Our original premise was that the protagonist is a construction robot riding a von Neumann probe, bootstrapping and expanding through pure machinery. That setting would give the game art a very austere, lonely kind of beauty — and I love that mood — but since this is the first time I’ve ever had to produce game art myself, I had to admit it was way too hard to pull off.
So Faketorio started drifting away from Factorio right here: we’re adding cute anime girls. Because an automated factory doesn’t have to be this cold and empty!
Here’s the rough draft I put together. After the probe ship lands, the player picks one of three girls to wake up first. Each of them comes with a different ability, and the player leans on that ability to develop faster. Working names for now: Ying, Ju, and Yao.
Ying · YING-01 — Manufacturing
Earnest, a little clumsy, but actually a brilliant mechanical engineer — she names every machine she builds with her own hands. She’s never met a human before, and the thought of “will people even like this planet once it’s terraformed” leaves her equal parts excited and nervous. She’s the first protagonist actually implemented in the build, so she might be a bit overtuned for now.
Her specialty line is “prototyping” scaled up three ways: manual crafting from the start, faster manual research, plus she comes with a logistics robot and a logistics storage crate for flexibly auto-sourcing raw materials.
Ju · JU-02 — Construction / Planning
The oldest and coolest-headed of the three. Doesn’t talk much, has a mild case of “everything must be aligned” syndrome. Tsundere through and through — she keeps telling Ying “you never plan anything,” but secretly thinks the world of her and feels responsible for helping Ying’s talent come through. She acts like Yao is a hopeless case she can’t do anything about, but honestly she loves it every time Yao clings onto her (see the cover art).
Her specialty is built around “blueprint construction”: she starts with an extra construction drone, her drones have longer build range, and her blueprint size cap is bigger. Down the line, the combat system is planned to give her a stronger shield.
Yao · YAO-03 — Exploration
The energetic one, the mascot of the trio, and the lightest-equipped. Restless, optimistic, and way too curious for her own good — always wondering what’s over the next hill, giving nicknames to every rock on the road, and dumping weird samples straight into Ying’s storage bay.
Her specialty line is “see further, move faster”: bigger vision radius, faster movement, quicker health regen. Down the line, the combat system is planned to give her a better starting weapon.
About the animated portraits
The Doubao-generated videos aren’t bad quality-wise, but some weird artifacts in the backgrounds kept messing up the matting/cutout process. So for now the in-game select screen is still pretty rough — here’s what it looks like:
For now, though, I’m shifting my focus to generating building assets — I’ve already produced some genuinely gorgeous designs, like this burner mining drill (the legged version):
I’ve found the whole generation pipeline really fun, so next time I’ll share what I’ve learned from it.