I’m about 100 hours into Satisfactory in the past two weeks, which is either a concerning amount of screen time or exactly the right amount depending on who you ask. Sarah is tolerating my factory obsession with the patience of a saint, even if she doesn’t quite understand why I need to optimize my iron ingot production at 11pm. I don’t fully understand it either, but here we are.

The reason I’m back in Satisfactory after bouncing off it a couple times before: it’s Steam Deck verified now. And I have a dock. And I’m stuck on the couch. The stars aligned.

The Factory Game That Doesn’t Want You Dead

Here’s what I love about Satisfactory that I haven’t found in other factory games (and believe me, people keep telling me to play Factorio): it’s a survival crafting game that’s way more craft than survival.

There are creatures that want to hurt you, sure. But they’re not the point. They’re obstacles, not threats. You’re not managing hunger or thirst or slowly dying of exposure while frantically trying to build shelter. You’re just… building. The game wants you to build factories. It’s not trying to kill you while you do it.

This matters more than it sounds like it should. My brain has a hard time relaxing into a game when I’m constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Satisfactory lets me drop into that flow state of “okay, I need iron plates, which means I need iron ingots, which means I need iron ore, which means I need a miner, which means—” and three hours later I have a smelting array and no memory of how I got there.

The Idle Game You’re Actually Playing

The other thing that makes this work for my particular brain: Satisfactory is secretly an idle game.

You set up your machines. You connect them with conveyor belts. You walk away. When you come back, your storage is full of whatever you were making. The factory worked while you weren’t watching.

This is catnip for ADHD. I can engage intensely when I’m building something new, then zone out and do something else while the factory runs. I don’t have to maintain constant attention to make progress. The progress happens because I set up systems, and systems keep working whether or not I’m staring at them.

There’s something almost therapeutic about it right now. I can’t do much. I’m stuck on this couch with my ankle situation. But I can build a factory that produces hundreds of reinforced iron plates per minute, and that factory will keep producing them while I sleep. It’s a kind of productivity that doesn’t require my body to cooperate.

The Permission to Tear It Down

The other thing: you can tear it all down.

Built your factory wrong? Doesn’t matter. Dismantle it. Get all your materials back. Rebuild it better. There’s no penalty for getting it wrong the first time, which means there’s no paralysis about getting it right.

I’ve torn down and rebuilt my starter factory twice now. Each time it gets cleaner, more efficient, more satisfying. The game actively encourages iteration. Nothing is permanent, everything is fixable, and the only cost of a mistake is the time it takes to undo it.

That’s… kind of a nice philosophy to sit with right now.

If you’ve got a Steam Deck and you’ve never tried a factory game, Satisfactory is a good place to start. It runs great, it doesn’t punish you for walking away, and the conveyor belts are extremely satisfying to watch. Trust me. I’ve watched a lot of them.