Little Rocket Lab is a lovely game, and an essential pick for fans of cosy games, but its systems are deep enough that I think the Factorio and Satisfactory players out there will still get a kick out of it.
Little Rocket Lab won’t replace titans of the genre for hardcore optimization fans, but it doesn’t need to. It fills a niche those games never tried to: automation as an act of care and restoration rather than domination. If you love building systems but crave a quieter, more human context, something closer to Stardew Valley this is one of 2025’s most charming indie surprises.
Little Rocket Lab is the kind of game that makes factory building feel more like a hobby than hard work. It’s cozy, clever, and charming—just don’t expect high-stakes drama once your conveyor belts start humming.
Little Rocket Lab is about as cozy an introduction to automation as could be imagined, with a lovely pixel-art style and likable characters in a run-down but charming town. There's no pressure to rush anything, with major events coming to your door and minor ones popping up while running around the town. The automation makes for a nice change of focus for this type of life-sim setting, and it just keeps growing with new complications and machines to handle them at a nice, steady pace. The town of St. Ambroise isn't all that large, comprised of six major areas and a few indoors sections, but it's a lively place with room for the townspeople and all the machinery you build, if you plan it right. There's a lot of enjoyable work involved in bringing St. Ambroise back from the edge of ruin, from supplying rocket components to chasing after lost kids mad at their family, and while Morgan didn't ask for the latter, she's going to deal with every challenge and automation problem in her way to engineer her mother's dream into reality.
For players who want the deepiest, crunchiest, most byzantine and flexible factory builder out there without any distractions, Little Rocket Lab will disappoint. But for people who have tried the big names in this genre and found them daunting or chilly, and who are still looking for their entry point into the conveyor-belt and throughput analysis lifestyle, Little Rocket Lab may be the one. It’s a really good game that I personally didn’t like very much, but I think — and kind of hope — I’m in the minority.
Production chain games trigger my obsessive nature (Factorio) and I can burn out on them once they become a chore (Shapez). So, combining one with a cosy experience piqued my interest. And right until the last stage of the rocket, I didn't get obsessive, which is a refreshing experience for me with this kind of game. Little Rocket Lab's gameplay doesn't revolve around puzzle elements like fitting production chains into increasingly difficult and tight spaces (Infinifactory) or production chains that get ever longer and longer. Instead, Little Rocket Lab has lots of smaller temporary quest-based production chains all packaged into a cosy setting.
5/5
I was intrigued in the beginning, a Factorio with characters roaming around and interacting with.
Sadly it's disappointing with factory building and character interaction both feeling shallow.
While the characters are drawn in a "cute" style, the interaction possibilities are really not existing, besides gifting items and seeing hearts go up, there is nothing more to it.
SummaryYou play as Morgan, an aspiring engineer headed home to complete your family's dream project - a rocket ship! Finding home not quite how she left it, Morgan will need to research and build clever contraptions and sprawling factories to help the locals. From simple drills and furnaces to complex assemblers, cranes and miles of conveyo...