Factory Default: MicroProse returns to industrial simulation, with a gauge that scores your conscience

Start with the publisher's name, because it says something: MicroProse.

The studio behind Sid Meier and Gunship, revived in recent years as a publisher specialising in the simulations nobody else will put out. When a name like that gets behind a game about global supply chains, it deserves a look.

What the game promises

You run a planetary industrial empire, end to end.

You extract raw materials, refine them into components, manufacture high-tech goods, and sell them across the world. Every link in the chain bears on the efficiency and profitability of the whole.

The playing field is a three-dimensional globe inspired by real geography, with regions modelled on existing countries and economic unions, each with its own resources and advantages.

The central trade-off is therefore geographic: you extract where the ore is abundant, refine where it makes economic sense, and manufacture near the big markets. Add long-term supply contracts, a balance between imports and exports, and fluctuating global markets.

It is Anno crossed with a course in international trade, and on paper it is exactly what the genre lacks.

The idea that interests me most

The game carries a global perception system evaluating your company on four axes: financial strength, environmental impact, corporate responsibility and industrial influence.

In other words, the world judges you, and not only on your balance sheet.

You can invest in sustainable infrastructure and protect your workers, or maximise profit through aggressive policies and questionable practices. Both paths are open, and the game simply draws the consequences.

That is rare in an industrial management game, where externalities are usually scenery. If the system is well built, it could do what games like this never do: put a price on the easy option.

What we do not know yet

Which is why this article is not a review.

There is no release date. The Steam page simply says "coming soon", with no price shown, even though the game appears among this week's announced releases. It will arrive in early access.

We do not know the real depth. The game advertises hundreds of resources and manufactured goods, which can mean a gripping production chain or an endless catalogue. The difference is measured with hands on it.

And the perception system remains a promise. An environmental axis can be a genuine constraint or a decorative number you ignore after two hours. That is the first thing I will be looking at.

On hardware, the studio quotes sixteen gigabytes of memory and a GTX 1650 Super, for just one gigabyte of disk, which tells its own story: everything happens in the data, not in the scenery.

What we are waiting for, exactly

What I want from this game is for it to follow its idea through.

A global industry game that lets you choose between the clean factory and the profitable one, and makes that choice genuinely costly in both directions, would be a first. If it settles for adding a green bar to a logistics game, it will join the pile.

The developer works alone, the publisher knows the trade, and early access will let us judge on the evidence. We will come back to it when a date is announced.

Would you run the clean factory or the maximum margin? We are debating it on the InsertCoins Discord.