Fantastic Factories, published by Deep Water Games is a dice placement, engine building tabletop game where your objective is to best utilize your factory and workers to build the best buildings and monuments. Here is what I thought of the game.
A copy of this game was provided for the purposes of this review.
In Fantastic Factories, you race to manufacture the most goods or build the most prestigious buildings. There are elements of dice rolling, worker placement, engine building, resource management, tableau building, simultaneous play, and some card drafting. It is for 1-5 players, so whether you’re going solo or have a game night, you can pull out Fantastic Factories.
Initially, it will look like a complex game to play but it really is not. Yes, it has a decent amount of strategy to it, but once you get playing it gets simpler mechanically so you can focus on the strategy. While you are instructed to play the work phase simultaneously, for our first game we did not do that and opted to alternate between us instead. It made learning the game easier for us.
My first thought upon finishing playing this game was “I could play that again.” And that is probably the best review you could get from me. Replayability is one of my top needs for a tabletop game, and Fantastic Factories fills this with just the base game. It also has numerous expansions to add even more replayability if you so choose.
I have no serious critique or qualm with the game. I will say that this isn’t one I’d bring out for brand new gamers who are just barely getting into it unless they enjoy strategy already. It’s not heavy strategically, but it’s a bit of a learning curve for those not already used to the mechanics in my opinion.
Overall, I enjoyed my experience playing Fantastic Factories. I’ll play it again and will put it in my rotation of replayable games.
What is your favorite replayable game? Let me know with a comment!