Episode 168 - Should the Chip Face North? - Infinifactory

There is surprisingly little use for the podcast block. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, the dice have ordained we talk about Infinifactory. This is a game that has been on our list for many years at this point and the main reason we ended up putting it on the (now comical misnomer) Mystery May table was mostly out of fear. Fear of exposing our deep inability to play puzzle games with any kind of ability. Infinifactory is a game by Zachtronics, who are known for creating this sort of puzzle game in which you create machines to accomplish a task. This happens to be one of their most literal. Tasked with creating factories that create specific outputs from a never ending conveyor of inputs in the form of blocks. Using a litany of different tools including welders, rotators and pushers, you orient blocks and combine them together. This ramps up in complexity shockingly quickly and it’s both impressive and intimidating, as the objects you create become less abstract and more like actual things. This plays into the game’s thematic elements as you are creating these products for an alien race under duress. This plays into the visual and interstitial elements of the game, but also into a surprising narrative. Less surprising because of its content, more due to its existence at all. We’re going to be talking about our struggles with the game as it progressed, the relaxed atmosphere of the game, and how difficult it sometimes is to buy burritos. Thank you for joining us again this week! We may have been slightly out of our depth in the second half of this game, but we wanted to play it because it is, at first glance, the most approachable of Zachtronics’ games. And this largely bore out. Are you a long-time Zachtronics fan, or do you find these games kind of unapproachable? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we do not get to rest our brains, as we are playing Obduction, from the creators of Myst and following very much in its footsteps, so if you aren’t as mentally exhausted as we are, we hope you’ll join us for that.