Have you ever been to a new, secluded restaurant and ordered a cheap meal, expecting nothing more than to fill your stomach and being served mouth watering food? That's Mindustry. At a very affordable $6 USD, Mindustry presents itself as a sandbox tower defence game, somewhat similar to Factorio. With simpler graphics and a cheaper price tag, it's easy to think of the game as just that - A simpler Factorio clone. However, in its simplicity Mindustry has the ability to create late game complexity that will draw you in for hours on end.

As players progress through the simple but helpful campaign, where they'll collect resources to unlock more structures in the tech tree, unique problems will start to arise. Bosses will appear without warning, ruining what could be hours of setup in seconds of unexpected firefight. Eventually the basic defences you set up won't be enough to hold on the increasing difficulty of enemy waves, and swarms of enemies could trample upon you while you quietly design factories near your core. Even late game, when you've finally started getting strong defences, constant power supply, and efficient resource production set up, you'll still have the issue of space - The map is limited in size, and eventually there won't be enough room to add that extra tower where you need. Managing your countless item and power production setups in the cramped map late game becomes it's own enjoyable challenge. Players will go from learning how each tower works to learning how they can compact each design they make, trying to top each previous session's best wave.

The tech tree itself creates a fun environment for early game progression. In any normal survival game, the aim would be simply to keep going until you drop. However, the tech tree requires items collected in game to be used for unlocking new structures, and these items can't be used unless they are "launched" either through a mid game structure, or through "launching" your core and effectively leaving the current world with all of your current resources. This creates the challenge of managing how long you can survive and when you need to launch. With launching being limited to every 5, 10, and 15 rounds depending on how far in you've progressed, skipping the opportunity to launch brings a big risk of losing every item in the core and having to collect the same items all over again.

There are also a host of other fun features - PvP against friends, trying to break each players core, Multiplayer servers for survival with friends, and a large variety of workshop content - Custom maps and mods for new structures to experiment with.

Personally, I haven't even touched the workshop content yet. With 60 hours in the game, I've finally unlocked all the structures in the tech tree and am still powering through the final world I did it in, at 488 waves and 16 hours. At the price Mindustry sells at, and with the sales it occasionally has, this is a must recommend for anyone looking into a "tech" style tower defence game.

Have you ever been to a new, secluded restaurant and ordered a cheap meal, expecting nothing more than to fill your stomach and being served mouth watering food? That's Mindustry. At a very affordable $6 USD, Mindustry presents itself as a sandbox tower defence game, somewhat similar to Factorio. With simpler graphics and a cheaper price tag, it's easy to think of the game as just that - A simpler Factorio clone. However, in its simplicity Mindustry has the ability to create late game complexity that will draw you in for hours on end. As players progress through the simple but helpful campaign, where they'll collect resources to unlock more structures in the tech tree, unique problems will start to arise. Bosses will appear without warning, ruining what could be hours of setup in seconds of unexpected firefight. Eventually the basic defences you set up won't be enough to hold on the increasing difficulty of enemy waves, and swarms of enemies could trample upon you while you quietly design factories near your core. Even late game, when you've finally started getting strong defences, constant power supply, and efficient resource production set up, you'll still have the issue of space - The map is limited in size, and eventually there won't be enough room to add that extra tower where you need. Managing your countless item and power production setups in the cramped map late game becomes it's own enjoyable challenge. Players will go from learning how each tower works to learning how they can compact each design they make, trying to top each previous session's best wave. The tech tree itself creates a fun environment for early game progression. In any normal survival game, the aim would be simply to keep going until you drop. However, the tech tree requires items collected in game to be used for unlocking new structures, and these items can't be used unless they are "launched" either through a mid game structure, or through "launching" your core and effectively leaving the current world with all of your current resources. This creates the challenge of managing how long you can survive and when you need to launch. With launching being limited to every 5, 10, and 15 rounds depending on how far in you've progressed, skipping the opportunity to launch brings a big risk of losing every item in the core and having to collect the same items all over again. There are also a host of other fun features - PvP against friends, trying to break each players core, Multiplayer servers for survival with friends, and a large variety of workshop content - Custom maps and mods for new structures to experiment with. Personally, I haven't even touched the workshop content yet. With 60 hours in the game, I've finally unlocked all the structures in the tech tree and am still powering through the final world I did it in, at 488 waves and 16 hours. At the price Mindustry sells at, and with the sales it occasionally has, this is a must recommend for anyone looking into a "tech" style tower defence game.