Oh wow, I'm very excited about this. The post author wrote the absolutely incredible Space Exploration mod for Factorio, pitching itself as a "100+" hour expansion, realistically closer to 1000 hours for an average player.

Space Exploration has its quirks, but is fundamentally an absolutely outstanding puzzle game, among the best ever made.

One of the most delightful things about Factorio for coders is that the game smoothly takes you through multiple levels of abstraction, starting with handcrafting simple ingredients, and (in the base game), moving up to small networks of trains with automation, and flying robot armies to deal with construction and logistics. I'd say there are three-ish layers of abstraction in the main game, and each layer is super well balanced, has its own challenges and benefits, and is above all FUN.

Space Exploration adds two to three more layers of abstraction above these; culminating in networks of interstellar spaceships moving items into orbit and on and off planetary surfaces, where they intersect with the original game's buildings and mechanics. It's profoundly, profoundly good.

I knew Wube had hired the mod developer, but I'm super happy to see he's deeply involved with Space Age, which is explained to be a less hardcore experience, with a lot of the same fun as SE. Should be a blast. I hope they'll charge me more for it.