Forge Industry

[h1]Sum-Up[/h1] [h3]In-depth analysis further down.[/h3] If you’re looking for some screenshots [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/tho545454/screenshots/?appid=2152810&sort=newestfirst&browsefilter=myfiles&view=grid]click here[/url] to view all the ones I took for this game. [table] [tr] [th]🟩 [b]Pros[/b][/th] [th]🟥 [b]Cons[/b][/th] [/tr] [tr] [td] • Good amount of items to produce, sell and create. • Can probably run on a Nokia 3310. [/td] [td] • Extremely dated graphics, even for this genre and/or for an Indie production. • Unfathomably boring gameplay. It’s enjoyable for a few hours, but then becomes a horrendous slog without evolution. • The tutorial only is exhaustive up to a point, but isn’t as good about advanced stuff; this can cause confusion and frustration. • Heavy redundancy of several gameplay mechanics that are either gimmicks or not worth your time. [/td] [/tr] [/table] [table] [tr] [th]🟨 [b]Bugs & Issues[/b][/th] [th]🔧 [b]Specs[/b][/th] [/tr] [tr] [td] • In some cases, routes randomly pause without any reason and don’t work anymore. • Rarely, workers may all freeze in place. Reload to fix. • Request shipments may not fulfill correctly in some cases. • A few achievements don’t unlock correctly. [/td] [td] • i5 11400H • 16GB RAM DDR4 • 512 GB SSD • RTX 3060 6GB • 1080p [/td] [/tr] [/table] [table] [tr] [td][b]Content & Replay Value:[/b][/td] [td]Given its open-ended sandbox nature without a story or milestone objectives, it’s difficult to estimate how many hours of content are provided, as the game can, on paper, go on forever. Despite four different world biomes, the gameplay loop doesn’t change by much in them; I don’t see a reason to do another run at any point.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]Is it worth buying?[/b][/td] [td]Not really. Even in this niche management subgenre, there are other and better games you can invest your time and money into, and get a similar or, arguably, better experience. Forge Industry simply doesn’t have any redeeming quality to be worth your time to begin with.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][h3]Verdict: Bad[/h3] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2548409603]Rating Chart Here[/url][/td] [td]Some say less is more, but in this case, less is -actually- not enough. Minimalist visuals you can get away with; the same can’t be said for one-sided, unengaging, buggy gameplay that doesn’t evolve at any point.[/td] [/tr] [/table] [quote]Follow our Curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41449676/]Summit Reviews[/url], to see more high-quality reviews regularly.[/quote] [h1]In-Depth[/h1] [h3]Writing & Worldbuilding[/h3] Little blocky men scurry dubiously-built streets at 1, 2 or even 4x speed to fuel the endless grind of industrial production. This, surprisingly enough, isn’t Ho Chi Minh City, but a creation of your own ingenuity, where any and all distinctive traits its denizens may have, and they indeed -do- have, fade into nothingness. In much-less poetic words, there’s no story or incipit of any sort in Forge Industry, it’s an open-ended sandbox that throws you straight into the ‘action’ without any further ado. Perfect for those who can’t be bothered with stories or plots, but a blunder for anyone else that would expect at least a contour, a hint, a context of any sort. Each of your worker-automatons, ironically enough, has some distinctive trait about them, a small description of sorts, which means absolutely nothing and doesn’t affect their behavior in any way. Why bother with this at all, then, in a game that clearly doesn’t even think worldbuilding or story have any importance (which is fine for some games)? In any case, the world itself, regardless of the chosen biome, is extremely static and devoid of detail; a crude sketch that barely serves the purpose of visually-referencing what happens in-between production lines. Not even dynamic events will impact the looks of the environment, which will remain static and unmodifiable throughout, save for the structures and roads you’ll build. [h3]Building & Logistics[/h3] There’s no definite goal in Forge Industry; your sole purpose is establishing an ever-increasing logistical machine for the sake of endless profit. Beyond the mini-goals set by a, initially-decent, but later on lackluster tutorial, you’ll be left to your own devices in figuring out how to produce for the sake of more production. Luckily, a handy in-game wiki-manual-contraption contains all the info the tutorial misses, which can be quite a bit. You’ll be able to build a limited selection of structures initially, though that will change later on. Between buildings, you’ll be able to establish Routes, the main gameplay component you’ll spend most time fidgeting with - they allow you to decide what materials gerd delivered to which structure, by how many workers, how many times, and even add as many steps as you wish to the same route to increase efficiency. Say, for instance, it would be nice if those workers picked up some iron on the way back from the refinery, after delivering coal, so it can be sold at the market, right? Well, you can plan exactly that. Unfortunately, the interface to do all this becomes cumbersome, fidgety and not-so-much user friendly in later phases. There’s some decent quality of life ideas, like a tool enabling you to clone existing routes, but sadly many problems remain in the system, like the inability to edit the materials of an already-ongoing route, or bugs that at times make routes or workers get stuck without reason. In addition, you’ll have to also manage market orders, making sure to not buy too much or too little of any given resource to achieve maximum efficiency; if on one side this is managed decently with order caps and custom-set time intervals between buy orders, on the other there isn’t a clean interface to display profit and losses conveniently, as other games of this subgenre have, so it may be quite difficult to gauge if you’re actually working at a loss or not on-the-fly. [h3]Production, Events & Research[/h3] You’ll spend most of your time configuring and re-working pipelines to get a finished product out of byproducts and raw resources. For example, to make a sword you’ll need to craft several components and assemble them at a dedicated station. To research new buildings, you’ll need to deposit all the resources in the Atelier, a special structure, and then ‘buy’ the associated research. Unlocked buildings enable you to produce more complex and time-consuming gizmos, to then sell at the market or fulfill international shipping orders with, once available. You’ll also be able to experiment with alloys to create metal combinations that fetch superior prices, and in some cases will be needed to research more advanced buildings. A nice mechanic that, however, feels RNG-based and formulaic due to precise proportions being needed to actually unlock new metals, something that can become dull and time-consuming, not worth your time. The point is, that there’s no reason to do any of this. You can make lavish amounts of money in just a couple real-life hours by selling basic crafted byproducts, like sword blades, made of the cheapest possible metal. Leave this going 2-3 hours and enjoy having 750.000+ gold, enough to last a lifetime. What then? Nothing. The biggest flaw of Forge Industry is this: giving players the freedom to set their own goals, but at the same time failing to create a varied, stimulating environment rich in random factors and de-facto goals. It’s a barren, boring world where so-called events are minor fluctuations on a ledger, at best. Logistics aren't fun in real life to begin with, what makes anyone think that would be in a game, without any further meaningful addition to their principles?

