Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

I bought it last night and played for about 5 hours and can&#x27;t wait for my work day to end today to get back into it.<p>Overall, I&#x27;m pretty happy with it. Factory building with a dash of colony sim mechanics. My only criticism is that the tutorial is a bit lacking and basically info-dumps a lot of &quot;what&quot; without a lot of &quot;why&quot;. If I didn&#x27;t have experience with other factory building games, I&#x27;d probably be completely lost. It&#x27;d be nice if the game guided you more through the first couple tech tiers.<p>It was also a bit frustrating at first with how expensive conveyer belts are, but then I had a light-bulb moment where I accepted that this is not Factorio&#x2F;DSP&#x2F;Satisfactory, and that I don&#x27;t NEED conveyer belts everywhere. In the early game, trucks are cheap and can easily handle the load until I&#x27;ve got steady production of Construction Parts II.<p>The Recipe window is REALLY nice. I love it! It makes planning so easy! My only request would be to make it so you can click on a product and have it take you to the recipes involving it.<p>I also really like the design choice to not have to lay power lines everywhere. In other factory games, it&#x27;s such a chore and not at all a fun mechanic.<p>Looking forward to seeing how the game evolves over time.

Looks awesome! Congrats on the release, and it seems like you&#x27;re getting a pretty good reception so far as well.<p>A few questions:<p>1. How did you get all the assets for your game? Did you make them yourselves? I also work on games as a hobby, but I&#x27;m no artist so I struggle to get things looking as good as this game.<p>2. How did you decide to use Unity for your game engine? Did you consider any others, and if so, what was the deciding factor?<p>3. How did you organize your code in Unity, especially on a big, multi-year project like this? I find Unity scenes and prefabs get messy really fast. The only way around this I&#x27;ve found is to avoid using the scene&#x2F;prefab stuff as much as possible and just focus on doing stuff with code instead. But I&#x27;d love to hear any strategies you have.<p>4. (Probably most related to the art question) How did you decide to make the game 3d? It just seems a lot more difficult than 2d so it seems like indies tend to avoid 3d when possible. And it definitely seems possible for a top-dow-view strategy game.

I’m a sad. No Mac. :-(<p>Looks really good. Congrats man. 84% overwhelmingly positive isn’t anything to sneeze at too. The experience must have been amazing. I learned more about computers in developing games that were 1% of what you’ve done. No matter the financial outcome you are winning at nerd life, which is the only life that matters (other than to your spouse your family and friends).

<i>&gt;I also quite enjoy the added SWE challenges. I had to write so many complex algorithms (path-finding, logistics, serialization, ...) and optimize things down to bits (shaders, compression of in-memory data, ...) that were rarely required by my corp job.</i><p>If you ever need a reprieve or change of pace and want to write some words instead of code, do consider writing an engineering blog about how you designed and built it. Factorio&#x27;s blog has been an enjoyable read, seems like a similar one by you guys would be as well.

Congrats on the release. It looks really solid from the video, I&#x27;ll probably pick up a copy soonish. I hope it does end up being a good financial decision for you.<p>I used to be in the game industry a long time ago, and while I&#x27;m no longer in it I still try to work on game in Unity (turn based strategy game right now) with my very limited energy in my spare time. I&#x27;ve been out of the whole industry long enough I don&#x27;t really even know where to chat and bounce ideas off of other indie devs, or find people to work with. Some Discord channels? Itch.io forums?<p>About how much did you have saved up to take that year leap to work on it full time? How far along were you? At some point I&#x27;d like to make a similar leap but I don&#x27;t think I have enough cushion built up to do that yet.<p>Also at one point did you decide the game was good enough to put up on Early Access? Core game loop? Core game loop plus certain nice to have features?

