Kaizen: A Factory Story Review
Kaizen: A Factory Story is a triumphant return for Zach Barth and his team in their new studio.
Kaizen: A Factory Story. Credit: Coincidence / Astra Logical
Zachtronics helped define modern automation puzzle games with titles like SpaceChem, Opus Magnum, and Infinifactory. Zach Barth announced the studio's closure in 2022, saying they'd "gotten very good at making Zachtronics games" but found it hard to make anything else. The developers then went their separate ways.
Thankfully, the dissolution turned out to be temporary. Barth has reformed much of the same team under a new studio called Coincidence, and their debut game, Kaizen: A Factory Story, released by publishing partner Astra Logical, picks up exactly where Zachtronics left off. Kaizen’s open-ended automation puzzle gameplay, wrapped in thoughtful theming and executed with meticulous attention to detail, makes it feel like a Zachtronics game through and through.
Kaizen: A Factory Story. Credit: Coincidence / Astra Logical
You play as David Sugimoto, a young American who moves to Japan at the height of the country’s economic boom in the 1980s to take his first job, a sales position at Matsuzawa Manufacturing. Instead, he finds himself thrust into the world of factory automation design as the higher-ups rotate him through different manufacturing divisions, each focused on distinct product categories, from electronics and toys to plastic display food and clothing.
The core puzzle mechanics involve building production lines to assemble recognizable objects, like radios, toy robots, and rice cookers. What makes solving these puzzles so satisfying is watching the components come together into something familiar and tangible. You'll move, duplicate, cut, and attach parts using various factory components, setting up automation with commands on a timeline for each machine you place. The tangible nature of the products you're creating makes the game feel more grounded than many Zachtronics games.
Kaizen: A Factory Story. Credit: Coincidence / Astra Logical
Like most great automation games, solutions are entirely open-ended. After creating each production line, you're rated on efficiency, cost, and size, leaving you free to decide whether to refactor your solution for better scores. The UI deserves special praise for being both clear and satisfyingly tactile. Every interaction feels deliberate and well-considered, and it never feels like a chore to go back and make adjustments. While not designed for controllers, I found it perfectly playable using Steam Input with custom key bindings.
The skeuomorphism—where digital graphics mimic real-world textures and materials—of the 2D puzzle graphics showcases careful attention to detail, and is a big part of what makes tinkering with the automation lines so satisfyingly tactile. Each UI element, machine part, or product component is colorfully rendered with beautiful, realistic textures you can't help but want to touch. Every visual element, such as the period-authentic electronics and clean-lined graphic style of everything outside the production line, works in harmony with the city pop-inspired soundtrack to reinforce the historical setting without feeling superficial. I just love the attention to detail in the art direction and sound design.
Kaizen: A Factory Story. Credit: Coincidence / Astra Logical
Kaizen also includes Pachi-Sol, a clever pachinko-solitaire hybrid that serves as a respite from the factory puzzles. Players strategically drop balls into a pachinko machine with turn-based mechanics to land on playing cards below, and follow solitaire rules to clear the board. It's substantial enough to work as a standalone game and provides the perfect palate cleanser between sets of puzzles.
Kaizen: A Factory Story proves that Coincidence hasn't just continued the Zachtronics tradition; they've refined it. This is automation puzzle design at its finest, with a remarkable tactility and optimization depth that will keep me tinkering forever. It also helps that the team regularly updates the game with bonus puzzles. I can’t wait to see what Coincidence does next.
Kaizen: A Factory Story is available now on Steam.
Overall Score: 9/10
Played on: Steam Deck