Saw all the positive reviews and jumped into it. The game has some pacing issues, to say the least. I found myself waiting for money to come in and finding that as I expanded the infrastructure the game told me was profitable, I ended up losing money. Maybe some items need to be priced 1-2 coins more, maybe that would make things too easy. I don't know. As I approached minute 45 and my cash balance hadn't improved. I was locked out of progressing in the game. I decided a refund was in order. This game looks great in the videos and screenshots, but I just wasn't able to get into its systems for the above reasons.

TL;DR [i]I'm sorry, but no.[/i] [b]Pros[/b]: Indie game, Unity/Mono, Youtube videos of devs. [b]Cons[/b]: Tedious routing mechanics, horrible UI & user workflow, difficult to distinguish between buildings & between resource icons. [h2]Graphics[/h2] In factory games, the overall graphics is barely important after a few hours. What matters is to be able to distinguish between the various buildings, resources and symbols relatively quickly. Didn't happen for me in this few hours of playing. [h2]Mechanics[/h2] Route-based logistics with the usual input-transform-output buildings. The idea was that the player sets up and organizes these routes instead of some kind of task-based or supply-demand based system. Unfortunately, after playing hundreds of hours of Factorio, DSP and any game with conveyor belts, I started disliking such transport systems due to their fiddliness. It's a personal bias, not a fault or mistake in this game. But. [h2]User Interface[/h2] When SAP developers make a game. Dialogs within dialogs within dialogs. The YT videos mention it was even more dialogs before. Setting up routes does especially stand out as being tedious. First, picking which resource to transfer is just a dropdown of not easily distinguishable resource icons, assuming the item actually shows up in there. Then, it turns out the route can't be created because there are no free employees. One can hire some more employees without leaving the dialog, nice. Now I forgot how many things I needed to transfer to the Atelier. The routing lists of buildings don't indicate the resource being transferred directly, only by hover. Can't change the assigned worker count there either. The pause/go button doesn't seem to work sometimes. In the Ateilier, when looking at a research, I have to look back and forth between the left and the right side to see if I have every requirement met. Found a small bug that got me confused: picking a crafting recipe, Shortsword for example, shows the wrong ingredients in the tooltip in the workbench. [h2]Overall gameplay[/h2] I run out of money during the tutorial, before I could start my first research. I checked the forum and there is a semi-exploit of short-loop iron smelting and selling. Developer approved. Now that money is not an issue, the limit on worker numbers is. No problem, I'll just switch routings, crafting orders, reassign workers, right? Except the UI makes it tedious. Sadly, I didn't get too far to experience ships and weddings, not sure I want to continue. [h2]Suggestions[/h2] For next time since the devs are finished with this title. The UI of a factory game should be hassle free, informative, workflow-oriented: how can I express my vision of transport/crafting/behaviors with as little hops as possible? For example, setting up routes could be as simple as dragging an arrow from source to destination, then picking the resource/amount/worker in a quick dialog. [h2]Context[/h2] I have a soft spot for indie and factory games. Somehow, Youtube suggested the developer's channel and started watching their videos. Very informative, honest and transparent! Eventually decided to buy the game on sale. My day job is to develop logistics, automation and information system frontends/backends, hence the harshness on the UI. As a hobby, I remade an old 4X game, developed a few dozen Unity mods for some survival-crafting game. All free. Eventually, I want to make my own game and sell it for a few bucks, just for the indie experience.

