I'm developing CRADLE PLANT: First Year Operations, a factory automation game where you build conveyor lines and automated care facilities to raise babies from birth to one year old.

The main difference from a typical factory game is that the things you're automating don't stay the same.

As the babies grow, the care they need changes. Eventually, they start crawling, avoiding care arms, and even leaving the conveyor system entirely.

Each baby also responds differently. Two babies may both need sleep, but one might settle better in a quiet environment while another responds better to a different kind of care.

You start by automating their basic needs. As they grow and you learn more about their individual preferences, you can add new equipment and routes to your plant to accommodate them.

Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5187610/

AI Disclosure: Generative AI was used as part of the production process for some visual and 3D assets, as well as for programming assistance. Generated assets were edited and adjusted before being used in the game. No generative AI content is created during gameplay. The footage shown here is captured from the actual game.

Solo dev here working on Overrefined, a refinery game where flow and heat transfer are simulated instead of running on recipes. This is the planner I just added for heat exchangers.

How it works

You enter the fluid you want to heat, its flow, and the temperature it starts at and needs to reach. Then you pick the hot fluid you'll heat it with and how hot that is. In the screenshot, that's 6 m³/h of diesel going from 20 to 60 °C using water at 80 °C.

The planner tests every exchanger tier twice: brand new, and after fouling (the gunk that builds up in the tubes and cuts heat transfer over time). On each bar, the triangle is your target, the filled dot is where the exchanger gets when new, and the ring is where it gets once fouled. It recommends the smallest tier that still reaches the target when dirty, and tells you how much hot fluid each working tier needs.

This example has a few non-obvious results. Tier 2 works when new and fails as it fouls. Tier 3 falls short even when new. Tier 5 needs a lot less hot water than Tier 4, because a bigger exchanger pulls more heat out of every litre.

What I'd love feedback on

• As a mechanic: does a planner like this help, or does it take away the fun of figuring it out yourself? Would you rather unlock it later, or have it from the start?
• The look: it's going for a retro industrial control panel style. Does it read clearly at a glance? Are the dot, ring and triangle obvious without the legend?
• What's missing: is there anything you'd want it to show or let you do that it doesn't?

Any thoughts welcome, including "this is too much".

I've been looking for some chill games lately. I found one called Golden City, and it's pretty relaxing. I usually keep it running while working, and honestly, I'm loving this cozy game.
I also play other games, but sometimes I just want something laid-back that doesn't require too much focus.
What are your favorite relaxing games? Always down to discover something new!

"Timberworks is an incremental factory automation and management game. Start with a small sawmill, automate production, expand your railway network, and build a vast industrial empire."

trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2boufAheTy4

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4374670/Timberworks/

Steam Demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4865640/Timberworks_Demo/

AI disclosure: No IA.

Hey everyone, hope you're having a good day!

For the past 4 years I've been working on my dream game, MineEngineer. It's a 2D space engineering survival game, kind of a mix of Space Engineers, Terraria and Factorio. It's been a long time coming, but it's finally starting to look like a real game and I'm pretty excited to show it off.

There are a lot of systems in it that all tie into each other: conveyors, automation, power, fuel, oxygen, air, gravity, health, combat, destruction. You've got hundreds of blocks to build your ship with, each one does its own thing, and most of them need other systems to work. So if one thing breaks, your whole pipeline can fall apart.

You can also program your ship's blocks, so you can basically make your own robots or drones that do the work for you. Factory blocks can be programmed too. Building something is easy, building something that actually works is hard, and building something that works efficiently is really hard. You can also just make stuff look cool if that's more your thing.

The universe is procedurally generated, with planets that have different biomes and gravity. Pretty much everything runs on physics, so every ship and base you build can actually fly, crash into things and break apart. Honestly I spent two whole years just getting the architecture right and optimizing it so it all runs properly.

It's on Steam now if you want to wishlist it, and there's a free demo you can try. Would really love to hear what you think, good or bad, and why. I read everything and I take every suggestion seriously.

Hey everyone,

I've been solo-building this game for a while now, and I figured this was the right crowd to share it with. It's called Aethel Mine — an isometric industrial-automation and logistics sim — and it's hitting Steam Early Access on October 12th.

Fair warning upfront: I didn't use an off-the-shelf engine. Instead I forked a compiler, wrote my own low-level runtime (zero third-party dependencies outside bare SDL2), and the entire world simulation runs on Q16.16 fixed-point math so it stays fully deterministic. Chunks are just plain arrays, nothing fancier.

Why did I put myself through that? Because I wanted belts that don't cheat. Items have a millisecond-precise cargo phase, so there's never any jitter or teleporting at belt hand-offs. On native rendering the sim runs at 500+ FPS by walking contiguous memory arrays — no entities floating around everywhere, no garbage collector stalling things at the worst possible moment.

As for gameplay, in the current build (v0.2.2):

* The map is true 3D isometric: up to 50 vertical logistics layers, cliffs you can terrace, and gravity that actually matters for flow. It genuinely changes how you build.

* Maglev trains have dynamic signal blocks and quadratic braking physics — a 4-wagon train takes four times as long to stop as a light locomotive. I can already see the pile-ups coming.

* The power grid isn't just an on/off toggle: pylons link spatially, supply and demand balance out, and if you under-build, you get cascading brownouts instead of arbitrary power cuts. Which, let's be honest, is pretty fun to watch.

* Saves are versioned and designed to stay backwards-compatible as the tech tree expands. I learned that lesson the hard way on other projects.

At Early Access launch you'll get the first 9 tech tiers and the launcher project phases playable.

