Very awkward controls. It's tedious when you want to output multiple lower floor belts to single upper floor belt. I liked the original Shapez, but here I feel like I'm fighting controls and camera instead of playing and enjoying the game.

I spent 2 hours mowing my neighbors lawn for this game and this game is highly disappointing. I tried it for 2 hours and can't believe I can't even get a refund now. WHY IS THE FPS READOUT 1 FPS OFF FROM THE ACTUAL ONE BUILT IN ON STEAM? WHY IS IT ONLY AT 55 FPS AT MINIMUM GRAPHICS ON MY 1994 MACBOOK AIR? And wort of all, the DEV DOESN'T EVEN CARE ABOUT US! They only released 25 devlogs, and didn't provide nearly enough polls, like for example, WHY WAS THERE NOT A POLL FOR THE EXACT WORDING OF MILESTONE 1? For something sponsored BY A FREAKING GOVERNMENT, why is it so freaking unpolished? I thought that this game would be a fully completed game with NO BUGS WHATSOEVER. Even this random "early access" thing doesn't justify it nearly as enough. In an early access game, it should at least run in a manner on par with "Minecraft" and not just a very well designed game with random stuff. However, the thing that gets me more mad than all of this is how there is a lack of options at the beginning. IN THE NAME OF GAME PROGRESSION, WHY IS THERE A TUTORIAL, and WHY ISN'T EVERYTHING UNLOCKED AT THE VERY BEGINNING?!? This game treats us like a freaking seven year old and pretends we can't add single digit numbers or something. I'm highly disappointed in this game and don't understand why it's getting positive reviews. Just GO BACK to the positive reviews and give me ONE REASON that it deserves a positive review and comment. Thank you for reading and DON'T WASTE $20 ON THIS ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE GAME.

The perfect game for over-engineering! Need a total of 400 half-squares? Better spend 20 minutes making a machine output 200 per minute!

Its a dangerous game. Its the kind of game where you sit a late evening, look at the clock seeing you have 10-15mins before its time to tuck in for the night. Next time you look at the clock and an hour has passed. Then you say to your self, im just going to fix the thing im in the middle of, will only be a few minutes. Later, at 2-3 am you realize its going to be a rough day tomorrow.

Why do you refuse to refund my purchase? I have asked for a refund more than a dozen times so far. I have said I will not buy no other game on steam until you refund my money,

My kids and I have been waiting for this game for months and it's way better than we had possibly hoped for. The computer has been running it non-stop all day and it will likely become the rest of the week and weekend. We have a waiting list and special timer to take turns. Even grandma is interested. Get to the back of the line Grandma! No cutting. This game is seriously cool.

Its like crack except you're also making it and huffing and distributing it simultaneously while also being asked to split it up, separate it out, package it in cute bundles and mix it with other stuff.

Too grindy

The most important thing first: The game starts with 70% music volume and an overall volume of 50%. Why can't all games do this? Gameplay is nice. Game runs smoothly. No crashes.

Too rigid in forcing tutorials on the player. Won't just let me play and figure things out.

This game genuinely stole me for 28 hours of my life. It is addicting just like games such as Factorio, but even more so since it takes away everything that isn't building and growing your factory. Genuinely amazing and would recommend, but only if you have no other responsibilities for a long time! As for me, I need to get back to studying...