This looks super fun! Congrats on the release and hope you continue to grow the game though early access.<p>Just for fun took a stab at rewording the game description following some tips I saw in a GDC talk on Steam store pages years ago, feel free to use any pieces if helpful. I&#x27;ll try to find that talk link when I&#x27;m at a computer, it had some nice tips around not leading with a game category but rather very specific flavor hooks.<p>&gt; Colonize, then mechanize! Land your crew of sea-stranded survivors in an exciting natural paradise... and survive! Build, explore and exploit the local environment to truly thrive. Can you automate your way to a space-faring industrial civilization? Or will every last settler perish at your hands...

Congratulations and all the best for your venture!<p>One of my favorite aspects of Factorio was that the environment constrained your scaling. Grow out too fast and your tech won&#x27;t be able to hold back the evolved hordes. Build too far away before you can defend it and it you&#x27;ll be defending too far and wide before you even know it.<p>@iliketrains May I ask if this game will have an environmental component&#x2F;conflict to constrain the player scaling various concerns and prevent it from becoming a uneventful sim?

Any plans for a Linux build?<p>Made the mistake of watching the trailer before looking if I can even run it. One of the best trailers I&#x27;ve seen on Steam! They&#x27;re usually only about backstory with concept art and zero idea about what the game will actually be like to play. This could still have shown more UI, but at least the game itself was there the whole time and I feel like I have a good idea whether I&#x27;d like it :)

Hey, This looks super cool from the videos, and exactly the sort of thing I&#x27;d love to play. Would love a Linux build so I can play it though, haven&#x27;t needed a Windows VM in ages.<p>Added to wish list for whenever you release that! (I thought modern game development was cross platform these days?)

I purchased a copy of your supporter edition before I even finished reading.<p>Part poor impulse control, part believing in the HN filter, part doing my part to support idealistic founders putting their time and opportunity where their mouth is.<p>I hope that you find great success.

Congratulations on the release! Building a game to some often elusive sense of completion is harder than some think. You should feel proud and take some time to bask in the nice feeling of finally having it out there.

Huge factorio&#x2F;satisfactory fan so I can’t wait to get home and try this.<p>Would you mind sharing a high level number on how much it cost to buy all of the art for the game? I saw you mention around $500 per model in another comment but I’m having trouble deciding how many models went into a project like this.

Question. Can I make a crane lift a crane?<p>In the spirit of: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;HDG6mdB.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;HDG6mdB.jpg</a>

Great job and everything to get so far!<p>I like that you actually mine the stuff in the style of mines you use and the stuff is getting removed visually.<p>What i find disappointing is the trucks&#x2F;vehicles not needing any streets. I&#x27;m not sure if it would make the game more interesting or not though but that i have to build a bridge over a pipe for the trucks but the trucks just drive through each other... not liking it :D

This is very good! It&#x27;s Factorio, but even better because... it has trucks!! :D My son loves trucks so it&#x27;s fun to see the little trucks going around and doing stuff.<p>Good game, although a bit pricey.

Just noting that I have interest in multiplayer support similar to Factorio or Satisfactory where players work towards a common goal, and also have purchased with that not being a feature per the road map. These types of games make for good time passers while conversating with distant friends.

Looks really fun! Any hope of multiplayer (even just LAN) coming soon? My son and I can easily waste a weekend on the couch playing Factorio together. This could be another bonding&#x2F;time waster for us.

Congrats on a huge achievement! The game looks highly legit<p>And now you&#x27;re set to get a good job in the game industry, working on these kinds of more interesting challenges, if you decide you are tired of the indie life

Just came here to say congratulations! Releasing a game is a real accomplishment and you should be very proud.<p>Well done!!!

Congratulations! I&#x27;ve had my eye on this game for a while this post + your story motivated me to buy it.<p>I&#x27;d be interested to hear what kinds of resources you found most helpful in getting something like this to a shipped state. I&#x27;ve never worked on a game before but having played factorio, DSP, and satisfactory I&#x27;ve had a lot of ideas &#x2F; my own views on the genre. There&#x27;s definitely room in the market still and I think you will be able to find success, especially as a two person shop. Congrats again.

