I 100% recommend Shapez 2. I bought it during early access but even then it felt complete enough that I got my fill of it. Imagine my surprise right now when I discover it had a 1.0 launch. It's an exceptional factory game because it strips the genre down into the most fundamental aspects of factory building and then implements those key aspects with perfection. It's the purest form of factory builders. No exploration, no collecting resources to build bigger factories, no time limits, no combat, very little space restrictions (99% of the time your own builds are what get in the way). You just build factories that build shapes and then you build ways to get those shapes into the vortex and that's the entire game. Conceptually simple, elegantly designed, very customizable and can easily get very complex.
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I feel I like exploring in games like Factorio, the trains delivering faraway resources was the funnest part for me.
I guess technically no exploration isn't exactly true. There is some exploration in the sense that you have an insanely huge map with different shape resources and scroll around the map until you find the shape resource you want to use. But it's not the kind of exploration where you have to clear the fog of war to see what's out there. And you do use trains to move resources around because some of those distances can get pretty big.
And the SCALE of it. It even makes my group Factorio Space Age server feel small, and that's 14k promethium SPM.
I played a ton of pre-1.0. It's SO good. What an astronomical leap from Shapez 1.
I'm stoked to dig into 1.0 of the sequel, the new mode looks cool
Phenomenal game, can't wait to give it a second go
I know what I am doing my two hours of gaming time today!
You're going to be playing for way longer than two hours my friend
I did. Factory mode is great!
I played Early Access and even as an avid factorio player I wasn't convinced.
There is something that makes it meaningless in the fact we are just building shapes.
In Factorio, if I create a battery factory I just automated a core component for a specific range of items and technologies.
In Shapez, you make an arbitrary shape and that's it.
It wasn't for me.
Now I will give it another chance and I totally understand that to some it might be a purer form of factory management games, but to me it will probably lack purprose.
Interested to check the Manufacture mode though.
I feel the same. The 1.0 , claassoc or manufacture is not engaging. There is no purpose and it just feel a puzzle game not a factory