I like the game a lot and definitely recommend it if you like real time strategy games such as Dwarf fortress, Rimworld, Kenshi, Project Zomboid, etc. Its also similar to Terraria in were there's mundane metals, but also lots of mythical metals to craft goods with aswell. The art is nice too. The game does run slower with more workers after around 400~ workers. If that can be improved upon that would be great. Overall If the game continues to get supported by the devs with updates and fix some bugs the game will definitely be on the same level as the games mentioned above

This game is a lot of fun and I really like the building art! It is interesting to research new materials and buildings and progressing through the game with more and more weaponry and materials, sell things and automate the whole process. Music is nice and calm too.

The concept of planning routes and such is a cool game mechanic, it's execution is incredibly basic though. When you compare this game to games like factorio (which might not be fair), there is barely any QoL. Setting up routes that are easy to scale is very labor intensive and generally not fun. I really want to like this game, but with the devs no longer actively working on this game, I can't recommend it. It might be worth 5 euros, but not the 16 they are asking for it. It is also riddled with bugs.

ワーカーが停止するバグが発生してまともにプレイ出来ない(´・ω・｀)

Route management is a level of micromanagement that I don't think is fun.

I really enjoy playing this game, it's fun to try and manage my little workforce and build a pretty town at the same time. I appreciate the guidance the game gives in the beginning, especially because I normally take some time to understand the mechanics of a game. So that's great! All in all, I can really recommend this game, it's a nice way to play a goal-oriented game without too much stress.

So firstly great job on completing a game. I'm still in the tutorial process of my game development journey so I have a long way to go before I start to actually develop a game, especially since I'm still finishing my Software Development degree. I commend you guys for doing that as that is really where it seems like many devs stop in that they are perpetually trying to improve their game but the cut major parts to redesign it, only to eventually never release the game. I also purchased this game from the youtube channel with the intention of reviewing it and while I haven't made a finished game yet, I have played plenty so my perspective comes from that. I'm also not going to beat around the bush with my feedback so sorry if this review seems mean. Pros: Interesting music, even though it isn't super interesting. It kept me playing. I like the simple design and the way the buildings snap into their place on the grid. I like the theme of the game. I like the blue outlines and most of the tutorial steps. Cons: The game crashed on me in the first five minutes. That's really not good as I haven't even finished the tutorial and the game crashed. For context, it was right before I started trying to figure out how to make the Architect's Atelier (what is this?). The UI is fine but I need to be able to see how many resources I have vs. how many I need for construction. I didn't realize that I was selling my bars at first. I feel like this should be a warning to the player when they make a route since it isn't a good idea to sell these right away. I purchased a bunch of workers and the tutorial didn't suggest I do so. I did this because I had no bars and I wanted things to go faster. The game is kind of boring as there's no plot. Why am I doing this? It seems like the game is designed to be similar to Factorio and while this is fine, I think part of what makes Factorio so fun is how easy it is to create things so if that's the goal with this game, it should be super easy to get workers to run a route and super obvious that they're doing that. The game is also ending for an unknown reason. I keep getting the game over screen when I'm just playing the game? There's no explanation for why this is happening. All in all again, not the worst game in the world for a first game. I think there really could be something here if this is supposed to be a builder like Factorio but set in the "old world." I think it needs a little bit of a plot and perhaps better art. I think that the core of the gameplay is there but like you guys have said in your videos, some things need work such as balance. I should be able to basically sleep and click through the first 10-20 mins of gameplay and it should feel somewhat rewarding with nice sounds and graphics. People really respond to that. So perhaps you need an art person on your team? Sadly too, I cannot in my heart of hearts recommend this game to anyone so I'm going to leave that as a rewiew. Sorry guys. Keep it up though!