Looks nice! Would buy if it was on GoG or Itch. Do you plan to release the game outside of Steam?

Things have come a long way from the days of Taipan[0]. If any of you remember it?<p>[0]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;taipangame.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;taipangame.com&#x2F;</a>

Wow! Looks super well polished. Did you create the art assets in house or contract them out? What 3D engine are you using?<p>PS. I think I could just watch the excavator digging holes all day.

There are some basic things broken in the graphics engine:<p>1) Turning vsync &quot;on&quot; doesn&#x27;t have the intended effect. There&#x27;s still <i>very</i> visible tearing half way down the screen.<p>2) Turning vsync on in combination with full-screen mode results in a <i>hideous</i> stuttering when turning the viewport with the mouse. It looks like you got the swap chain sequence.. backwards? As in... swapping the &quot;most recent&quot; frame.. and then an <i>older</i> frame!? Or something like that. It&#x27;s literally stuttering back-and-forth making my eyes bleed. It is also inconsistent: switching in and out of borderless windowed mode changes the behaviour.<p>3) The GUI scale setting is weird by default (140%!?), and is ignored for some UI elements. Do you test with 4K monitors?<p>4) Lots of GUI glitches. E.g.: clicking the tabs in the settings window will make it disappear for a moment and reappear.<p>5) The game continues to use 100% GPU even when I alt-tab out to the desktop<p>6) I have a 60 Hz monitor. The game generates more GPU load (75% vs 60%) with vsync enabled than if I use the &quot;limit to 60 fps&quot; mode, which confirms that the vsync setting is doing something very wrong. These two modes should produce identical GPU load.<p>7) Hovering the cursor over some in-game UI elements causes alternating-frame flicker. E.g. the &quot;Right click &amp; drag to remove existing designations&quot; orange mouse icon thing.<p>As a former game engine developer, my advice is that with both DirectX and OpenGL there is generally only &quot;one right way&quot; to do certain things such as managing a swap chain. Yet, somehow, game developers manage to get this consistently wrong and never seem to test&#x2F;fix it.<p>Test, test, test! Plug in multiple monitors. With <i>different</i> resolutions. Drag your game around between them. Try laptops with hybrid (NVIDIA+Intel) GPUs. Use a HDR monitor. Use one of those laptops with a hybrid card and unplug the power while your game is running. Plug the power back in. Change your desktop resolution <i>while</i> your game is running. Try to get 10-bit working. Try to get the game to look <i>identical</i> even on wide-gamut monitors. Etc...<p>Iron out these bugs through acid tests. You will <i>never</i> notice real bugs otherwise, because it&#x27;s too easy to get stuck in some &quot;happy path&quot; rut, such as testing with a single 1080p monitor.<p>Non-graphics related feedback:<p>&quot;Unsaved progress will be lost!&quot;<p>&quot;What year is this!? Am I stuck in 1990 again?&quot;

Hey! Nice game, I Will buy it after work!! Congrats!<p>Now, some question about steam:<p>How they fix the price based on each country (here I can see the price at u$ 3.5). how is the deal with them?, that is the price for all the countries or you fix a global price and they make the cut?<p>I&#x27;m asking because I&#x27;m moving to USA and I&#x27;m staking games here in Argentina because the prices are, sometimes, 10 times cheaper.

Real, solid, genuine, wonderful heartfelt congrats on shipping. I know how totally and deeply to-the-core satisfying it is to put a labor of love out into the world (and a bonus for it to get a positive reception), so I wish you all the best. I&#x27;ve followed on Steam to keep track of progress! (And when&#x2F;if a Mac version emerges, I shall acquire).<p>Best of luck and rock on!

