shapez 2 - Factory

shapez 2 is a good game. But my problem with it is that there is simply no friction. Everything is infinite, and nothing has consequence. I think a lot of factory game players will enjoy this lack of consequence. The nice way to put it is that the game is "laid back". But for me the lack of constraints causes the experience to lose meaning.

Extremely satisfying game, easy to learn and hard to master. Deceptively simple looking but very challenging on the harder difficulty. Game mechanics flows really smoothly and adds to the satisfying game loop. Buy at your own risk, you may very well getting addicted like me.

I love this game. It's the perfect mix between being challenging and relaxing. At first glance you might think this is a very complicated game but it actually has a well thought-out progression system. You start with simple jobs and along the way you get access to new machines and new controls. The controls themselves are very player-friendly and you pretty much never have to fight them. Getting to grips with the controls is NOT one of the skills you have to master as a player. Want to flip one of your designs? Presto and it automatically has also changed the direction of any belts so that you can directly use it. The controls are full of such nice Quality of Life features. Depending on what mode you play the game in, there are no time-limits or any real limits as you work your way through all the jobs the game contains. Resources can be found all over the map and as you progress you get more comfortable and proficiant in moving them quickly from one end of the map to another. It all looks very cool and the interface, again, is very well thought out. The more you zoom in or out, you enter a different view mode with different tools to your disposal (that often do fulfil the same role but on a grander or smaller scale). The piece and calm of this game is also carried by the music. Such calm and smooth tracks that you forget time while you play it. I have put many hours into the game already and many are more to follow as this is one of those games you think "let me see of this works" and before you know it another hour or more has passed. This game gives you the option to play it as a simple builder of items with the available machines and you just enjoy the calm nature of the game, watch all those little blocks flow by on screen while the tunes give you this zen feeling of fulfillment. But if you want, you can go full out with multi-layered platforms and even multi-layered space-transports with trains that perform loops and follow tracks with complicated routes and signalling. The ultimate end goal is to create a MaM, a Make Anything Machine. But that's only if you feel up to it because this requires some higher logical thinking and you have to use complications using boolean operators (in the form of machines that you place on top of belts or pipes, as an example) to guide certain parts through certain machines so that the right parts come out at the end. I haven't tried it yet and maybe I might never succeed but I will certainly give it a go once I get there. I've put 60+ hours in it already and I still have a *LONG* way to go before I can think about building a MaM. I don't want to yet either because I'm still having lots of fun trying to fulfill all the jobs in a kind-of smart way. I highly recommend this game if you like a relaxing building game with some chill music and some well though-out controls and progression system.

It's a puzzle game, those comparing it to factorio or satisfactory shouldn't be, it's not even close to those games. You make shapes, cut them, combine them, move them around. You plug parts of the factory together like building blocks. It's fun for a bit, but not fun enough for the asking price. In the 10 hours I played I've not yet seen all the mechanics of the game, but I really can't bring myself to play it any further. Game runs well, no graphic or audio issues, no issues on linux

Shapez 2 is a cozy beautiful factory simulator game with the most polished and satisfying UI of all factory simulators, and none of the frustration. For example, let's look at two of the worst aspects of Factorio: 1) it's tough to rebuild outdated designs and experiment with new ones, since rebuidling takes time, resources, and the game does not allow you to pre-test any designs; 2) there's no time to perfect any designs, since while you are optimizing some random circuit assembler, the bugs are chewing your walls. As the result of these two problems, you don't really have room for experimentation without knowing what to do beforehand (from guides or previous experience), so you are often forced to use objectively terrible factory designs way past their shelf life, unless you've already played through the whole game, and know to which endgame designs you should attempt to converge. Both of those problems are fully solved in Shapez 2. Building is free and flexible, you can instantly reposition, copy-paste, delete objects, preview the outputs immediately. The game always shows you the building-to-conveyor belt ratio (which stays constant through the speed upgrades!!!!), making it easier to design perfectly efficient setups. UI/UX has been perfected - it is unsurprising that the developers of a game about optimizing the designs have, indeed, managed to perfrectly optimize the UX design. It means that every click and interaction is satisfying. There's no functional pause in this game, but unlike Factorio, this does not create any pressure on you, since your only enemy is inefficiency. And you are given ample means to eradicate that. I don't mean that the game is trivial though - there are difficulty levels, and you are free to seriously challenge yourself.

Great game to sink hours into. I almost burned down the house because I lost track of time playing the game and left the oven on for too long but otherwise would highly recommend just make sure you have a timer or something to remind you of your oven.

This game feels like cooking up tiny colored pills, swallowing them, and drifting through a cloudy dream in search of life’s true meaning.

If you followed the "overwhelming postiv review" here on steam but you like to find a real automation game like me you might be disappointed. It´s not like Factorio or Satisfactory where you have a huge amazing production chain and you get rewarded step by step. It´s more like building the needed puzzle tile, deliver it and move on to the next. The point is; it´s a lot of copy paste AND delete or reconstruct. This is what i don´t liked. So the game isnn´t really bad but it´s not what it seem to be cause of its title. If you you´re here because you enjoyed Satisfactory or Factorio it´s maybe not your game.