Shapez Review (Navid)
i have read about automation games or cynically also called ‘treadmill simulators’. But I could never imagine what could be fun about it. It's pretty boring to watch and graphically it's not exciting anyway.
But then Shapez was reduced to 1 euro during a promotion and I just bought it, because what does 1 euro mean?
Well, it starts completely harmlessly. You build some crooked things that somehow work. What's supposed to be difficult here? But then you suddenly want to deliver the full amount for the achievement and just let it run as an idle game in the background. But then one exciting mechanic follows the next. Tunnels, colour mixing, colouring etc. require a lot more space and better planning of the conveyor belts. As there is no time pressure, this could all be solved in a relaxed manner.
But then came the first mission, which you can't solve simply by waiting, as you have to deliver a certain number of objects per second. This was a bit of a challenge, as you suddenly had to build quite a large number of colouring and dividing objects in a well-planned manner. It suddenly made sense to zoom out further and start building much further away for reasons of space. And how the hell big is the whole playground you have here? As it doesn't matter how far away from the goal you start, I just started at the edge and watched the treadmill all the way. This is where using the keyboard and shortcuts becomes mandatory, because otherwise you make too many mistakes with the mouse and have to constantly delete things.
But then the shock: despite its enormous size, the frequency of my delivery is not sufficient. What have I done wrong? Let's see how many parts each object can process per second. How many can a conveyor belt transport? How many structures do I need to get exactly the quantity I want? All of these statistics are available and can be used, and should be at some point. So they become even more absurd.
And then I was trapped in the ‘bigger and bigger and wilder’ loop. I can't believe how much fun a game like this can be. There are no ‘consumables’ or ‘hidden constraints’ here. Only your own ambition drives you to push it further and further. It is somewhat comparable to an ARPG. While in the first levels you believe that 10 damage makes you strong and you end up throwing billions of damage per second at your opponents. Here it's 2, 3, 4 belts at first, while later you combine thousands of structures with each other and the ever larger structures take on increasingly ‘impossible’ sizes.
What a game! And when I've played through that, the 3rd dimension awaits in the form of Shapez 2. This time I'll buy it at whatever price it costs at the time. Conclusion: perfectly successful promotion. The game is also easily worth 20 euros.
PS: there's at least one restriction I don't understand. You have to play a specific piece to copy, cut and paste a struture and the price depends on the size of the structure. So you're forced to build the largest amount of this piece you possible could and deliver it all the time. Well... when I think about it, it seems like a genius idea to force you into building crazy large numbers of this particular piece.