shapez 2 - Factory

nice game, simple but complex

It would be unfair to give this game a negative review. I really enjoyed Shapez 1! Shapez 2 is defenitely a big Update and worth the purchase, if you liked the first part. But what bothers me is, that I need to play three different game modes to achieve everything in the game. I would have been fine with Classic+Manufacturing Mode, as they are different, but classic is devided into normal and hexagonal. I played hexagonal, because it is the hardest and most challenging, but after noticing that I would need to repeat everything with the normal 4-shape-mode again it kinda dropped me..I'm a completionist and this would be just boring grinding of the same. I get that hexagonal is for additional challenges, but then give the master players in hexa mode the opportuinity to achieve all unlocks also in this mode.

Fantastic entry into the factory genre, simple premise as a gateway drug that is higher automation.

I played the Early Access version of this game. It had some rough edges, and the devs seemed to be asking for feedback, but the folks in the Discord were dismissive and belittling. The clunkiness combined with the attitudes on Discord soured me to this game and developer.

🚀 Just hit 1.0 and it's absolutely fantastic! If you love factory games, Shapez 2 is pure dopamine. No enemies, no stress — just you, endless space, and the most satisfying shape automation you'll ever build. 1.0 delivers everything: Brand new Manufacture Mode for massive permanent factories Full mod support Achievements Stunning new visuals & performance upgrades Multi-layer 3D building that feels incredible It’s the perfect mix of chill zen factory vibes and deep, brain-tickling optimization puzzles. Whether you want relaxed 30-minute sessions or 10-hour factory marathons, it delivers. Easily one of the best factory builders out right now — cleaner and more focused than Factorio/Satisfactory while being ridiculously addictive. Highly recommended!

It's quite complicated - I love and hate this game at the same time. When coming from shapez 1, this game allows fully skip it together with inconvenient design choices like high level goals, asymmetric buildings that cannot be mirrored and non-free factory copying. Here, those problems were not just fixed, they came with bunch of QoL and graphical changes that made game easier to play and understand. Loop also changed a bit, milestones were split in separate steps, each completed milestone also unlocks handful of additional jobs, in reward for each you get points to unlock new buildings and upgrades. Also now there's space layer for building extractors, platforms and connecting them, and platform layer where you do the same thing as in first game (cut, rotate, combine etc.), but with smaller space (limited by size of platform) and higher shapes volume to process, thankfully game gives you proper tools. Here are some notable improvements: [list] [*] Can copy & paste selected sections for free. [*] Can mirror selected sections. [*] Can save sections and platforms in blueprint library to reuse later, also can share them as text. [*] Conveyors can be branched as you want, similarly to compact splitters/mergers. [*] Detailed info box telling you about effectivity of your factory and if there's window of improvement for it. It also tells you how much exactly machines are needed per belt to keep them unclogged and saturated. [/list] Game never rushes you, gives time to learn, find ways to optimize current flows with newly unlocked upgrades. I personally had alot of fun with rethinking flow from one platform per shape to one function per shape, allowing easier to adapt to milestone requirements. What I probably didn't like about this game the most that it's never felt like a proper challenge. Even with low throughput working on milestone shape then switching to job ones takes right amount of time for milestone capacity to complete. If you played shapez 1 you might remember "watermelon slice" level that instead of delivering bunch of shapes required to provide high throughput for certain amount of time, I really liked that, it made me think of how to improve flow further as copying flow didn't help much. While first game has single moment like this (throughput doesn't come up again until you complete the game), this one doesn't have any. It's just always about solving, not effectivity or working around limitations. Another thing that completing jobs you literally can remove their factories without any drawback, future shapes rarely would match it, keeping refining factories is good idea though. Also you have to keep milestone shape factories to keep passive upgrade points income. By default map is formed as spiral, which comes with big gaps in-between. I think it's here to make you use trains as otherwise nothing much happens there as most work goes close to extractors rather blank spaces. Spiral formation can be tweaked and even disabled, but that can be done before creating save file. Platform capacity upgrade is seems the most useless one, you get high limit in the beginning and can increase it with operator levels, which isn't hard as well. Overall I'd say give game a try if you like "chill factorio"-like games, yet there's not much for it to offer.

玩到最后我已经懒得管好看不好看了，最后除了基地是尽心设计过的，其他地方都蓝图+缝缝补补（摆烂）了，能满效率运行就行...反正后面还要重构、重构、重构...吐啦

The game is generally engaging, but it occasionally crashes saves. It’s very frustrating to have to restart the same level over and over again while being almost certain that the save will be corrupted again. It’s also strange to see FPS drops down to 20–25 on a system with a 4070 Ti.