Factory friends and fellow automation lovers, this is going to be—already is—a hell of a year for the factory-building genre. I know this because not only are we going to get Satisfactory 1.0 , we're getting the giant game-doubling expansion that is Factorio: Space Age .
I know this because the herald of this golden year of factories has arrived today in the form of early access for Shapez 2 . In the bare decade that factory-building has evolved from half-baked ideas and fringe Minecraft mods to full-fledged sims we've seen some great games, but the future is looking ever-brighter. Shapez 2 is such a good example of how many more ideas are still lurking in this genre.
It's so different from the two other big-name factory games releasing this year (it's also different from Foundry , yet another option released four months ago). Where Factorio and Satisfactory embrace the survival genre and the idea of limited resources as a game constraint—something to give you that delicious friction and tension as you play—Shapez focuses instead on the inherent puzzle of arranging and connecting the machines that make up your factory. You can build practically as many machines, platforms, and as much work space as you want because the focus is instead on how your factory's products take shape.
In a game like Factorio you send an iron plate into a machine and get out a perfectly shaped iron gear. Simple as. In Shapez you pull a square out of the ground but the product you need is a ha.