21–30 of 41 posts
What is the motivator of the primary gameplay loop? If I never have to make a hard decision on how to use an earned resource then it devalues my autonomy.
>Shapez 2 is the purest factory building game imaginable - all buildings are free, resources never run out and there are no enemies or time limits What is the motivator of the primary gameplay loop? If I never have to make a hard decision on how to use an earned resource then it devalues my autonomy.
Liking it so far, although the 'task' progression isn't my favorite. Feels like there are way too many tasks to do that seem like tedious busywork. Honestly a really simple game design fix for this would be to unlock tasks more slowly as the player demonstrates more engagement with the system. That way if you are like me and mostly find them boring and repetitive, you don't feel as bad about not getting them done.
>Shapez 2 is the purest factory building game imaginable - all buildings are free, resources never run out and there are no enemies or time limits What is the motivator of the primary gameplay loop? If I never have to make a hard decision on how to use an earned resource then it devalues my autonomy.
If you play on the harder difficulties, you are limited by the number of platforms you can build (even if you later delete one). You earn more by delivering certain shapes, with more complex shapes giving more points. It means your platforms both need to be efficient, and you need to be thoughtful in how you place them.
I love Shapez 1, it's really a game I can recommend to people who love puzzles, planing, organizing stuff and those things. So I also tried the Demo for Shapez 2 when It released, but I kinda didn't vibed for me, the old charm is not there. I think it's because it's now 3D, and controls were also a bit wobbly and shaky at the time. Does anyone know if this has been improved till then? Or is this version just more con…
I do other 3D factory/sim games fine (like Dyson Sphere Program or Cities Skylines or hybrid transportation games), but IMO the stacking of shapez 2 is more a gimmicky distraction than an actually enjoyable element. It's really annoying having to route things in different levels because the UI doesn't make it easy to see what is happening. Instead of natural ramps like in other games you have these elevators and anchors that are hard to control.
>Shapez 2 is the purest factory building game imaginable - all buildings are free, resources never run out and there are no enemies or time limits What is the motivator of the primary gameplay loop? If I never have to make a hard decision on how to use an earned resource then it devalues my autonomy.
Even in similar games like Dyson Sphere Program, you can play with cheats on (infinite or free resources) and but it's still a challenge to scale up production.
Before paying up, keep in mind the bait-and-switch played on people with version one. Anyone without a Steam account is stuck with an old version when it required a Steam account after launch.
Looks very polished, also glad to see a launch with a mac build. I'd love a write up from the devs on how these type of games are built. I understand arcade style games, but not how you write structs to support these types of games. It looks very challenging to design and program by the sheer amount of stuff happening in real time, and the careful balance of gameplay. Then again I could be completely outdated and it'…
The original is open source! https://github.com/tobspr-games/shapez.io?tab=readme-ov-file
Looks very polished, also glad to see a launch with a mac build. I'd love a write up from the devs on how these type of games are built. I understand arcade style games, but not how you write structs to support these types of games. It looks very challenging to design and program by the sheer amount of stuff happening in real time, and the careful balance of gameplay. Then again I could be completely outdated and it'…
And it's definitely great! I just hope they get a universal build soon, as if you are on Apple Silicon (M1+), the game runs under Rosetta. There's a bit of a performance hit because of this, although you can still run really high resolution (5K) on low fairly effortlessly! And it looks absolutely beautiful.
Side note, I was a tiny bit confused about the "tutorial" when you get the two checkboxes, one of them saying something like "Don't destroy buildings".
I thought it meant you should reuse your structures and not destroy them, which after a few milestones is just not possible at all.
Looks very polished, also glad to see a launch with a mac build. I'd love a write up from the devs on how these type of games are built. I understand arcade style games, but not how you write structs to support these types of games. It looks very challenging to design and program by the sheer amount of stuff happening in real time, and the careful balance of gameplay. Then again I could be completely outdated and it'…
Performance on my M2 Max is pretty poor, even just in the tutorial levels. I wonder if it's a Rosetta build...? Playable on Medium-High or so but laggy on higher settings right off the bat.
(On the other hand, it also launched on GeForce Now, and is silky-smooth there.)