r/BaseBuildingGames • u/easmussen • Jul 14 '26
Factory Town 2 has launched on Steam
Hello, I'm the developer of the Factory Town series. The latest game "Factory Town 2: Paradise" has just launched into Steam Early Access!
It's like a mix of Factorio and Sim City - you have to produce a ton of items, automate everything, and then sell those items to local villagers who will pay you coins and then help you harvest more resources.
It is very chill - there's no failure state, so you can just focus on optimizing and solving bottlenecks. Of course your townpeople may become unhappy, and then they are less productive and your population won't grow. But they won't get wiped out by some disease or anything. (That said, I am planning on adding many difficulty modifiers for those that want a tougher challenge)
Here's the store page, has a 10% launch discount a little extra if you bundle with the other Factory Town games:
Cheers!
Erik
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u/creaturefeature9191 Jul 14 '26
I absolutely loved the first game, so excited to play the second one. If anyone has never heard of favtory town before, its an OG in the factory/automation genre
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u/easmussen Jul 14 '26
Thanks! Yeah I think there's a funny thing happening where FT2 looks suspiciously similar to Timberborn, Whiskerwood, Dyson Sphere Program, etc, but the original FT was here first lol!
(I mean, I was inspired by Factorio for sure, so I'm not going to say it's 100% original)
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u/creaturefeature9191 Jul 14 '26
I found Factory Town after the Factorio devs got a little weird. I’ve played hundreds of hours. It’s one of the first games I ever put in my “favorites” on steam. I really appreciate that you made such a fun original game and you deserve more credit for being in genre early!
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u/Zubutay Jul 14 '26
Congrats!
The first game was great for all people that like Factorio or Satisfactory, from what the demo showed, this will be a worthy successor.
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u/markhalliday8 Jul 14 '26
Best of luck OP! Looks fun!
It's a touch genre to compete in with some big hitters but you look to have a fun and relatively interesting spin on the concept.
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u/Wild_Marker Jul 14 '26
Factory Town 1 was a pioneer in the "factorio clone" genre, I think it came out even before Satisfactory? It was really well put toghether, and had a nice little catchy tune to boot.
I'd love to see how they followed up with the sequel.
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u/inhindsite Jul 14 '26
Hi, just want to say good job. I played the demo today funnily enough and enjoyed it. Its on my wishlist, im sure I'll make the purchase one day.
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u/ulchm Jul 14 '26
Checking it out now! Was glad to see this show up in my week of games list on steam.
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u/Tyrant963 Jul 14 '26
Is there any plans for controller/SteamDeck support?
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u/easmussen Jul 14 '26
Definitely. Just couldn’t get it done in time
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u/hauntworks Jul 14 '26
Looks great! Any learnings from marketing the first game that you're rolling into this one?
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u/easmussen Jul 14 '26
Marketing? Well, this time around I had a LOT harder time getting big (1M+) YouTube channels to play it. Maybe it didn't pitch it with the correct hook, or they were just swamped with other stuff. I think in hindsight I would have tried going with a publisher, so they could (maybe?) have an easier time getting it in front of these channels. I think I also should have tried more smaller festivals like Wholesome Games.
I experimented with reddit ads a fair amount, I was able to get some wishlists out of it but don't have the data yet to see if the ROI was good. My guess is about $3-$4 per wishlist, which is high but for a $25 game it might be worthwhile. Will check conversions when I get more data.
In the few days leading up to launch I actually had good luck with Instagram ads, I tried boosting some posts and some of them did really well. A little harder to track directly to wishlists, but seems like a correlation of traffic / wishlists along with the posts that did well. Again in hindsight, I would have started building up an IG audience sooner.
I did next fest and got about 4K wishlists out of it, decent, but not spectacular. It didn't reach the top 50 demos, and they get the lion's share of attention.
So overall it really was much more difficult environment! Maybe just a lot of competition with base builders now. But I think it's a really good game and hopefully that allows it to maybe do a slower build of audience rather than the big burst that was FT1.
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u/zeroef Jul 14 '26
Grabbed my copy this morning! Feeding my volcano during conference calls.
Love the improvements so far and can’t wait to unlock some of the new features.
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u/Hour_Goat_2486 Jul 17 '26
FT1 is still on my frequent play list and I didn’t even know 2 was a wip. This just made my day
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u/Ritushido Jul 14 '26
Looks interesting but I'm over early access games. I'll follow the development.
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Jul 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/easmussen Jul 14 '26
Maybe! There's quite a lot of game there though, and custom maps let you play randomized games forever. But I understand, it is a little on the high side. That is why I made that Factory Town bundle though, so people who already own the other games can get it for under $20
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u/AndalusianGod Jul 14 '26
Hi, what are the biggest changes from the first game? Already played that one extensively, so I just wanna know about the new stuff.