Hello World Studios has announced BELTFED, a roguelike factory-defense game that combines automation, base building, and enormous enemy swarms. The studio’s debut title now has a Steam page, with a playable demo planned for later this year.
In BELTFED, players control a rogue AI with one directive: turn a growing factory into an efficient weapon against an army of hostile insects. That means laying conveyor belts, powering smelters and assemblers, and making sure the entire operation produces enough ammunition to survive the next wave.
The bugs do not wait for the factory to be finished. As players expand into new territory for resources, they will need to balance production, power, and defenses while increasingly large swarms close in.
The Factory Is the Weapon
Rather than handing players ammunition directly, BELTFED makes production part of the combat. Raw materials have to move through an industrial chain before they can feed the guns, flamethrowers, rocket launchers, mortars, lasers, drones, and mines defending the base.
The goal is not to build a permanent factory over dozens of hours. Each run begins with a new build and moves toward a defined end point, giving the game a roguelike structure built around rapid growth, difficult choices, and the pressure of escalating attacks.
According to the studio, individual runs can feature huge numbers of enemies on screen at once, with kill counts reaching into the millions. That scale should make every bottleneck matter. If the belts stop moving or the power grid falls behind, the defenses will not have much time to recover.
Build a Different War Machine Every Run
In-run upgrade cards will shape how each factory develops. Some upgrades can cause buildings to explode, while others introduce more unusual weapons, including cannons that fire black holes.
There is also persistent progression between runs. Players will unlock new technology, buildings, weapons, Nexus cores, and modules that can change their starting options in future attempts. The Nexus serves as the factory’s central intelligence and storage point, so protecting it will be essential. If it falls, the run ends.
BELTFED is being developed by Hello World Studios, a two-person team founded by brothers Troy and Toby. The studio says its experience in both indie development and distributed systems engineering has helped it target the large enemy counts at the center of the game’s design.
The Steam page currently lists BELTFED for a 2027 release. Players can wishlist the game now, with a demo expected to arrive later this year.