Factory

Factory: The Industrial Devolution is a Macintosh shareware puzzle-strategy game by Patrick Calahan, originally published commercially in 1993 by Softstream International and re-released by the author as shareware in fall 1995, later reissued under RoundHouse Software. The Info-Mac copy here is version 1.3.

Premise

The game drops the player into a not-so-distant future where automated manufacturing systems have failed. Your job is to keep the factories running by routing components along conveyor belts and through pipes, clicking control switches to combine them into finished products and meet a quota - or get fired.

Gameplay

Players oversee an increasingly complex and chaotic series of assembly lines. The puzzle-strategy mix swings from satisfying to downright frustrating when a single misrouted belt cascades through the line.

Editor and community

The registered version unlocks an editor for building and sharing custom factories and products, organized into user-created months of levels. That editor and the resulting community-shared content kept the game alive long past its initial release.

Versions and compatibility

Version 1.3 changed the sound formats and runs silently under System 6, while the older 1.1 retains audio there. Both run cleanly through Mac OS 9 and accept the same registration code. Built for any Mac from the SE up, System 6.x or greater, with 1 MB of free RAM.