shapez 2 - Factory

I played the hell out of shapez years ago and was excited for 2. I played the early access last year and just never got hooked. Then I tried it again once it 1.0 was released and... yeah it's real good. Here's the big highlight for me, a super simple but incredibly impactful choice the game makes. See, in the first game, machine ratios, i.e. how many machines it took to export a single full belt, was quite complicated. Even splitting a belt was complicated, requiring a unique machine. This was worsened by systems that allowed you to upgrade the speed of machines separately from the belts, meaning that a set of painters that previously worked fine, would suddenly be operating at 80% capacity because you upgraded your belt speed. Getting a good handle on these ratios felt like specialist knowledge and it never really clicked for me. In Shapez 2, a couple of small decisions have fixed all of my problems. First of all, belt splitting is an inherent ability of belts now. It works so seamlessly that the idea of having to place "splitters" feels entirely alien. Ratios are now listed very clearly when you select machines. They're always integers from 2-6 meaning that you can perfectly balance inputs and outputs. These ratios are also pointed out to the player from the first moment they deal with them, encouraging engagement with the concept from the moment you start building factories. Finally, and I don't think this was the case in the earlier build of the game I played, machine speed is now a singular variable that upgrades all machines AND belts, meaning that the machine that you built in the first five minutes will still be a viable design after 50 hours. This is such an insanely good change and it reinforces the way this game approaches ratios by keeping that number consistent. No matter how much I upgrade, I am still going to need two rotators for every full belt of shapes. Now this falls apart a little bit when it comes to fluid, which behaves differently from shapes. At a base level, this is a great change. Fluid in the first game behaved identically to shapes, being moved along belts as individual clumps. In 2, fluid is measured in liters and requires a different kind of belt (tubes) to transport. This means you can no longer get a clump of blue stuck in your stacker, which is nice, and requires you to deal with the physical properties of fluid, also nice. However the transportation of fluid and its use in machines feels far more like the first game's ratios. It's very unclear to me how much fluid is needed per machine. Pipes can be fused together and transport fluids instantly to machines, but can still run out of fluid if not enough is being supplied. Launchers, which function seamlessly for shapes, impose limitations for fluid. And because we're dealing with liters, the numbers are far harder to grasp at a glance. Despite this, I have managed to make painters that operate at peak efficiency, although the complex nature of fluid means that I can never feel quite certain that I'm not oversupplying them. As for general game feel, Shapez 2 is peak. The productivity ceiling is so much higher than the first game, but you start at about the same output, so instead of going from delivering 20 shapes per minute to doing 200, you go from 20 to 200,000, discovering new levels and technologies to reach that number. My only critique would be to hide some of that future from the player at the onset. Players are informed of a third level early on in the game before you have access to it, so you're aware that you're operating at limited efficiency for a good portion of the early game, which doesn't feel awesome. If that level was hidden from the players (which would require some remodeling of the space pipes, so I understand why they don't do it), you could convince the player they're always being as efficient as possible, before pulling the rug out from under them and revealing, "no actually, you can do triple the amount." I also wish the shape requirements were a little bigger. As it is currently, if you build efficient factories that export a full train car of shapes, you burn through each level of a job extremely quickly, meaning that you've hardly gotten started on designing the next factory when you have to go back to the first and update it. I crave moments like I had in the first game where I can take a deep breath and take a break or just appreciate my work. As it is, there's not really a gameplay "loop" as much as a gameplay "laser;" constant, unrelenting, but still pretty rad. Anyways game good buy