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Shapez 2’s Next Fest demo is the purest catnip for factory game loversJoin me in drooling over endless lines of conveyor belts
Join me in drooling over endless lines of conveyor belts
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Gamera Games
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Gamera Games
Shapez 2 knows exactly what it needs to be. It’s what developers Tobspr are calling a “pure” factory game, which means there are no enemies to fight, and all the factory buildings and belts you place down are entirely free. It’s simply about taking simple shapes, cutting them up, rotating them, and stitching them together again into more complex shapes which you then feed into the big shape-hungry portal at the centre of the map.
Click on any of the shapes you need to deliver, and the game will offer multiple 3D views of the shape so you can easily understand how to make it. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Gamera Games
If you played Shapez 1, it will all be very familiar to you. The main difference is that Shapez 2 is entirely 3D, and aside from the obvious added complexity of having multiple levels of belts, it means everything looks about 8000% more gorgeous. But it’s not just that. Key info such as belt throughput and ideal ratios is much more freely accessible. The controls are more intuitive, too, particularly when placing down conveyor belts - which make up a good 75% of everything you’ll ever place, so it’s a damn good thing they got it so spot on.
Shapez 2’s animation also does a lot of the heavy lifting in making everything feel as satisfying as possible. Watching the cutters neatly bisect and re-organise shapes, or seeing the belt elevators scoop items up and down like bike pedals, is just sublime. The design throughout is exceptional, and stopping to zoom in on a section of my factory at work was just a great big 14-gauge needleful of serotonin to the brain.
Placing down conveyor belts in Shapez 2 is more pain-free and satisfying than in any other factory game I’ve played. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Gamera Games
You can zoom out extremely far in Shapez 2, and pan around to see the full and daunting scale of its procedurally generated maps. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Gamera Games
I do wish the demo challenged me a bit more. Unlike in Shapez 1, the portal will accept the right shape inanyorientation, which feels odd in a game that’s so hyperfocused on precision with its shapes, and I’m still not sure about all your building costs being free, either. It’s convenient, but it also means there’s less incentive to be efficient. The platforms may help with this, of course, but even in the demo it’s very easy to circumvent this, as I simply had more platforms than I knew what to do with. Convenience is nice, but removing all limits isn’t necessarily always the most enjoyable thing.
The visual upgrade from Shapez 1 to Shapez 2 goes far beyond simply making everything 3D. Everything from the textures to the animations are beautiful, especially in motion. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Gamera Games
I think Shapez 2’s long-term success will come down to how ambitious it ends up being. I had a scroll through the tech tree beyond the point where the demo ends, and I saw a few very cool-sounding features - trains, colour mixing, and vortex technology (whatever that is) - but I’m mostly hoping for at least one or two more basic shape types. At the moment there’s only the circle, square, star, and windmill shapes, and everything is built out of those four. I know that the complexity comes from the layering and colouring of those shapes, but still. What I wouldn’t give for a clover, or a diamond, or a donut!
Despite that, the demo left me aching for more. Which probably means it was exactly the right length. I spent a languorous seven hours beating it the first time, but that was down to me deliberately scaling up my production to silly levels. I played the demo again afterwards, and finished it in 90 minutes. So it’s really dependent on how you decide to play. Still, everything I’ve seen looks very promising indeed, and here’s hoping that when Shapez 2 releases into early access this year, it will turn the holy trinity of factory games (Factorio,Satisfactory, andDyson Sphere Program) into a quartet.
