Fay’s Factory – Early Access

• DEVELOPER: egor dorogov
• PUBLISHER: egor dorogov
• PLATFORMS: PC
• GENRE: Turn-based strategy
• RELEASE DATE: May 8, 2024
• STARTING PRICE: 19,99€
• REVIEWED VERSION: PC

Fay's Factory is a story-driven strategic deck-building game where we'll craft spells to battle in duels on our travels through the Hundred Kingdom. Precisely, the game combines elements of managing and planning a factory, where various machines are used to create magic. We will design our own character who is hired to work for the sorceress Fay where fantasy and capitalism are intertwined. Fay's Factory was released in the Early Access edition where it will remain for about a year. This version contains almost all the planned mechanics: building a factory, dueling, talking to characters and completing tasks, dealing with stress, changing your character and decorating your house.

In terms of content, Early Access includes the first chapter, which contains three large adventures, four side missions, and several smaller tasks to complete. The story in its essence was quite striking. It was interesting to see how the world of fantasy intertwines with some more modern ideas. Namely, sorcery has just been invented and is rapidly changing the world, and everyone has many ideas on how to make the best use of it. You can expect a very detailed story with a large number of characters, but also interesting locations. However, most of the dialogue seemed "empty", mainly serving to better understand the story and characters, and all of that was often predictable. Unfortunately, I didn't feel connected to any of the characters in the game as most were fleeting. Fay stands out the most, that is, the whole story revolves around her and her guild, which you have to enrich and make famous.

Within the story, you will often be faced with various decisions. Some of the key decisions are locked behind dice rolls, where success is determined by a percentage, and you can increase that percentage by collecting clues throughout your journey. On the other hand, there are also numerous side decisions that, although they can unlock mini-games, generally do not significantly affect the main story. For example, you can decide to help the fishermen with their restaurant, even though you are being chased by bounty hunters at the same time. It seems a little crazy to insert such a segment into that part of the story, but it's not really necessary to help them. There were also a lot of questionable parts of the story, for example, I committed a crime, but no one punished me and there were no consequences. Unfortunately, most of the dialogue was irrelevant, so you could easily just skip over it. What stands out personally is that after losing or winning duels, the game takes on a slightly different course, and the world dynamically changes depending on how everything unfolded.

I really like the look of the map we use to travel around the world. Traveling from one end to the other is very easy, and the interaction with the environment is brilliantly executed. Although I wish there were more elements that would directly affect the game, such as the one where you can push the train, nevertheless it was still fun to explore and click on various things and read the texts that appear. Sometimes it was important to click on different items to get certain clues, but often that segment was pretty lacking. I believe that will change.

One of the most interesting aspects of this game is the simple turn-based battles where you use magic that you create yourself. You have your own factory with several machines, each with its own abilities. You'll often inject ice, fire, electricity, or coins into these machines to attack or use various effects, such as changing elements or directly affecting enemies, for example, stopping their machines. Thinking about the strategy of how to best use certain moves makes the game interesting, and you can upgrade each machine, either to cause more damage or allow more uses. However, you have to be careful because you are limited in this department, and enemies will often be stronger than you. It is up to you to make the best of the situation.

Changing the screen in the game is rather intuitive. By scrolling your mouse, you can quickly access your factory or see what your enemy has. Of course, you can't install all the machines, which means you have to choose carefully. Some machines, like the cannon, can affect others, so if you fire one, it will move back one tile in order for it to work successfully. There is also a mechanism for coping with stress, which is still not entirely clear to me. You can drink wine or eat a sandwich, but I'm not sure why or what it's for.

The quests are very easy to access, however I did experience a bug where the day would keep repeating despite selecting a new quest to tackle. Resetting the game seems to fix the issue. Also, you can choose whether to solve side quests or focus only on the main story. Every day you usually come back to your house, which you can also decorate. It would be great if there were more buildings that we can enter to explore or unlock different machines in other ways than just through quests.

Fay’s Factory also has an extremely beautiful aesthetic. The graphics are polished, and the details give it a special charm. The position of the characters on the board is particularly interesting, which creates the impression that we are playing a tabletop game, not a PC game. All things considered, this is a title still in Early Access. The story is not finished, some ambitious features are missing and the project seems to be quite original. The text can also be quite vulgar and contain funny moments and responses. Ultimately, I personally believe that Fay's Factory brings something unique and new, and you won't be wasting your time if you decide to try it.

Review copy provided by the publisher