NeurIPS Conference 2025 Conference Paper
Factorio Learning Environment
- Jack Hopkins
- Mart Bakler
- Akbir Khan
Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly saturating existing benchmarks, necessitating new open-ended evaluations. We introduce the Factorio Learning Environment (FLE), based on the game of Factorio, that tests agents in long-term planning, spatial reasoning, program synthesis, and resource optimization. FLE provides exponentially scaling challenges -- from basic automation to complex factories processing millions of resource units per second. We provide two settings: (1) open-play with the open-ended task of building the largest factory on an procedurally generated map and (2) lab-play consisting of 33 bounded tasks accross three settings with fixed resources. We demonstrate across both settings that models still lack strong spatial reasoning. In lab-play, we find that LLMs exhibit promising short-horizon skills, yet are unable to operate effectively in constrained environments, reflecting limitations in error analysis. In open-play, while LLMs discover automation strategies that improve growth (e. g electric-powered drilling), they fail to achieve complex automation (e. g electronic-circuit manufacturing)