Shapez 2 Demo Impressions – A Bigger, Sleeker Factory Builder In The Making

I stumbled upon Shapez, stylised as “shapez” last year when it was an Epic Game Store freebie. This seemingly simple indie game has then consumed me for the entirety of a week as I discovered that despite its very ordinary presentation lies a deeply rewarding factory builder. It should be up there with the likes of Factorio and Satisfactory when conversations about this sub-genre under the broad strategy game umbrella that share traits with city builders.

So I am excited to see what Shapez 2 has in store. The early trailer promises the game going bigger, moving from 2D to 3D. And after spending a couple of hours of the demo, which should be available now, it’s safe to say that Shapez 2 is shaping up to deliver that promise.

Shapez 2 has the same premise of the original. You extract shapes from a deposit to send it to the center of your manufacturing hub. But this time, you’re in space. And the manufacturing hub is an all-consuming vortex that will suck up all the shapes you throw in.

The main gameplay loop comes with having to deliver specific shapes, which you can create by having the raw shapes you extracted to go through various machines, transported by conveyor belts, until you it forms the exact shape the game demands. And from there, it’s all about being able to manufacture those shapes faster, as you’re not asked to create 1 of them, it’s likely a big batch of them. And from there, the factory grows.

The move to 3D is not as jarring as I had expected. You can freely rotate the camera around, but by default the camera is “sticky” and will lock to either 30 degree angles for that isometric look, or 45 degrees. And if you want to play Shapez 2 from a top-down view, that camera angle is still available.

The machines you can plop looks very distinctive from a 3D perspective, so it’s easy to just glance and recognise if that’s a clockwise-rotation machine or an anti-clockwise one. The art direction here is nice- not too cartoony but still carries over that simple presentation the original game has. But now in space. And on that note, the new music which includes synthwave remixes of the songs from the first game are fantastic.

The change to 3D also effects gameplay. For example, the Stacker machine is not two vertical conveyor belts merging into one this time. It’s now two conveyor belts stacked on top of each other merging- the top shape being pushed to the bottom shape. So you’ll need to figure a new way to not only get this machine working, but also to figure out how to get a row of Stackers online. It’s a fun new challenge.

In fact, racking your brain that you have a 2nd layer on top to work with has been fun. Instead of building tunnels (put a pin on that), conveyor belts can go up and down vertically (on the Z-axis) and it’s as simple as dragging the belt while you go up or down a layer. And I like that you can just converge two conveyor belts into one or split a conveyor belt into two. More intuitive than having to add another tool to load balance. Though deleting a T-intersection belt means you delete the whole belt so that’s a bit more of a hassle.

Shapez 2 also changes the space you work with. Instead of infinite space, you’re now floating in space with limited-sized platforms.

You still have infinite space, as in, zoom out far enough and you’ll be treated to an infinite scroll of shape deposits. But you’re not treated to an infinite grid space. Instead, you have to work with small-ish platforms. The main platform with the big vortex is the biggest you can have in the demo, as the platforms you can expand are smaller.

On one perspective, you can’t make too big of a spaghetti mess of conveyor belts that you just cannot untangle anymore which is a shame. But these smaller platforms makes you think about building modularly, so that you can easily scale up production. As the factory grows bigger, most of the belts you’ll be laying are the long tunnels and space belts to transport far-off deposits to the Big Hole.

Shapez 2 will nudge you to sprawl out systematically, turning what would be a mess of a factory into a mess of lines and machinery akin to electronic circuits.

The demo content will take about 2 hours to complete, not including the specific demo challenges. There is a limit to how big the factory can grow, and you’re not incentivised to build further out due to lack of tools (you cannot extract paint colours, and the coloured shapes required to complete the demo challenges will only spawn close to the hub) but there are no time limits imposed so you can mess around as much as you want once you see the demo through.

All in all, Shapez 2 looks set to make its transition to 3D smoothly. The new art and the synthwave music are great, the gameplay feels fresh but still retains the soul of its predecessor and seems to just as addicting.

For the hobbyist industry engineers out there, keep a close eye on Shapez 2 and check out the demo. If this demo is any indication, Shapez 2 should be shaping up for a bigger, sleeker factory game.

Shapez 2 will enter Early Access sometime this year.

Played on PC. Early demo key provided by the publisher.

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