This looks great and I&#x27;ll probably buy it. Well done!<p>I&#x27;ve dabbled with games in the past. I&#x27;d be interested in a course about how you structured your code, got assets created, lessons you learnt, etc.<p>While I could write a game I don&#x27;t have time to learn <i>how</i> to write a game (i.e. I don&#x27;t want to spend 6 years learning the lessons you learnt along the way).

Neat game, looks fun. Congratulations on launching!<p>It made me sad to see the island torn up by polluting industries. I would be more excited about the game if there was a sustainability angle... maybe that could be an expansion pack? You use current-gen tech to survive and get moving, you trash the place, then you rebuild and transition to something sustainable.

Maybe you&#x27;ve done this already, but here&#x27;s an idea. A factory consists of units that follow simple, or not so simple, instructions. For example, a truck unit does the truck thing: once let into the wild, it starts transporting stuff from A to B. You don&#x27;t neef to direct it manually, you only give it a direction and keeps doing that forever. Some units are programmable: you can change their instructions, and they&#x27;ll follow them. You can make units of hostile nature: trucks that steal stuff, builders that are reprogrammed to disassemble your neighbor&#x27;s factory, units that are tasked with destroying hostile trucks amd so on. The goal is to get intetesting emergent behavior. Instructions are executed one step at a time, at fixed pace, so a poorly programmed unit would appear stuck. To simplify the ramp up for beginners, there are a few pre-fab factories with a stable crew of units.

Congrats on the release! 6 years is a lot of time, but such is life for bootstrappers. I&#x27;m working on a desktop app, it may take some 4 - 5 years total to launch it, 4 - 5 years to get some 5,000h put into it - (I could probably do better but my self funding strategy was inefficient - part-time freelancing, now working to change it to get a full-time job and similarly live off savings for 1 year before the launch).<p>I never did game development but kinda wish that I started my career with that rather than apps. It must be really exciting to build words and implement all that complex algorithmic stuff, but I got too much momentum with apps, maybe in another life :)<p>Did you track your time? Can you share how much hours more or less you put into it, or at least how it changed when you went full time? Did you do more than 50% of the work in the last year of going full time?

Picked CoI up last night after reading this post and played it for a good few hours. I&#x27;m quite enjoying it so far! I&#x27;m barely into making my own electronics and I&#x27;m already planning out how I&#x27;ll bench my open pit mines.<p>My only real gripe so far is pipes, and how they can be fiddly about adding junctions or expanding them. E.G. you must install pipes in the correct sequence to be able to get junctions and elevation changes the way you want. Otherwise, trying to splice a pipe onto an existing one at the beginning of an elevation change will not work due to the existing pipe beginning to ramp. Yet if you do the junction first, and then tee-off for the ramp, it&#x27;ll work fine.<p>E: Coal seems over-subscribed, at least early on. Needed for smelting, to make cement, to make diesel, and again to make rubber from diesel?

Ha, I saw this in my queue on Steam yesterday, it definitly drew my attention. Congratulations on your achievement!

I&#x27;m not really a gamer. You are here and I saw the video. I have been yearning to start some strategy game. Bought it, and will try to play. I hope you have a little happy dance for my tiny purchase too. I know the feeling. Best of luck.<p>Edit: Well, it says it is not available on my Platform!

Well that looks like a pretty variant on a factory-builder! I quite enjoyed the intro video. If you eventually end up with a Mac version I&#x27;d happy buy a copy. Either way, though, congrats on your progress! Releasing a full game that people enjoy is a great accomplishment!

I&#x27;m loving this huge wave of indie factorio-likes! Keep up the great work. Your game looks great!

Why does everyone now have to drop F-bombs in everything, even if beeped. The main promo video: &quot;Those f*king pirates!&quot;. Makes me not want to support the game. I know it&#x27;s petty or prude but it&#x27;s just not edgy anymore, just kinda dumb.

