Shapez 2 Review (Tragic)
As a Factory Game fan, since the original backer for Factorio, I am just astounded at how far the genre has developed. With flagship products like Satisfactory (that I have 1000s of hours in) to amazing upcomers like Foundry or Techtonica or the new hybrids like The Crust expanding the genre, it is still astounding to me that a no-frills factory experience is still so addictive. This is what Shapez was, and this is what Shapez 2 is: the distillation of the factory game experience down into its purest form. Production lines of spaghetti madness.
See my Shapez Review!
Now sure, Satisfactory and the rest are amazing games, but the move to first-person and the expansion of the aesthetics of a factory build has shifted the factory game from a kind of chill puzzle into what are basically modern “train sets,” like my great-granddad used to have in his garage. Now sure, Dyson Sphere, Factory Town, Mindustry, and others are still flying the 2D(ish) factory flag, but there is nothing quite like Shapez, at least that I know of.
Shapez takes all the “stuff” from the factory genre and removes everything but the actual production line mechanics. There is no story, no fancy buildings to organise like lego to arrange aesthetically, no map limits, and no resource scarcity. Nothing. You place miners, place machines, and build a chain that sends products to the void at the centre of the map.
What this does is turn the entire game into a relaxed, almost zen-like experience. It places no onus on the player, offering instead a light brain workout. Scratching that Factorio itch without all the distracting fluff. Sure, infinite resources, infinite space, no real costs – efficiency is not really an issue unless you want it to be… it is almost like free play in most other games, but that is where the genius of the game resides. In the idea that the game itself, the mechanics, is what is fun… and it is. Addictive fun.
The game has a progression system to unlock and teach the gameplay, but the true magic starts with the randomised shape challenges. Like a Minecraft world, each shape has its own code, one you can share with the community or friends, producing an endless series of challenges to work on.
The only real downside to Shapez 2 is that it is basically just a graphical update to Shapez. This is both good and bad. Good in the sense that if you like Shapez, you will like Shapez 2, but bad because the entire point of Shapez is how it distils the factory genre down to its bare minimum, so the entire game is balanced on mechanical gameplay. The issue is that the mechanical gameplay is basically identical to Shapez 1, which is a fraction of the cost. I mean, there are differences, but very few.
Verdict: This is one of the really great games of the factory genre, and the facelift in version 2, taking it from 2D to 3D, is sure to attract more players. Yet, I cannot help but feel this is not really a sequel. There is little new or added on – yes, there is some new content – but what this game really is… is a remaster/remake of Shapez, a definitive version, so to speak, of a game that already exists.