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Beware the overwhelmingly positive reviews! Long and exhaustive review ahead…
As a hardcore fan of Shapez 1, I was incredibly excited to play this and explore all of the magic of building complex machines, deal with the challenges of organizing output channels, and finding creative ways to create products from multiple nodes. Unfortunately, I have found this game to be lacking in the true sandbox feeling of the original.
Don't get me wrong, I think this game is decent, but if you're looking to replicate the same kind of strategy and limitless creativity of the original, you may be disappointed. I think I am in the minority here, but I will outline a few key points as someone who is a dedicated fan:
1. Right and Wrong gameplay.
Shapez 1 simply tosses you in and allows you to play with simple logic of . The lack of platforms, space belts, and the greater variety and progression of building types means you can solve a shape goal by creating the most heinous, ungodly travesty of spaghetti factories imaginable and then slowly refine them as you continue to experiment and progress through challenges The game by design almost seems to tell you that your factory MUST fit into it's more narrow idea of what a factory should look like or how it should function. Don't get me wrong, you can still build some awful stuff, but the endless variety of problems that were FUN to solve have been replaced by problems that have incredibly narrow solutions. Need red circles to go to three separate factories? Well, they can only be exported from point x and y and you must use these huge and unwieldy space belts to deliver them, and don't even THINK about trying to deliver separate shapes on one space belt to multiple destinations as a stop-gap solution.
That's really the main issue that I take away. The game demands that you over analyze every move you make because the very foundations of your factories are limiting by nature and instead of designing cool factories, I'm simply placing more and more foundations and worrying about the most efficient way to link them together. The least engaging part of Shapez 1 - delivery logistics, was often the LAST problem to solve for each factory in Shapez 1 and often the easiest. This game takes that same problem and asks you to solve that problem in very specific ways over and over again in the middle of each build. Need just ONE more painter to reach your desired output but you're out of room on your platform? Sorry, now you'll have to create an entirely new platform, figure out how to deliver your resources to this new platform from this very specific opening, and then figure out how to connect your space belts in a way that doesn't overwhelm the area around the factory.
The game really desires to train you to design factories in a certain way and punishes you for trying to solve for the product in a way that the infrastructure doesn't agree with.
Very creatively stifling - I understand that the end result of the game is essentially a circuit board/ computer that delivers every possible item, but I find that telling your player to be creative and have fun and then setting very annoying barriers to experimentation and trial+error to be disengenuous and pritoritzes out-the-gate planning and strategy over progression and a sense of achievement for solving problems in your own unique way.
"Conform! Design your factory MY way!" says the shapez overlord.
2. Limited building space.
A huge hurdle for me has been the introduction of Foundations which are fixed size platforms on which you build your factories. The platforms initially are only offered in two sizes, 1x1 and 1x2 but you can spend massive amounts of research points to unlock more sizes. The platforms have been a huge annoyance as it really limits your ability to create larger and more complex structures that may have very creative use of space. Part of what I love about the original is the ability to create absolutely insane factories that solve multiple problems and perform multiple functions, growing them to wild sizes and maximizing output. It's so fun to tear things apart and rebuild them without limit. The platforms have fixed areas on each side where you can import/export resources which means fitting your factory and organizing it on the limited platform area becomes the main challenge of the game. Instead of making the factories of my dreams that can do exactly what I designed them to and challenging myself to make them simpler and more compact / efficient takes a backseat to simply trying to make your factory fit into a fixed area. It becomes repetitive and annoying and feels more like an arbitrary limitation to the game instead of a strategic challenge.
Solution: Allow players to create their own platforms by clicking and dragging to create a platform of the desired size. Or eliminate the need for platforms altogether.
3. Space belts.
Space belts deliver resources from node, to factory, to vortex. The space belts have four conveyors each. Unfortunately, they are incredibly tedious to use when desiring to simply export one resource, especially when you only have a few areas on each platform to export from. Once again, the game devs are attempting to train you from the get-go to think about the long-term efficiency and structure of your factory instead of allowing you to begin with less efficient factories and slowly refine them as your entire production grows.
Solution: Allow space belts of any size, with the ability to transport even just one conveyor worth of items at a time. Perhaps this is a scale issue, as when you zoom out to observe your entire world, the singular conveyor may be virtually invisible.
3. Poor progression.
One of the magical things about Shapez 1 was that each task you completed felt genuinely satisfying, but in all my dozens of hours in Shapez 2, I have not had nearly the same feeling of accomplishement after each task as I have in 2. This is aprtially because I spend much of my time in each task simply trying to determine how the hell I'm going to get resources in and out of my factories . Maybe it's just me, but I would MUCH rather spenmd my time on the acvtual factories themselves rathe than being annoyed that it's going to take 90 research points to unlock the big platform and until then I have to create very frusterating tiny factories on multiple platforms, where many of my solutions are unviable because of simply the SIZE AND SHAPE of the platforms, Again, the platform options are insanely arbitrary and seem to serve no purpose other than to force you to creat a more circuit bpoard-like end result.
I liked the fact that in game 1 you couldn’t see what was coming in the future, yuou couldn’t plan for future shapes. This game seems to take the excitement out of seeing a new and interesting task appear on the Hub because it sets you up to be able to build the perfect factory from your first node instead of allowing the player to experiment, change course, and restructure their builds as the game asks for new and more challenging solutions.
The ability to see every item you can unlock before you even start building is also a detriment. I remember getting giddy when I got a notification alerting me that I had unlocked the quad-painter. There were always new and exciting surprises as you progressed the game. I loved the shroud of mystery around what you could do with the game.
What began as a very simple mine and deliver game for the first 10 minutes, began to morph over hours into a game that slowly revealed more complex layers of production until the very final picture of a game where you create a computer began to emerge. This game tell you from the start what you’ll be expected to do, and I resent that.
4. Research points .
The first game, again, had this one beat in progression. PArt of that is because in order to upgrade your factory you