Foundry: just me and my drill building our own little world

Foundry is what you’d expect the lovechild of Satisfactory and Minecraft to be like. The indie game was released in Early Access on 2 May 2024. It provides a sandbox of procedurally generated maps where you can live your passion for factory building. While the block-like landscape is reminiscent of Minecraft, the first-person factory construction and open world trigger Satisfactory feelings. Maybe the Dyson Sphere Program was also involved in spawning this lovechild. After all, the design of various facilities, the research tree and the fact you play a mechanic are reminiscent of it.

What’s the drill?

In Foundry, constructing huge factory complexes also begins with a mining tool and two different ore deposits. As a Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere veteran, I’m familiar with the principle. So I jump out of my landing capsule right after starting a new game state. An untouched, idyllic landscape with strange trees and bushes greets me. I’ll soon be turning this organic chaos into a tidy, well-organised industrial site.

The drill in my hand will be assisting me. At first, I mine for ores myself, only to turn them into equipment that’ll do the work for me in future. The tutorial shows me how to place an automated mine next to the two ore deposits. As soon as the mine is supplied with electricity from biomass – i.e. those trees and bushes I was talking about – four small drones fly out of the building and start extracting ore.

These are later processed into bars or sheets in a melting furnace. A conveyor belt between the mine and the melting furnace are in charge of transporting it, while loaders lift the parts from the building onto the conveyor belt and from there into the target building.

Think big!

Foundry makes no secret of the fact I should think big from the get-go. One furnace isn’t enough. The tutorial AI tells me to connect eight furnaces in a row to the mine. This means you’ve got to think about how you’ll feed the supply conveyor belt to the machines and how the finished products will be conveyed out right from the start. If you’re familiar with other automation games, you’ll have an easier time here.

Building factories in first-person view is no fun in Satisfactory, and things are no different in Foundry. I curse every time I fall off a wall because I took a step back to place a new plant. Building is also quite fiddly in parts. That’s the price you pay for three-dimensional construction from first-person perspective. At first, I couldn’t imagine creating a mega-complex in this way, but it gets much better over the course of the first few hours.

The relaxing music helps me ease into the game, as it suppresses the angry feelings I’m getting about the construction system. After a few hours, the first production lines are clattering away, supplying my science stations with research packages. In the research tree, I select which new construction plans and product schema I want to unlock next.

Genius or annoying? The energy transfer

Every decent factory needs power. But the question: how do you get power from the generator to the consumers? In Foundry, it’s through foundation blocks. A machine merely has to be standing on the same foundation system as a generator; regardless of how far apart the two buildings are. This spares you having to manually hook up each machine to electricity pylons as you do in Satisfactory or to the flood of Tesla towers featured in Dyson Sphere Program.

In fact, it’s enough to connect different foundation levels with a row of blocks. This means blocks take on the job of a cable. I quickly realise I can bury blocks in the ground and use them as an invisible power connection.

The system’s interesting, but fiddly at times. You can’t tell by looking at the foundation blocks if they’re hooked up to power. This makes troubleshooting difficult, especially if you need to uncover these quasi cables first. And if you have to set up a charger just a few metres away from the rest of the infrastructure – let’s say for an external warehouse – the effort this involves is disproportionately high. Those are the moments I wish the pylons from Satisfactory were back.

Having said that, the system does encourage you to immediately cover the surrounding area with foundations. This connects everything without compromise and you no longer have to look at the lush nature.

Creating my own little world

Speaking of nature. My drill also serves to tear through my surroundings. I don’t just mine ore with it, I also drill through trees and the ground. In the first few minutes of the game, I gingerly work away at the trees with my drill. After all, I don’t want to disturb nature too much. But my biomass generators are always demanding supplies, and I start losing my initial reluctance. I’m a robot, I don’t need nature. Slightly embarrassed, I later replant the few seeds some doomed plants have left behind a little further away.

In true Minecraft manner, the landscape consists of blocks I can shred with the drill and reuse elsewhere. Foundry is all about shaping the world to my own taste. And if I so wanted, I could hollow out the ground and move my factory underground. Or I could build a skyscraper factory. A gameplay trailer revealed that there are elevators later on in the game for transporting resources and myself up or down. Foundry provides numerous decoration modules to add stairs, lights, railings, paths, doors and more to your factories.

Incidentally, the game runs very well for Early Access. I haven’t experienced any bugs yet and there’s already a lot of content. I didn’t come across any work-in-progress indicators or missing research during the first few hours of playing. The roadmap for further development mainly lists improvements for the advanced game, such as additional transportation options.

Like Satisfactory with more freedom

After my first few hours of playing, my first impression’s confirmed. Foundry hasn’t reinvented the wheel, but it’s got a lot of things right. The game offers laid-back construction work with relaxing music and puzzles to solve. Although the graphics of Foundry doesn’t even come close to the beauty of Satisfactory, the manipulable environment and procedurally generated maps make up for this. However, the game could do with a little fine-tuning – not least the dull-looking interface, for example.

There’s also a co-op mode, but I didn’t test it. According to the developer, there’s currently no limit to the maximum number of players.

Foundry was released in Early Access on Steam on 2 May 2024. The game was provided to me by Paradox Interactive for testing purposes.