izigame.me

While the concept of this delighted me enough to buy it the day I learned of it through a sale, (thinking it a good place to start for someone that's only played the demo of a factory game before), I sadly lost interest just 91 minutes in the first session, then less than that the second.
As it was not wholly-disliked, even though this is a “No” as far as recommendations go, I will first list the...
Merits:
- Very nice and clean aesthetic.
- What I could hear of the music was subjectively enjoyed.
- Great for those who can grasp the systems, but don't want any threats, or NPC-inflicted damage to one's base/factory.
- Gets straight to the point...to a fault.
- Can entertain those that enjoy it for hours at a time, if the “play one save for 20 of them” achievement is anything to go off of.
Unfortunately, those are not enough to make up for the list of...
Demerits:
- The sound was very quiet at the comfortable-to-my-ears' favoured “audio interface turned up until audible on both sides, then Windows Volume down to 12” level, even when both in-game sliders were at 100. While yes, I definitely could turn it up, that would mean making the discord ping louder as a result, and I very quickly muted the game as a result of this.
- Missable achievements. I saw the “Don't upgrade this until you're past level 12!” one after I had already voided that save by upgrading it.
- ...which is to say that unless you do everything your first go, you need to restart...
- ...Something inevitable due to the seemingly-impossible-your-first-go, beat Level 12 within 30 minutes of starting.
- Overly-simplified, yet overly-complicated thanks to the very rigid inputs and outputs on things. One cannot have something feed into another at the side, and I still don't know how the game expects you to merge three belts into one.
- Possible applications for everything not clearly-explained, and I still don't know what can, and cannot be done as a result.
- This is to say that they under-elaborate on the applications of things, making it rather obtuse.
- Game tells you to “not destroy your factory”, then makes things seemingly-impossible without doing so.
- “Not an idle game”...yet some things seem to be purpose-designed to necessitate waiting.
- ..making the previously-mentioned “level 13 in under 30 minutes” achievement questionable at best, and thematically-defying at worse. I thought this was supposed to be a relaxing, frustration-free experience?
- After going back in to see if I was incorrectly-using things, I can now say the above challenge is as frustrating as it seems, and now have a new compaint in the form of “Game does not give you enough space near the hub to install everything that is required to do levels speedily
- The “snap to grid” placement method for conveyor belts is not the default, necessitating one hold an extraneuos button for precision.
- Only key held toggles are available, rather than push once to swap modes, in spite fo the code for such a thing basically being done.
- I gave up the first time after the lack of side inputs meant I had 0 clue how to finish the shape it wanted, (by combining two colours, then putting it on a line with a circle to paint it.) Only to see the “show me what to do”/”Hint” video use a very specific set up not located anywhere on the randomly-generated map.
Verdict:
While it can probably be deciphered by the more factory-minded of individuals, I found it to be very limited, archaic, and frustrating, so while it's not fundamentally-broken, and thus gets saved from Traumatically-Toxic, I don't think the merits are high enough to be mixed, and as such, it gets...
Placed In:
5: Dourly Dismissed