Hello folks, first and foremost I apologize for the tough time folks have been having with regard to android builds. There are multiple reasons for this, which this comment aims to address. It's a bit of a long read, but I recommend taking the time as it will answer your questions.
However, if you don't like reading, there is the TL:DR version, yes you can play on mobile, but you need to use Joi Play.
If you're curious as to why, read on.
All builds of the project come from the same source code. Other builds don't present this particular game breaking issue, therefore it's not a bug in the sense that it's something which can be fixed by me. In other words, I am not the root of the issue for this particular bug.
Regardless of that, I share your frustrations, so I've literally spent months attempting to pin down why this happens and fix it.
This is what I've found:
The game files are somehow being corrupted during the Android build process itself.
Regardless of changes, or fixes, to the source code, this problem still occurs.
This is a strong indicator that the problem is with Rapt, the program used to build Android games with Ren'py, or configurations of it being used with Ren'py. It's complex stuff which I have not the time nor desire to delve into. Therefore this leaves players with one solution:
Joi Play is a program that was bought to my attention a few weeks back. It allows you to play some PC games on your phone essentially from what I understand. Using this, you should be able to play Hom Factory on mobile.
Conversely, building games in Android also comes with a 2 GB file size limit. Meaning that, in order to continue playing on mobile you would need to use Joi Play anyway at this point, or simply play on PC. Moving forward, Android builds will no longer be offered, you will need to use Joi Play. This isn't something I can control at this point, so you could consider it the natural progression of the project.
0.28 has already reached and surpassed this size limit, so I strongly recommend that you use Joi Play.
There are instructions on how to do so here:
Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks for your patience as I attempted to solve this.