Word Factori is a simple-looking puzzle game that's sort of like automating a round of Scrabble, but the kicker is a devilishly clever play on the English alphabet which has been an instant hit with people looking for a mix of Wordle and Satisfactory (it's me, I'm people).
Word Factori was officially released on Steam a few days ago for $5 (well, $5.39, on sale from $6 normally), and it's since amassed 100 reviews with an 88% positive rating. I can see why. This is one of the most intriguing brain teasers I've come across in some time.
The point of the game is to spell out a bunch of assigned words, but you only have one letter to work with: a capital "I." Word Factori treats this one letter as a resource and pictograph, and you physically manipulate it using ingenious little functions to turn it into other letters. Need a C? Bend the I around an indentation. Need a D? Combine a flipped C with a straight I and smush 'em together. How do you make a B? Two Ds on top of each other, of course. And so the list goes on.
It's word-building in a very literal sense, and it's utterly fascinating to think about, especially when many letters have more than one plausible recipe. And remember, you're not just running these transformations one at a time. Word Factori is very much a factory automation sim, so you have to build – or really, program – efficient assembly lines that turn all your Is into the right letters and deposit them at the right point on your assigned word.
To this day, my bar for what makes a good puzzle game is the ability to make you think in a new way, and Word Factori has immediately done that for me. Give it a look if you're after something a little more hands-on than Wordle.
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