Awesome! It&#x27;s so cool seeing you post this here, because I&#x27;ve been excited about this game since I learned about it a few days ago. I hope it&#x27;s successful!<p>As a question, what games inspired this one? How many hours have you put into factorio?

I am in love with this game. As a hardcore Factorio user, I see this as a refreshing change in my addiction.<p>Also I am an amateur game dev and I plan to have some sort of MVP by Q2 2023, at least something that shows the key aspects of the game.

Seems to be the shit!!! Awesome, congrats!!<p>And bought it already!

Congratulations! This looks awesome!<p>I think this is very inspiring. I have always wanted to have an impactful side project. But every time I ran into some technical difficulties, I seek for an alternative idea. I ended up having many prototypes, instead of a single solid implementation that can be called a product.<p>I often see other smarter people can stick to an idea for years to deliver something really awesome. This is what I should do. I need to calm down and be patient.<p>I only have one question, for indie game development, how to get high quality game assets cost effectively? Did you learn to diy everything, or you purchase&#x2F;outsource the work?<p>Thanks.

Oh the Czechs, also know as the factory game makers from now on.<p>Just kidding. Great game. Congratulations for successful release! It is tough sometimes quitting a well paid job and making what you love. Been there. Wish you success!

Any chance you&#x27;ll release outside of Steam? Add one vote for Mac as well.

The difficulty is nicely balanced. I mean I had to restart 3 times and new issues keep blowing up when you just solve the previous ones. Exactly why I expect from highest difficulty setting.

One comment on your website copy: consider changing “farm” to “grow crops” as it might confuse some people into thinking it has some kind of horrible FarmVille-like mechanic to the game.

Looks very cool, but I’ll have to wait for a Mac version. Good luck.

Cool!<p>How did you handle it between money, work and your spare time?<p>Are you happy with your work work life balance?<p>Have you tried a publisher?<p>What financial expectations do you have for being able to keep on it?<p>How do you balance family and friends?

Congrats on release, legit game.<p>My initial reaction is negative. I have really bad vibes with oil&#x2F;gas industry mining and pollution. So now i&#x27;m wondering if there is a market for this same kinda game but its all renewable industries. Sustainable crop rotating farms, fog collection water source, planted forest for wood construction, public transport for workers, wind&#x2F;solar power everywhere.

Congratulations! I&#x27;ve seen some Factorio and Satisfactory players&#x27; videos about this game. Looks really impressive for such a small team.

I don&#x27;t have access to a Windows PC. Is it possible to compile it to Linux or have it accessible on GeforceNow?<p>It really looks like my kind of game.

Honest question: how much did prison architect and their work inspire you, in terms of solutions to engineering problems?

Looks amazing, would love a port to Nintendo Switch, though I understand that might be very unrealistic.

Thanks for sharing this, very refreshing to see a new contender in the simulation space, rather than just another Tropico, anno, civilisation, etc.<p>I purchased immediately!<p>I also look forward to seeing the changes over time like how I have watched Factorio evolve over the last many many years.

Good for you and your friend to actually release a game after 6years, it&#x27;s a long journey.

How far along with the game were you when you decided to quit your jobs?<p>The video&#x27;s had no sound, correct?

I am currently on break from playing video games, but I will buy your game today and save it for when my digital detox is over.<p>You learned more by writing those algos than your corporate job would have done you :-)<p>Congrats on releasing your baby!

I&#x27;m going to buy this game after work. I&#x27;m a big fan of these kind of games combined with trading and a paradigm for competition&#x2F;cooperation with ally regions. Thanks for sharing!

Phenomenal job on the video. Loved it, buying the game. Best of luck!

Congrats on the release.<p>This might sound harsh: You had my undivided attention for 6 paragraphs and I have zero clue what your game is like, or why I should care to find out.

Literally bought with the bonus pack a moment ago, looks great, the reviews on here and Steam are compelling. Looking forward to seeing how it goes!<p>Congrats on the launch &lt;3

Congratulations! Which game engine have you chosen and why?