I don't want to give this game a negative review because there's nothing inherently wrong with it, but it is NOT an automation game. This is a puzzle game with belts and I can't help but feel a bit disappointed. I saw a few reviews from Factorio and DSP players so I bought it (never played the 1st game) but this game is just not for me. In an actual automation game you are constantly trying to optimize your factory and grow it. The iron you mine from the very start is still required 5 tiers down the tech tree so you have to juggle your resources and logistics to feed 10 different new items that require that iron. You tear down what you've made because you want to improve on it and grow it to feed your constantly hungry monster of a factory. You tear it down and redo because there's bottlenecking and isn't efficient and you get a dopamine hit when you fix the problem that you created. This is just a puzzle game that requires you to ship shapes. Say the shape required is ABC, you have to cut or rotate the mined pieces to get them to become A, B and C, then combine them to become ABC. After you ship 1000 pcs of ABC, they require DEF. You're now out of space, so you tear down your ABC pipeline because it's completely not used anymore once you're done shipping it. Then somewhere down the line you might need part B again to make a BGH, but that was so long ago you just simply build a new line to create B. There was no point in keeping my initial ABC because it just took up space and did nothing for a long time, ....which btw, is the complete opposite of automation lol The puzzle aspect is also pretty simple. You just have to put parts together according to the recipe and ship the combined shape/colour it asks for. The game makes it cumbersome by making it so that the cutter only cuts the left side, or the swapper only swaps the left side ever and so you have to add 3 slow "rotaters" on your belts just to get it to face the right way before you cut or combine. I'm half way through the space part (chapter 4 I believe) and there's nothing really new or exciting. The tech tree is basically just shipping more shapes and earning points to pick what new 'machines' you want to unlock (which I don't feel improves the factory that much) or making the belts/machines move faster. I don't get a dopamine hit from doing anything in this game at all because it's all so simple and pointless. Even the little bit of belt and auto-miner in Core Keeper gave me more of an "automation" dopamine hit than this and that game never claimed to be any sort of automation. That said it's very polished for EA and I didn't encounter any bugs or issues. Everything moved smoothly, and the graphics are lovely. If you love puzzle games I'm sure you'll enjoy this very much. It's just not an automation game and if you're looking for a game "like" factorio and DSP this is genuinely not it. ---Update 31st Aug: Thanks for all the clowns guys; I bought a nice animated background for my profile. I gave the game a positive review because like I said, I felt it was a me-issue, but I didn't expect to offend so many people instead to the point you're coming to my profile to send me hate. Stellar upstanding community right here... all this over a POSITIVE review on a puzzle game. Scary... lol... I can't refund because I'm 4+ hrs in, so the devs not only got my money, but also a free thumbs up, but you guys hate-bumped me to the top page, until the poor devs were forced to reply. It's a genuine review of the first 4 chapters. Even if it take 20 hours to get to any automation, my review still applies for the first 4 milestones of the game. I'm not gonna sink another 16 hours on something I'm not enjoying. Maybe one day when I'm in the mood for puzzles, I'll come back to it and the game will absolutely blow my mind and make me rewrite my entire review, but for now I meant what I wrote. If you don't agree then write your own review. Anyway if you're still considering, read the dev's response; the future chapters might be right up your alley even if it's not up mine.

the square goes in the square hole

this game sucks. good luck trying to figure it out with no direction

had to return the game, could not get the shapes to go up one level. tried everything, even reset and started over and still could not figure it out. nothing ever popped up to tell me what was wrong, or if i was doing something wrong. loved the first game, i absolutely cannot figure out this second one.

The game looks beautiful and is well made. I also like puzzle and factory games. So why did I play it just 17 minutes and then refund it? Because it utterly lacks any motivation to spend the dozens (hundreds?) of hours required to finish it. Factory games usually give you some reason to want to be in the game. Satisfactory has a beautiful world to explore, and progression in the game involves gaining new items and ways of interacting with the world, like new equipment, weapons, etc. This game offers you no reason to progress, other than to get new pieces which allow you to further grind for no reason. In those 17 minutes I could see a future where I poured hours into spaghetti conveyor belts and processing systems...for no tangible purpose. Just finished pieces spinning off into a void. No thanks.

I hate games with no goals. Yeah so what, I changed the color of a square and added a quarter circle to it whoopie. Look now a can add a new piece to the void , Oh-boy! Feels like you are never getting anywhere and never see any results even when you get a new unlocked piece. It's all for nothing. Reminds me of a place that could resemble something you probably would find in Hell. Talk about depressing, this is it. I love factory games but this really is to me so boring and pointless.

