With Shapez 2, the factory builder and automation game, now fully released, developer Tobspr Games has now announced their next game.
Called Puzzlez – A Shapez Game (the stylised title is all low caps, with an en dash—not an em dash or hypen), players need to construct shapes inside of handcrafted 3D dioramas. These puzzle boxes, which are all based on the mechanics of Shapez and Shapez 2’s factory building, can be further optimised if you fancy making smaller, sleeker solution.
Initially, the idea of a puzzle game based on Shapez was planned as DLC, but it’s now spun off into its own standalone title, so any puzzle enthusiast can try it out without having to jump into the rabbit hole and time sink that is a factory builder.
Here’s a full quote from Tobspr Games founder Tobias Springer, on Puzzlez:
“We set out to create a standalone successor to the puzzle DLC for the original shapez, so Puzzlez began life as a planned DLC for Shapez 2. However, we realized that this would require players to own the full Shapez 2 game just to experience something we’d designed to stand on its own, so we decided that since releasing it as a separate title doesn’t change the price and would give us far more creative freedom, we’d make Puzzlez its own game. Our aim is to grow Puzzlez into a series itself and I think the gameplay will be quite intriguing to Shapez fans and puzzle game enthusiasts.”
At launch, Puzzlez will include over 75 puzzles, all handcrafted. The game will include tools to create your own puzzles, with the ability to share them with the community. No hard confirm of a histogram like you’d see in a Zachtronics game, but there will be ways for you to “track how well you did, and compare with others.”
Shapez and Shapez 2, like any factory builder, is all about creating solutions given tight constraints. So making a puzzle game spin-off is a no-brainer for the series.
The Shapez series has now sold over two million copies combined. So if even a fraction of the Shapez playerbase decided to pick up on Puzzlez, that’ll a lot of puzzle solvers out there.
Puzzlez has no release date yet, but it’s coming to PC (Steam).