right trait in Elin.

Anything can be licked, anyone can be milked.

Begin your dream of a dungeon crawling stripper commune now, in Elin.

There’s a game that’s like if Factorio was set in Stardew Valley. I just started playing it on a whim last night.

It’s called Little Rocket Lab. I’m not to far into it so don’t take this as a recommendation necessarily, but there is a dog. You can pet it. You can play fetch with him.

As a person who plays both of these games frequently, this is very accurate.

The comic is highly accurate, I just wish that Factorio didn't feel so similar to work. I like Stardew Valley overall, but I just don't want to make friends with NPCs and play a fishing minigame.

Mmmh I wonder if factorio will run on my steam deck....