The Gold Factory is an incremental game that pays homage to the games that inspired it right on its credits page and features the same ASCII art game world as those inspirations. Borrowing ideas from the likes of the exceedingly popular Candy Box and A Dark Room this title takes the genre in some interesting and fun directions that make it well worth a playthrough for fans of this niche genre.
Players start within the ASCII art world with only a factory and the cloudy skies above them. In time players will expand across the horizon to the right of the screen with new buildings that also unlock new mechanics for players to indulge in. Alongside being your first building this gold factory is your primary source of income through the employment it provides you and the initial 1 gold bar per second you earn as a salary.
Without too much effort the first of many new buildings will appear which provides a shop for players to spend their accumulated gold bars. Offering you the important things in life like a shovel, pizza and a trusty wooden sword that expand the gameplay loop. The shovel for example unlocks a the ability to dig under a nearby sign and the wooden sword (later upgradeable to other swords) gives you the option to engage in combat. In time other stores are made available that similarly expand your arsenal with new sword types, iron bars, health potions and other items for your inventory.
With your sword of choice a players first experience of combat will be squashing the surprisingly large and dangerous rats that hang out in the gold factory and provide once off gold bonuses for defeating them which makes your boss happy. Combat itself is a simple mechanic in The Gold Factory with players character appearing on the left hand side of the screen and your opponent on the right with stats and health pools displayed. The Gold Factory is a game without consequences though with failure in combat simply returning you to the overview world screen and hinting that you need to be stronger for that encounter.
With little strategy to the combat itself from start to finish it serves more of a content locking mechanism as you grind out gold bars for the best equipment to unlock more buildings and secrets. The Gold Factory can fill somewhat slower than similar games at this point with a slow generation of gold that relies on bonus sources of highly active play so expect to leave the game sitting idle for long stretches if you don’t want to click an attack button on rats repeatedly to start out. While these combat options do expand later to unlock special skills and health potions it takes some time to reach this point and pass the initial slow hump. Players that are good at solving ciphering the optional codes challenges or opt to cheat with Google to find the answers can skip this initial slow hump though.
Fans of incremental games will enjoy the ASCII themed world, secrets and progression that are familiar to those that have come before it as you unlock more shops, dig out holes in the world and find new structures. The Gold Factory also includes an option colour toggle for those that prefer a dark background over the default white design.
Summary:
- Use gold, iron and pizza in this incremental game to progress through buildings and challenges.
- Dig holes, fight rats and adventure to the castle for the ultimate objective.
- Use swords, potions and skills in battle against various enemies of increasing difficulty.
- Enjoy ASCII art graphics with a colour toggle to swap between white and dark backgrounds.
- Play for free in your browser.
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Review Platform: Browser
