Kaizen: A Factory Story is a great return from the Zachtronics team

Reformed under the new studio Coincidence, the team from Zachtronics have now released Kaizen: A Factory Story with Linux / SteamOS support. It's also rated Steam Deck Playable by Valve. Note: key provided by their PR team.

One of my favourite automation games is actually from Zachtronics, where I was completely captivated by Opus Magnum when it released back in 2017. And of course, because it's Zachtronics, uh - Coincidence, it comes complete with another solitaire game but this time with a pachinko theme to it. Nice to see them return to their roots a bit more with this one.

So what is it? Well, you might think you know what to expect from an automation puzzle game like it but it will surprise you a bit. Especially the visual novel styled intro, where you have to do a little musical rhythm game that I failed miserably at but it didn't seem to cause any problems. I just wasn't prepared for mashing a few keys like it when going in. You got me there, Coincidence.

For the main part of the game once you get into it your goal is to design production lines to create specific products. You get given a bunch of parts, and then it's up to you how they all fit together to make whatever retro product it is that you're tasked with. What you do is drag and drop pieces of the product around, and then the parts of the factory machines you're going to use onto a board, do a little simple code-block programming and see if it all comes together.

If it doesn't, move all the pieces around until it will. Using a mixture of welders, arms that push things around and more eventually you'll have lots of moving parts that becomes a joy to watch.

In between you get more little visual novel bits diving into the expanding story of how you, David, were really not meant to be building things in a factory.

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Compared with other similar games from the developers formerly at Zachtronics, it feels a lot less complicated. It's much more inviting and feels a lot more like you're slotting puzzle pieces together with a little automation flair. Still quite puzzling at times though, a few of them really left me scratching my head for a while. The inviting nature of it can certainly hide the challenge.

If you like the sound of some puzzling automation wrapped up in a retro 1980s Japanese theme, it's one for you. It's not perfect though, as story-telling clearly still isn't a strong point for the developers with nothing about the story and dialogue being at all interesting or noteworthy, it's just kind of…there. It breaks up the building a little, but that's exactly why we're all here. Other than that, it still makes me feel like a tiny genius when I solve the later levels so i did really enjoy it.