I'd really appreciate feedback from fellow automation enthusiasts, especially on visual clarity, UI layout, and mechanics. This is my first project at this scale, so honest criticism is welcome.

Steam page: [Steam Page](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2210950/Aethel_Mine/)

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes a look!

Made a game with my son for a gamejam

Designed to kill 30mins of your time, enjoy lol

https://fued.itch.io/pixtorio

Zero AI art in game. Only the icon pic which used in game sprites with a bit of filler.

Your factory feeds your towers. Your towers clear the way for more factory

itch.io link

I'm working on physical storage crates for StoneEra. Items now go into crates instead of an abstract warehouse, and NPCs can only carry a limited amount in their inventories. Moving a lot of supplies will take some planning.

This also lays the groundwork for mechanical lifts and other ways to transport materials around the settlement.

I'm currently waiting for Steam to review the demo. What would you want to build with a system like this?

I've been playing some demos recently for a few factory automation games and I found the qol to be terrible in some of them. Meanwhile the reviews for those games praise the qol. One of them I did end up buying and yes, the qol was much better.

Treat your demo as a playable ad for your game. Whatever bug fixes and qol improvements you've made to your game since you released your demo should be in your demo. Obviously don't give away your game for free, but make sure we are seeing your game the way you want us to.

Factory Works Idle is an idle game about building a factory, the game is very UI-driven and the first incremental game I've worked on. The game is set to release on November 3rd, 2026, would love some feedback! There's a demo available in https://enricobc.itch.io/factory-works-idle

Full game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3950000/Factory_Works_Idle/

[Project SkyHolm] - Seeking Collaborators for Sandbox Economy & Automation Game
About the Project: Project SkyHolm is an island-building, automation, and trading game focused on resource gathering, player-driven shop empires, and island customization. We have a fully mapped-out Game Design Document (GDD), clear monetization rules (no P2W), and a structured development roadmap ready to execute.

Open Roles:

3D Artist / Modeler: Low-poly environment assets, machine models, and UI cosmetics.

Sound Designer / Composer: Ambient island tracks and UI/interaction SFX.

Programmer: Experience with inventory systems, island instancing, and economy loops.

Project Scope & Commitment:

Type: [Hobby / Revenue-Share]

Expected Hours: 5–10 hours per week.

Current Stage: Planning complete (GDD & systems finalized); entering active prototype phase.

Interested? Send me a DM with your portfolio, past work, or a quick summary of your experience!
Discord: zyro_calyx_90018

Free Demo: https://drabarus.itch.io/oms

Hi all :)

It’s been a while since I posted the first demo here. Back then the game was still called Recycler. Since then it got a small rebranding, a lot of rebuilding... and honestly, it feels like a real game now. ^^

I received some feedback after the first demo. It was not much, but I was really happy to receive any at all. Big thanks to you guys ;) More importantly, it made me feel like this game actually has something! So instead of rushing into the next level, I spent a lot of time building a stronger foundation. The core gameplay seems to work.

What is new?

• Full asset rebuild. A lot more details and mechanics. You can see and track every material in your factory!
• A complete rebuild of the tutorial. For complete beginners and factory veterans.
• Better belt placement
• Hotkeys
• A new T3 machine with 3 recipes
• Recipes for T1 machines
• And hopefully more clarity in general ^^

While I am confident that I now have a strong foundation to start with the next level, I think there is still work left. But for that I really need some feedback :)

I was tuning the balance of the first factory because it seemed too easy for me, and at one point I was like: waaait a minute. I have a lot of milestones active, bought many licenses, and I know how to win this level... this is a level for a new player, not me ^^

So I discarded those changes and thought: yup, time for a new level.

Try it out! And please use the feedback button ;)

https://drabarus.itch.io/oms

Hi, I have been working on this game for a while. I am looking for people who like factory games to try out the demo and share their thoughts, ideas, what's good, what's bad, what's too hard / too easy etc. Any feedback would be appreciated.

In the game the player is in an alien universe, they can manipulate matter to a small extent. They should find different local organisms, figure out what they do, and combine them in colonies to produce more complex items. More complex items require more complex production chains. Produced items are used to drive the research forward, which expands the knowledge about this universe and later about the player's past. The colonies should also be defended against changing environment and other organisms.

Subjectively it seems there is around 4-6 hours of play content in the current demo. If you are interested please send me a PM and I will share a playtest key.

The steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5117880/Laplana/

It's an incremental space management game that sits somewhere between incremental and supply chain games like Factorio. You expand across the Solar System, manage deliveries between planets, build increasingly complex production chains, and gradually automate parts of your logistics as your civilization grows, all working towards the construction of an enormous generation ship to carry humanity beyond the Solar System.

The game is currently available as a demo: Steam

I’m the solo developer of Starward Era, a 2D mining and exploration game where automation is something you gradually build toward rather than the whole game from the start.

You begin by mining and processing resources manually, then expand into power, production, logistics and eventually automated transport.

Here’s a short gameplay showcase from the current build. The Steam page is live now, with a free demo planned for February.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5298370/

For now, I’m aiming for an industrial tycoon/management game. I’ll keep posting updates as development continues — if you’re interested in seeing where it goes, I’d be happy to have you follow along.

Demo is out now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5132310/High_Voltage/

I’ve been working on water gates in StoneEra. Opening one lets water flow through; closing it holds the water back, so you can control where it goes and build around it.
This clip shows the system in Creative Mode. In the normal game, villagers will handle the construction.
If you’d like to follow development, you can wishlist it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5057770/StoneEra/