When you play until the wee hours because you want to a) build one more production line, and/or b) improve the efficiency of an existing one, and then finally tear yourself away to get some badly needed sleep only to learn that sleep will not be coming because your mind is still back figuring out better ways to feed the Vortex, you know a game has hooked you. This game has the PERFECT blend of challenge without frustration. I judge a game's value and play duration by how far I get into the game before I've seen 'one of everything.' Assassin's Creed games show you all the play components, upgrades, weapons, and armor about halfway through the game, making the last half a slog of just 'more of the same' only in different parts of the map (I'm looking at you, Valhalla.) This game was just the opposite. Sometimes, I couldn't wait to earn sufficient research points to get a much desired upgrade. That, of course, was always rewarding. Sometimes, I didn't even know why I would want to work towards an unfamiliar upgrade. But after I'd reach the latter, and then suddenly realize the exponential efficiencies or capabilities it opened up, well that was surprising and motivating to see what else was in store. Oh, and -- at least in my 600+ hours -- nary a bug in sight. Buy it. We need to feed the Vortex...

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☑ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ☐ My eyes are bleeding ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Masterpiece ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ Sounds like a fax machine dying ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ☐ My dog enjoyed it too ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Runs on a toaster ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ RTX ON ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☑ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☑ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ Emotional rollercoaster ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☐ Long ☑ Never-ending ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ Ark Survival Evolved ☐ Bethesda™ Experience ---{ Multiplayer }--- ☑ No multiplayer ☐ Local co-op only ☐ Fun with friends ☐ Good online experience ☐ Sweaty tryhards everywhere ☐ Dead lobbies ---{ Replayability }--- ☐ One-and-done ☑ Maybe another run ☐ Worth a second playthrough ☐ Endless fun ☐ You'll never uninstall ---{ Microtransactions }--- ☐ None ☑ Only cosmetics ☐ Fair pricing ☐ Pay-to-win elements ☐ Predatory ☐ Feels like a mobile game ---{ Modding Support }--- ☑ No mods ☐ Basic mod support ☐ Good modding tools ☐ Modding is life ☐ Turns into a completely different game ---{ Community }--- ☐ Nonexistent ☑ Small but passionate ☑ Friendly ☑ Helpful ☐ Competitive ☐ Absolute chaos ☐ Worse than League of Legends ---{ Innovation }--- ☐ Generic ☐ Somewhat unique ☑ Brings new ideas ☐ A game-changer ☐ Years ahead of its time ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☑ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10 ☐ 11/10

Refunded for climate change propaganda on loading screen

can you stop holding my hand and let me play the game? The tutorial almost makes the game unplayable! Please make it optional

Personally, I don't like this game that much. It's a fine game with nice graphics and streamlined factory mechanics, but to me the greatest weakness of this game is the "meaning" of the factory. All we are going to make is ... shapes ... that doesn't really have any meaning attached to them. We are not making the residents of our colony happier, we are not launching rocket into space, we are not making space gigastructures, we are not learning chemical reaction along the way, all we do is to stick squares or circles together and colouring them. The supposed-to-be more "complex" mechanics like crystals or pins, they don't have any meaning or immersion attached to them either, they're just ... mechanics designed for the sake of complexity. And I think except making complex-looking shapes, it's hard to say that the logistics challenges this game presents are very engaging. All the tools you have is to either splitting the shapes or combining the shapes in different manners. The one and only purpose of this game is to combine shapes together to make other shapes, so if you are into that, great, buy it. But if you are like me, expecting more depth of mechanics or immersion from this game, this is not the game for you (at least at the point when the review is posted).

strong urge to give the hole what it wants

shapez2 loses the fun from shapez. It didn't have to be this way. Tech is there, but gameplay choices are bad. The game is a slow, tiresome grind. The game starts slow, the research tree is less interesting that shapez and keeps you at a slow speed for some time. You have to make very boring builds. Rather than the massive space of shapez, you have tight areas which eventually become a little less tight, but still not the same feeling of freedom. You'll be forced to tear down your structures over and over due to the space usage and the fact they become useless quickly. Trains are broken. There game is not colorblind accessible. And for all that the issues, the game isn't hard or interesting. You solve the same problems often. The 3D and blueprints allow you to place combinations very quickly. Build a set of tools and put them down. Play the first game or something else that respects your time.

Like Shapez 1 but better in every conceivable way. More features, better graphics, better sound and much better UX, this is a worthy sequel and absolutely worth your money. It even has the decency to have the default volume at 70% so your ears don't explode the first time you launch the game.