You can now turn your Factorio Space Age empires into constellations via the Galaxy of Fame
Complete Factorio’s Space Age DLC and – feelings of acute megalomania aside – you will be able to upload a snapshot of your game to the “Galaxy of Fame”, this being a digital night sky from which your cataclysmic industrial exploits shall gaze down eternally, for the instruction and/or disillusionment of tomorrow’s factory builders.
The star map, which you can check out here, is developer Wube Software’s “last little surprise for Space Age”, which launched earlier this week. You’ll be prompted to upload your game to it once you’ve reached interstellar space. It lets you save general map info, such as time played, together with a chart view of planets and platforms and your item, energy and kill stats. You can update your solar system once you’ve enshrined it for posterity, but be aware that each player can only have one star at once.
“You can browse around and see other peoples factories and see how they work,” the developers continue. “You might notice that some of the maps look a bit suspicious, well at this time we aren’t blocking saves that use cheats/commands/editor, as we don’t want to be overly restrictive, but we will add some filtering options soon.”
I’m posting this partly because a lot of people are playing Factorio right now – the Space Age DLC has gone down a treat on Steam – and partly because I enjoy fanciful attempts at preserving player accomplishments in games. The Galaxy of Fame reminds me of Noctis, the amazing experimental space exploration sim with some of the loveliest prismatic effects I’ve ever seen in a game.
Released over two decades ago, it allowed players to name the planets they discovered and share them in the form of an old-school database. You can still download those files with the app and visit the worlds in question. I wonder if Factorio’s cyclopean assembly lines will command similar nostalgia, in 20 years time.