Recent reviews by Pyras

It's really fun! I am glad this follows up very well to the first game and steps it the ♥♥♥♥ up from the previous one to a larger scale than before. I think I like a lot of the new mechanics and am currently about to finish the normal scenario, and am wracking my brain apart trying to figure out how to make an MAM that can handle crystals and pins.


Mutliple floors are cool. Makes various tools like stackers a lot more intuitive, and an interesting alternative to the tunnels and wires-only floor of the previous game.

Fluids are a lot more suiting to the 3D nature of this game over the paint blobs of the first, and speaking of the 3D I think the work done has been amazing, and love seeing the detail on each tool to see how it works internally over the black-box nature of the previous - not that it was bad, but this is better.

The milestone system and operator levels are great, and so is the research tree. I think the game's current structure gives a nice flexibility to how to approach tasks and milestone targets, while also keeping you constantly engaged with newer things to make. I (think I) have ADHD, and this game soothes the heck out of it, and boy does it make me stay up too long at night instead of sleeping in the endless cycle of "just this one part more". It's very good at constantly giving me new stuff to do and deliver, especially as I finish one and it tells me I have finished another and I have to go update it's factory for the next level, or have gotten enough reasearch points to start doing more new stuff.

Trains are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome because trains are really freaking awesome. I love trains wooooooooo. The extensive scale expansion of this game definitely calls for better ways to transport masses of resources, and having trains that can do cool tricks and also have a slick look adds to the experience.

The music agksgf;sdfhsf I love it a lot!! I am glad to have gotten the supporter edition for additional tracks, sad that it doesn't give a cut towards the composer (as per their comments on youtube) but I want to state it very clearly that I am a big fan of the soundtrack for this game. I am a developer by work, and I will be listening to shapez1/2 OST as a backing material for coding for a considerable part of my future now.

Crystals and Pins are an interesting addition. I have yet to finish the crystals stage, but pins are a nicer way of getting gaps than falling layer trickery, though either one is often a challenge.

That said, there are aspects that I often find a little irritating to the experience, but more so minor hiccups in an overall great experience. I think this has been said often on the nolt, but the you can't split while changing levels really makes designing frustating more than a good challenge, especially with pipes and particularly large buildings like the mixer - still managed to make a 1 platform mixer, and very proud when it worked after fixing it twice, but I do feel that the way pipes wouldn't go in a T shape - given how flexible they are to being split normally - makes the experience cumbersome. launchers having a fixed long range make it hard to integrate them into a layout without switching levels, especially because [the thing I just described].

It's also weird that there's no target shape wire output on the hub, so a MAM can't be fully automatic like it is in shapez 1 [Side note: If it somehow happens to start outputing it after I finish crytals milestones, then whoops. But it would be nice to have it all the time rather than after a point, just hidden until you unlock wires. Especially would like to see multiple wire outputs for each pinned target, and maybe "channels" for the global transmission to listen in].

I do understand and appreciate the complexity shapes vs fluids brings, but the experience of not being able to easily convert a conveyor based design into fluids one means I need to make duplicate blueprints, and I only have so much space on the blueprint bar. Speaking of the blueprint bar, it's very common for me to place blueprints and then press 1/2 to place spacebelts or pipes, only to load in my first blueprint. Maybe blueprints can use the buttons from 2 onwards instead, making it easier to add pipes or belts to selected blueprint designs. Another idea is if we can have variants switchable with tab, especially we can put a folder instead of a single blueprint into the bar, and then press tab to switch between some first n members of the folder, making it easier to have blueprint variants of the stuff we have on the floor level.

I will be adding these points to the nolt as well (after I finish, so I don't have false issues), so that it is more trackable, but keeping them here so that people can see and I can provide feedback to the devs.


I am not a person that normally plays factory games, shapez 1 is the first and only one I had played before this. But it unlocked a love for this type of game that I didn't know about before, thanks to seeing a youtuber (RCE) play it. I do feel I will try more of these as I get time and money, but this game and it's predecessor will remain in my heart forever as one of the best games I have ever played. I got the supporter edition, and have purchased upgrades for my friends as well, and I am glad for the regional prices too! It helps out a lot when currency exchange rates are hell and they keep getting worse with each year. Obviously it's a steam thing and it's quite common to find it, but I still appreciate when indie devs include it, especially when some AAA games don't and it sucks a lot.

Fun when nobody is good at it