Shapez 2 is like in the event you stripped down the moment-to-moment joys of a sport like Passable or Factorio to their most primal components and left all the remaining behind. As I extract, rotate, chop, and stack polygons to dump into a large vortex, there is no such thing as a better narrative or survival context to what I am doing. It is logistics for the sake of logistics, nearly Tetris-like in its pure mechanical focus. And there’s a sure zen satisfaction to that.
The demo stage for Shapez 2 begins you on a platform out in area with a easy purpose of constructing a system of conveyor belts to ship contemporary rectangles and circles, straight from the earth, to a swirling anomaly within the middle. It is a slick-looking sport with a really efficient UI, and I discovered the controls fairly straightforward to make use of and intensely versatile. The simplicity of it makes every part of a manufacturing line straightforward to determine at a look. And any time I received caught in my tracks, it wasn’t as a result of I could not determine the way to construct what I wished to construct. That frictionlessness allowed me to concentrate on the puzzle itself as a substitute of combating with keyboard shortcuts.
(*2*)
Complexity is progressively layered on from there. It begins with reducing shapes in half. Then you definitely would possibly must rotate them to ship a particular orientation. Rotating them 90 levels then lets you lower the halves into quarters. It could possibly get surprisingly tough. For example, making an L-shape requires you to chop a sq. in half, then lower some – however not all – of these halves into quarters, rotate all the pieces correctly, and eventually stick the quarters onto one of many empty quadrants of a half. And that is earlier than we even get into the truth that entire shapes might be stacked on high of each other.
POLY-GONE
At every step up in issue, you may have a fundamental goal to unlock the subsequent main milestone, in addition to aspect goals that ask for various shapes which give quantitative upgrades like sooner conveyor belts. Thus, I finally ended up with a number of interweaving manufacturing strains utilizing a number of the identical components in several methods. Unlocking extra vertical layers offers much more potential optimization and complexity.
Towards the top of the demo, you additionally unlock the power to reap totally different colours of shapes from asteroids that have to be linked to your fundamental manufacturing facility by a series of bigger platforms, which might themselves be used to construct extra complicated infrastructure.
It will get to be a fairly intricate and satisfying problem to get all of this infrastructure going initially. The truth that you possibly can bulldoze a whole manufacturing line and rebuild it for free of charge means the one barrier to beginning over and doing it higher is time. I finally discovered myself attempting to hone in on a setup that might ship any attainable part I would want as a base, as shortly as attainable, after which enable me to separate off any of these strains as soon as a brand new goal was revealed. On the identical time, the dearth of primary useful resource administration does create a sense that I haven’t got to suppose too fastidiously about what I am doing at any given step.
TIME AFTER TIME
The opposite concern I discovered myself dealing with with Shapez 2 is that there is a number of ready. As soon as you have arrange a manufacturing line to ship a posh form, you would possibly want to attend for a whole bunch of them to trickle into the vortex earlier than an goal completes, and there is at the moment no fast-forward button. Within the meantime, you possibly can arrange one other line to ship a special form for a bonus goal. However typically I had already finished that and was merely ready on each of them. It’s also possible to attempt to enhance the effectivity of a line so it completes sooner, however there is not actually any reward for getting issues finished sooner apart from the minutes of your life you would possibly get again. There isn’t any failure state and no particular award for velocity. I might relatively simply go make a cup of espresso or watch some YouTube movies.
One of many final methods you unlock within the Shapez 2 demo is the power to repeat and paste entire sections of a manufacturing facility as blueprints, which does add some gentle useful resource administration to the combination. Each merchandise you place as a part of a blueprint prices Blueprint Factors, that are earned steadily by delivering particular shapes to the vortex. Whereas this will save a good bit of time and fiddling, I did not find yourself utilizing it that a lot merely due to the problem above: saving time in Shapez 2 often simply means ready longer for an goal to finish. However it’s good to not need to recreate the identical constructions manually time and again.
CHILLAX
There’s something rewardingly meditative and zen about Shapez 2, particularly with the optimistic vibes of its electric-orchestral soundtrack accompanying me on my journey by means of area. I might see myself zoning out and twiddling with it after I simply must wind down and go at my very own tempo. However I additionally felt like I wished extra context, and extra stakes. I am unsure why I am right here, dumping all of those elements into an precise black gap, and I am by no means racing towards the clock or dealing with the potential of failure. In that approach, it may well type of really feel extra like a toy than a sport. And that is not essentially a nasty factor. However the primary concepts right here have the potential to go loads additional, and I feel they’d work simply as effectively in additional intense gameplay modes as they do within the sandbox-like one I received to take a look at.
If you would like to present Shapez 2 a spin your self, you possibly can try the identical demo I performed from now till February 26.