Best Crafting Automation Games on PC

PoliPlanet

Your galaxy is a blank slate; An untamed wilderness full of potential! Travel from planet to planet and develop each one into a beautiful village, town, or city through the use of machines and crafting!

Physics-Based Interaction

Actions in PoliPlanet are generally completed by interacting with the physical world rather than through the use of menus and UI. Whether it’s gathering resources, loading machines, or planting trees, it’s all done in real time and space.

Free-Form Building

No grids, no point & click. Whether it’s a segment or a complete structure, you’re free to build wherever and however you want. Let your creativity flourish!

Real Relationships

Citizens in PoliPlanet are not mindless NPCs who follow a predetermined set of instructions. They build complex relationships with the player and each other. Treat them well!

Natural Progression

As you develop your skills, you’ll learn more about the resources at your disposal and gain the ability to craft bigger and better structures and machines. As your planets become more inviting, NPCs will begin take notice. If they like them enough, they might even fly over in their rocket ship and take up residence! But of course, everyone is different. A merchant might want to see a few other citizens living on your planet before they’re willing to set up shop. They need someone to sell to after all!

Elaborate Procedural Generation

Each planet is unique, with its own resources and features! So what if your citizens are requesting some plant life on your sandy, desert planet? Well, it’s off to your spaceship to search for a shiny new planet, lush with trees and plants! But how will you get them back to your civilization? Rockets? An overly complicated tube system? Build a transportation robot who exists solely to carry out your every request? It’s up to you!

Read More: Best Crafting Base Building Games.

PoliPlanet on Steam

Project Existence - Multiplayer Sandbox

Before anyone gives this game a bad review, remember it is in very early access. I have enjoyed the game so far for what it is, and I can’t wait to see it grow into something much bigger.

Devs are very responsive on Discord and are always happy to answer any questions/suggestions players have.

– Real player with 24.6 hrs in game

Read More: Best Crafting Base Building Games.

Most current reviews are poor due to it being a very early version game, the game is actually well put together for such an early version of the game, and the Devs are awesome

If you are reading my review you are reading the best one, please ignore all currently negative reviews and either try it or write the name down and come back later…

I hope the Devs, the players and everyone else has a lovely day, afternoon, night (relatively)

– Real player with 11.7 hrs in game

Project Existence - Multiplayer Sandbox on Steam

Factorio

The absolute gold standard in factory games, standing out as the exemplar of smooth progression curves, options out the ears, gameplay that keeps the “one more turn” itch going and developers that care far beyond selling copies. To elevator pitch this one, “If you can do it, you can automate it.”

To describe Factorio by only using games that preceded it feels like an exercise in futility. The concept was born from Minecraft mods, but it feels unfair to compare the two or make the Terraria reference (this, but in 2D). So, taken on its own, Factorio is a game where you play an engineer who is trying to escape the situation they are in by building a rocket. But since the refining and assembling of material components for that sort of thing is unfeasible by yourself, you must build a factory to automate the process. Along the way you must research concepts and upgrades for the planet you are on, mine resources and deal with the locals (in the form of giant insects).

– Real player with 3172.1 hrs in game

Read More: Best Crafting Base Building Games.

I read a comment by a user saying “If you enjoy creating your own problems and solving them this is for you.” and he was bang on the money.

tl;dr

The knock-on effect caused by dependencies across an entire production chain will drive you nuts and it’s this that makes you play and I mean MAKES you play. Sleep is not an option.

Factorio

Engineers rejoice. Learn Technology, Automation and Efficiency in one easy to learn package. No? Seriously. this is a hard game to put down.

– Real player with 1654.2 hrs in game

Factorio on Steam

FortressCraft Evolved!

I play every 4x/base building game that comes out. In almost every game, I find myself wishing that X would be automated in some way. Such as, hiring bots, employees, or machines to do marketing, sales, shipping… whatever the task happens to be in the context of the game, and I’m invariably let down every, single, time. No developer has ever gotten this workflow right. In fact, some even argue that too much automation takes away “work” from the game. I’ve hand delivered X item to X person 100 times now; Why do I have to keep doing this same damn mission over and over Elite Dangerous? I literally can’t hire a space mailman to deliver packages? I gotta do it myself? Jesus.

