The Production Line has been running uber smoothly over on PC, as Klabater (Crossroads Inn, Heliborne) and Positech Games’ best-selling car factory simulation has made a bit of a name for itself. Very soon though it’ll be the turn of console players to keep things moving, as Production Line gets set to roll out onto Xbox, PlayStation and Switch.
Announced today for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4 and Nintendo Switch, Production Line promises to cover the bases that gamers looking for both deep management & strategy mechanics and easy pad-adapted controls are after.
It’s a new car factory management/simulation/tycoon game from Positech Games, the developers of the Democracy series & Gratuitous Space Battles, and when it arrives on console it’ll let you push your organizational and entrepreneurship skills to the limit. Can you build the ultimate optimized, free-flowing car production line whilst beating the competition and still turn a profit? You’ll get to prove it in Production Line.
It won’t be a simple job though. A modern car factory is a near-perfect example of efficiency, process management, and flow, with a massive army of precision-controlled robots dancing to a millimeter-perfect ballet of engineering excellence with perfect timing. Components snake along with conveyor belts to a ‘just-in-time’ ordering system that leaves no pauses, no delay, no confusion, or congestion. Nothing exists but the perfect flowing efficiency of high-tech car construction.
At least that’s the idea but in practice things will not be so simple. When you get to grips with your first factory design, it certainly will not feel in a state of pure flow, and turning a profit will be tricky. In fact, whilst creating a handful of built-to-order cars and breaking even is one thing, when you get the chance to go up against the big multinationals, hoping to churn out thousands of cars for the mass market, then you’ll find that it is a whole new ballgame.
To win market share from the big companies you are going to need planning, an appreciation of future technology, a careful eye on your bottom line, and an ability to design a factory layout that makes use of every square meter, and cuts production costs per car to the absolute minimum. All of this will come in Production Line – as long as you play your cards right.
The key features of Production Line will be:
- Take part in a challenging race to be productive and to be profitable at the same time
- Expand your car factory and research new methods of production to become a car industry giant
- Design and build your car factory using the approach discovered by Henry Ford. Ford’s system became a blueprint for the assembly line revolution and is still used in high-tech factories today
- Hire product design researchers to enhance your cars with new technologies such as automatic headlights, power steering, Bluetooth phone support, and voice recognition
- Seek out and fix inefficiencies that may affect the carefully planned production process
- Make use of every square meter of your factory, and cut production costs per car to the absolute minimum
So what do you think? Will you be keeping an eye on this one, ensuring that the production line keeps running smoothly. We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop, hoping that the controls are optimised for console once the time arrives, but let us know your thoughts too.
And if you want to play Production Line right now, pop over to the Steam page.
