The factory must grow, recursively. One-person indie dev Tiny Root Studio announced a new factory builder/automation game called Fractal Foundry. It’s actually self-explanatory, you build factories to create fractal structures.
If you’re not informed on the mathematical concept of fractals, Fractal Foundry looks like a factory builder not too dissimilar to the recently released Shapez 2. Maybe with less pizzaz as the operation nodes don’t have any fancy animation.
But look inside any of those nodes of the assembly line and you’ll find more assembly lines. Some are even nested or recursive. That’s like a painting that has a frame of that same painting which also has a frame of that same painting (ad infinitum), or like when you are previewing the desktop recording on OBS while the OBS window is on said desktop, producing an infinite window of that desktop.
That’s the magic Fractal Foundry is bringing that isn’t quite like other factory builders. You’ll be building reusable loops, conditions (there are yes-no logic gates) and variables to create these fractal megastructures. The example seen in the trailer is how you build a pyramid that’s part of a bigger pyramid that’s part of an even bigger pyramid, and you can see how the recursive loops keep on going.
While Shapez 2 will make you think of modularity, and plan in the micro and macro scale, Fractal Foundry here will inadvertently teach you maths and programming.
Fractal Foundry is aimed for a chill automation experience, in that there’s no cost, timers and penalties to building. You are free to build your fractal-making machine as elegant or as chaotic of a spaghetti mess as you like. As long as the factory inside the factory inside a factory keeps making cubes within cubes within cubes, you’re good.
Fractal Foundry is targeting a 2027 release window and is coming to PC (Steam).