Little Factory Board Game Review
Each and every Christmas, my wife likes to get me a board game to play, whether that’s a small game that will fit in my stocking, or a slightly larger game that becomes a full gift under the tree. The game is never massive, but it’s always nice for her to think about my favourite hobby year-in and year-out. This year, she picked up a game I had never heard of called Little Factory. Although this game isn’t doing anything new, it was a great little experience that was easy to teach and quick to play.
In Little Factory, players are working towards earning 10 victory points through buildings they construct and point tokens they can earn by trading in goods. The game works in a pyramid system of resources. Starter resources can turn into slightly more valuable secondary resources which in turn can be turned into valuable resources. For example, a wheat resource can be turned into a sheep resources, which can become a yard resources which can become a cloth resource. There are two ways resources are earned. You either trade in resources to earn better resources – i.e. a single log can be turned into a plank – or you SHOW a resource from your hand to gain a resource.
It is rather thematic, actually. Do get a yarn from a sheep, you don’t discard your sheep. You just show other players that you have one. That makes sense, as there is not reason to remove a sheep to get some yard. If you want meat, on the other hand, you’ll need to discard your sheep! Little Factory is a closed commodity type of game, which means there is a set number of resources available for all players: no more, no less. Further, you can only upgrade resources into other resources if the resource you are trying to acquire is face up in the appropriate row.
There are a lot of little things to consider when playing Little Factory. What resources do you need? What buildings do you want. Building can be activated for extra resources and actions, but you need a good collection of buildings for your strategy. Can you get the resources, or does someone else have them? There is only one cloth in the game – is it in the draw stack, or does someone have it in their hand? I love all of these little decisions, but it generally all works out in the end. While I haven’t won a game of this yet, the strategic depth is provides for the simplistic rules and short learn time is worth having it around.
Article By Adam
