shapez 2 - Factory

Great factory building game, lots of automations and scaling, extra side problems (Jobs) to solve. Nice and responsive 3D UI, clean design. Super recommend!

[i]When I first saw the game trailer, I was seeing stars. I wasn’t feeling yellow because of the challenge. It seemed like a square deal. I started, and I X-perimented a lot. The goal was crystal-clear. But soon, the gameplay started running in circles. I pinned the boredom on the menial tasks. I was wedged into a ludicrous game design, Its promises were a white lie I blacked out from the frustration. I kept telling myself Y ?! Then I saw red because of the green I wasted, And I was blue from the disappointment.[/i] In Shapez 2, there are very few machine types (cutter, swapper, painter…) in order to produce the required shapes, that makes the game very simple in some way. The challenge is to exploit these machines in every possible way in order to produce every kind of shapes. You’re strongly incentivized to create blueprints for each basic operation, like one blueprint to extract the north-eastern quarter of a shape, one other blueprint to paint the shapes with coloured fluid etc. These blueprints allow you to maximize the yield of your factory by piling up as many basic machines as you can fit onto the platforms. Once your blueprints are ready, which can be tedious because there a lot of brainless copy-pasting, it’s child’s play because you just have to assemble your blueprints like Legos in order to make some kind of an island, with inputs with basic materials and outputs towards the vortex. Once you’ve reached your quota, you just have to destroy your island and make another one. The trains are used to manage the logistics between your factory islands, supply islands and the vortex. The factory islands aren’t connected to each other in any way. You’re just accumulating more shapes over and over. So, the game is lackluster because to this point it feels like a very stretched-out tutorial. Then, you have the opportunity to build a MAM, a universal factory island that can build any randomized shape. The “wire” section of the machines (logic gates, flow control etc.) which was up to this point useless, is now mandatory. The required randomized shapes data can be transmitted into an electronic signal. Then it become suddenly very hard, because if you don’t have any technical background in electronics or programming, you’ll have to learn a lot of things. But it’s not overly complicated either, because the tutorials in the codex section are clear and the machines are basic. So, if you understand how the wire machines work, and if you manage to comprehend what you’re supposed to do, then you’ll also see the issues : [list] [*]Because the wire machines are still simple, you’ll have to make a LOT of busywork and copy pasting. [*]You’ll have to make a blueprint that can output 16 different signals, one for each quarter of each of the four layers of the required shape. [*]Then you’ll have to manage the flow control, between 9 different fluids and no fewer than a dozen of basic shapes that are inputted. You’ll have to take into account that some of the shapes cannot be painted and cannot be cut through. [*]You have to get each of the right 16 quarters with the right shape and the right colour and assemble them in the right way.[/list] It’s doable, but the difficulty spike is unreasonable and too sudden. But it is also uninteresting because there is too much copy-pasting, and if you make initially a single mistake, you’ll have to rectify it everywhere. The wire machines don’t exist in the space view, there is no space belt flow control, everything is miniaturized and multiplied. Also, there is no multiplexer, no clock signal, so the MAM flow control feels very backward and complicated for the wrong reason. When Shapez 2 is easy, it feels like work. When it’s hard, it feels like jumping through hoops. Come on developers, I’m a gamer, I’m not your employee nor your pet.

Coming from Satisfactory as my only real exposure to the factory genre - this is so fantastic. Its such a chill game. I can delete everything in 2 seconds if I think of a better design, and with no budget, I can whip it up limited only by the speed of my clicks. Such a simple concept but so engaging. Completely meme worthy, but it really does hit. The soundtrack is a nice background vibe as well. I like making my shapes. :)

very cozy

The game itself is great. Features, machines, ease of using them. I played pre v1.0 and enjoyed a lot. Then decided to come back after v1.0. As far as I remember, there was no stutter nor anything prior to the v1.0. But at the game's current state, it stutters a lot. Every 10 seconds, I'm experiencing a freeze. Maybe it's because of my system. IDK. Tested on both highest and lowest graphic settings. Both high FPS, both same freezes. Would like to play more in the future. With stutteres, even though it's playable, It makes me want to leave the game.

Поскольку я любитель жанра Factorio, то эта игра мне понравилась

紹介に偽りなし。優秀な操作性にUI、プラットフォームという土台を宇宙ベルトで繋ぐシステムのおかげで作業感はかなり軽減されて工場巨大化に没頭できる。 問題点を上げるならクリア後の要素が薄い。いや濃いのがあるんだけどやる意義が薄いというか…クリア後のコンテンツクリアのご褒美なりロマンが足りないかな