– Real player with 5700.5 hrs in game

I recieved Fortresscraft Evovled in a Indiegala bundle when it looked to me like a minecraft clone. I didn’t get the bundle for this game, but for another one but I’m glad I did! I didn’t play it until I saw direwolf20 had a let’s play on it, and the name sounded familiar. I’d recommend watching his let’s play or at least part of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTQQ6lLtL04&list=PLaiPn4ewcbkH0rlPVUYSR1QmkDe8jFGv8

What the game is

Fortresscraft is

95% logistics
4% Tower defence

– Real player with 1024.3 hrs in game

FortressCraft Evolved! on Steam

JUNKPUNK

Very fun finished it a bit fast but it’s early access so that’s understandable (Suggestion) need tools upgrade, a way to block the weather from blowing through structures walls, Lighting types, more building shapes, large ceiling and floor tiles placement, double stairs for a 2nd floor access, better placement snapping for building, rotation & raising/lowering of foundation tiles, keybinding access, body upgrades like a bigger backpack & foot jets, a items list for tracking builds, a auto-reset camera position to move cam freely, and a way to repair and use the crashed spaceship, a upgrade to breakdown all of the giant metal structures laying around the region & more quest.

– Real player with 32.2 hrs in game

Junkpunk is a good game with a lot of future potential. At the current price it is easily a good value and a lot of fun. I have spent the last 8 hours playing and it is only day one. Yes, I am aware that means I have no life, lol. In this 8 hour play through, I have had zero crashes, 7 hours I had a buddy connected to me and I was the host with only 1 single disconnect. I have come across no bugs, glitches, or any major concerns.

With all the positives, there are a few things I would like to see but are mostly small complaints:

– Real player with 22.6 hrs in game

JUNKPUNK on Steam

Outpost Engineer

Its a lot like Evospace..

Mine and cook ore into metal bars then use it to make components for more advanced products after you researched the blueprints. The game is mostly about building structures to place your machines and organize the logistic of your factory.

Sounds are awful

Graphics too

I still had fun playing it

– Real player with 26.5 hrs in game

This is awesome, way better than I thought, the factory of this game is so fun!

– Real player with 26.2 hrs in game

Outpost Engineer on Steam

Factory Defense

Jabo sends an expedition of humanoid robots to a planet identical to Earth for the purpose of taking it over and building a huge industrial factory there. But it’s not all that simple, because not only does Jabo want to take over the planet, the rival company Toady has similar plans. Toady regularly sends assault ships to land their troops to drive their competitors off the planet and destroy their factory. Your task is to protect the factory at all costs and take over the planet!

RESEARCH

Earn experience by killing enemies, Pump up your research tree to get more powerful weapons! Send resources to your company with the railgun to get new mechanisms and buildings! Explore the open world and find various components!

DEFEND

Set up turrets, artillery, air defenses and other defensive structures, devise tactics, team up with your friends, pick up your weapons and destroy the enemy!

BUILD

You’ll have to build various mechanisms to create the items you need to evolve. Over time you will unlock new, more complex structures and items, so you will have to expand your factory and think carefully about its design.

Factory Defense on Steam

Factory Town

TL;DR:

A mix of elements from Anno, Factorio and Kingdoms and Castles
It’s got that game loop in place: discover improve discover improve. There’s always that one new thing you want to build or line you want to change
Very active dev, daily responses in Discord and weekly updates
Already a large amount of content, even in its current state you’ll get your money’s worth in playtime

Disclaimer:

I’m one of the early beta testers, probably the 3rd or 4th wave. So I did get the game for free (although I’ve since abundantly made up for it with feedback & bug reporting etc). I’ve also been bumped up to mod on the Discord (come say hi!). So you know, this is a sliiightly biased review ;)

– Real player with 541.3 hrs in game

What is it?

A resource management game where you will find increasingly efficient ways to route goods from source to manufacture, and onwards to sell so that you can grow your town.

You’ll start with a few workers with which you’ll gather wood and stone. Then you’ll manufacture planks which in turn can make a wheel! Along comes a cart that can carry more than all those people. Meanwhile, new buildings will start to unlock, and new products can be manufactured which in turn can earn you coins of differing colours, with more advanced technologies needing the rarer coins to research and unlock.

– Real player with 498.3 hrs in game

Factory Town on Steam

Making it Home

Pillbug interactive keeps improving with every new title. A very bizzare and unique game.

Great soundtrack and background watercolor art made by some talented people. Game contains a surprisingly mature story despite what the artstyle would suggest, but it’s skippable if it’s not your cup of tea.

The developers have been very nice and receptive to feedback during development. If the game looks interesting to you, and you want to shape the future of where it goes, I highly recommend joining in on early access and talking with them on discord. :D

– Real player with 120.2 hrs in game

Is it a platformer? Is it a sandbox? Is it an optimisation puzzle?

Yes! and it keeps growing and developing in ways I couldn’t have predicted.

Build your vessel, mario all over it to get coins, use coins to make a grander vessel, and all against the clock.

Depending on your style, maybe the vehicle operates itself, maybe it’s 100m tall, maybe it’s 100m long, maybe you can use your melee 20XX skillz to go even faster than automation allows?

– Real player with 56.3 hrs in game

Making it Home on Steam

Astro Colony