The Factory Must Grow is a mobile incremental game themed around an every growing factory. The player is tasked with creating production lines,
managing base resource production, advancing technologies, and pushing back enemies to secure land.
While any incremental games focus on ever increasing costs, and a limited number of resource counters,
The Factory Must Grow will flip those, instead focusing on a large number of resources (items), and expansion increasing costs only in a few places.
During this pandemic, many people have been at home causing entertainment and distractions to be in higher demand.
Logistics management games like Factorio and Dyson Sphere Program have seen a strong growth, especially through the 2020 quarantine.
But this won't be the case for long, as the expanded audience enjoying these kinds of expansive logistics games will soon find themselves
removed from their computer and back outside with their phones.
Why not have a similar gaming experience ready for them when they migrate back into the mobile social world?
This game, The Factory Must Grow, is intended to be used to bootstrap funding into my other development projects. I have made preliminary research into company formation, enough to know there are numerous options available. While I do not have the specifics of how this company will be formed, it is among the things I plan to do promptly after getting funding.
As this game is based off of a PC game, I am blending two different markets and audiences. However, it's because of that difference in modality that I think The Factory Must Grow is able to compete, and stand alondside, it's PC counterparts.
Update Oct 2021, I have released The Factory Must Grow on a limited number of public channels.
| Game | Device | Est owners | Cost | Earliest Release |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Factorio | PC | 2,500,000 | $30 | Sep 2014 |
| Satisfactory | PC | 2,000,000 | $30 | Mar 2019 |
| Dyson Sphere Program | PC | 350,000 | $20 | Jan 2021 |
| FortressCraft Evolved | PC | 200,000 | $15 | Nov 2015 |
| Minecraft** | PC | ~131 Million | $30 | May 2009 |
| Mindustry | Android | 1,000,000 | $2 | Sep 2019 |
| Assembly Line | Android | 1,000,000 | IAP | unk |
| Drill Down | Android | 10,000 | $1 | Oct 2019 |
| Factory Simulator | Android | 100,000 | IAPs | unk |
| Industrial Factory | Android | 100,000 | IAP | unk |
A common element among all Android games is an emphasis on layout management of belts and machines. Frankly, I find working with layouts on a phone a bit tidious. The generalized idea of managing production lines is obviously well received by gamers. Another common element is all of these games lack much of an offline/idle gameplay mechanic; they must be active on a player's device to progress.
The Factory Must Grow is a production game designed for mobile platforms and gamers. It differs largely from other games in its genre by a reduced emphasis on
the exactness of how items get from point A to point B.
While this is a selling point of other games, I will counter not just with the increased simplicity, but by offering a larger number of items and potential production lines.
Its core functionality remains the same as others: acquire resources, craft buildings, research technologies, kill enemies, rinse, repeat.
I have considered in game ads, "wait for energy," and freemium currency models, and I do not yet know how they could fit well into my desired playstyle.
What I do think would work out extremely well is content packs. Content packs for The Factory Must Grow, would consist of ways to expand and complicate production lines. More resources, efficient refinement, varied enemies; are just some ideas for possible content packs. These would operate similarly to mods in other games, but they would be more professional and curated so including multiple packs in a single playthrough would not introduce bugs or balance issues. I could see these going for $2-3 a piece with 6-12 easily becoming available. The game platform itself may become viable to operate events, as most popular incremental games do nowadays. It may be of user interest to pay a one-time fee to access them. The ability to store/sync across devices would mandate the usage of a server and this could be a simple revenue source. Also on this list, would eventually be integration/bonuses to a selection of my future games. This would also be a charged service.
While there are certainly a number of ways to go about gaining revenue. I'd like to focus on estimating proceeds from content packs.
The estimated user bases are given in my market research section.
Among the PC games, there is likely around 5 million unique players.
For mobile users on Play, this could similarly be around 5 million.
Between the two, I'm going to estimate around 7 million unique players for games similar to mine.
If 5 percent of those players (350,000) each buy only one $3 content pack, the gross revenue could easy be over $1 million.
Part of my budget includes buying some time with a marketing firm to get some practical reality on these numbers.
I know I don't know enough for all the hats I need to wear to start my own business. Part of my initial seed monies is intended to help me get better information about different aspects of my business. Success is often influenced by both knowledge and perserverance. Because of this, being aware of the areas I don't know can allow me to seek those who can fill in these gaps.