Nightwater: an island floating on liquid void, and a factory to grow all the way to the lighthouse

You wake on a solitary island, floating on a sea of liquid void and starlight, ringed by impassable mountains.

That is a beautiful way to open a factory game, and also an elegant way to justify the basic constraint: you are going nowhere, so you are going to build.

The loop

You transform raw resources, simple sticks and stones, into an industrial factory. You progress through the ages, from primitive tools to modern machines and beyond.

And there is an idea I have not seen elsewhere: you expand the island by manifesting new biomes into existence, to harvest their unique resources.

In other words the map is not given, it is manufactured. That fits the setting, and it turns expansion into a production objective rather than mere exploration.

The game advertises over twenty resources, over a hundred buildings, crafts and buffs, and over sixty structures to link with pipes.

The detail that matters

Every resource has its own progression. You can gather it by hand or automate it with machines, and hitting its milestones unlocks new buildings, crafts and powerful buffs.

That is smarter than a conventional tech tree, because it pushes you to automate everything, including whatever you had set aside. In most factory games you neglect the boring resource; here, neglecting it costs you unlocks.

Another comfort point that says a lot about the care taken: you can move or deconstruct any machine at any time without losing items. For a genre where you constantly redraw, that is exactly right.

The minigames

This is the part that will divide people.

While your machines work, you can progress in one of five minigames, each with its own loop and its own items, unlocking buildings and buffs.

The intent is clear: fill the dead time of waiting, which is the genre's structural flaw. And it can be either a find or a distraction, depending on your temperament. If you came for a factory, five side activities can look like padding.

Personally I find the idea sound, provided they are connected to production rather than sitting beside it. Which appears to be the case, since they unlock buildings.

What it is worth

The game launched yesterday at 13.49 euros, developed by Studio Ashty and co-published with Irox Games, and shows 18 positive reviews out of 22.

That is too few to conclude from. What I can say is that the presentation works, that the art direction breaks from the genre's usual industrial grey, and that the accessibility options are plentiful for a game this size.

My reservation concerns comparison. Automation is a genre with crushing benchmarks, where players are demanding about the ergonomics of conveyors and pipes. A small studio has to compensate with an idea, and Nightwater has one, the biomes you manifest. Whether it holds up over time remains to be seen.

And there is a clear objective behind all of it: reach the Lighthouse and uncover its secrets. That is more than many factory games offer, content to let you optimise into the void.

What did you automate first? We compare factory layouts on the InsertCoins Discord.