After spending literally months playing Satisfactory and RimWorld with friends over the past few years, if this had a coop element, we would be all over it.

i&#x27;ll checkout the game!<p>don&#x27;t worry too much about making money, else you&#x27;ll lose your focus<p>consider this: you produced an asset which is more valuable than just money: 1) IP for the game 2) knowledge from building the game 3) happiness from working on a product people really care about<p>nobody can take it away from you, nobody can reduce the worth of that asset<p>what you put into the game is still in the game<p>also a tip: if you have more ideas, do them now, because later you may not be able to

I&#x27;m on a work trip and can&#x27;t play until I get back, but I added it to my wishlist as a reminder to get it. I love this kind of game.

Looks great. I don&#x27;t play games much, but when I do it&#x27;s things like Factorio and Rimworld, so this looks really fun to me.<p>Does it run on Linux?

Very nice! Which language the game is written in?

Looks awesome. I wish it weren’t Windows only.

Looks great, I would love to test it out. Is an iOS&#x2F;iPadOS release scheduled for the near future?

Looks good, that type of game is right up my alley!<p>I&#x27;m adding another vote for GOG and macOs support though :)

That&#x27;s exciting. I&#x27;ve been seeing a number of people streaming the game on twitch.

Unbelievable that two guys can do such a huge thing. I can&#x27;t wait to try it.

It reminds me a bit of Warzone 2100, which I wasted too many hours on as a kid :)

Congratulations on release. Are there any plans to release a demo?

When do you plan to release the final (non early access) version?

It reminds me Age of Empires... I think I&#x27;ll give it a try

Is there nuclear power?

This is exactly my kind of game, thank you for making this!

Looks cool, purchased.

I didn&#x27;t really look into the game itself yet, but if you allow me a suggestion, it would be to hire a translator for the description of the game in French, because the Google Translate is quite obvious :D

IT looks really fun!

Great work! An inspiration to be certain.

I will buy if MacOS support!

That looks awsome, kudoz :)

Oh yes please, I love economy game, big fan of Capitalism II way back when.<p>Will be giving this a spin for sure.<p>Great work getting this out to a steam release.

What&#x27;s the elevator pitch for this game? &quot;Factorio meets Civilization&quot;?

This looks great!

Mac OS release?

That’s dope

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com&#x2F;app&#x2F;1594320&#x2F;Captain_of_Industry&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com&#x2F;app&#x2F;1594320&#x2F;Captain_of_Indust...</a>

LOL Windows only. No thanks.

Reminds me a little bit of Ostriv game: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com</a>

Although I&#x27;m really impressed by your work (I know what it is to spend so many years on a &quot;side&quot; project), I can&#x27;t help but feel that in this day and age of global climate&#x2F;environmental crisis, making the apology of &quot;10000 tons of diplomacy&quot;, &quot;resource consumption&quot; and overall expansion at any price is a bit, well, unfortunate. I think nowadays indie games are strong enough to carry a message....

Hey! I have a bug report, related to downloading via Steam. I just purchased the game, but it won&#x27;t finish downloading. It says &quot;Missing downloaded files&quot;. I have retried multiple times. My drives are not full.<p>Here&#x27;s a screenshot: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thatsne.at&#x2F;file&#x2F;buipxq.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thatsne.at&#x2F;file&#x2F;buipxq.png</a><p>The game looks great by the way. Really good promotional material! My friends and I can&#x27;t wait to try it.

Oh man, yet another Windows only game! I haven&#x27;t owned or used a Windows system. I would love to play&#x2F;pay for this game or Anno-1800 and few others.<p>Is the Mac&#x2F;Linux community still so small that no one cares about it? I&#x27;d think with all the noise &amp; competition for Windows gamers, surely there&#x27;s an untapped market of other OS gamers!<p>The reason I love a similar style game, Factorio, is that it runs on Mac and other platforms!