My current obsession is Shapez 2. It’s part puzzle game, part factory simulator, where you set up endless conveyor belts and machines to interact with each other, like a fancy Rube Goldberg machine. The premise is so simple, yet the ridiculous complicated nature of the gameplay quickly takes over. When I say obsession, I genuinely mean it. I turn the game off after a mammoth session and I’m still thinking about it.
So, the premise. You have to build shapes and patterns from combinations of shapes and feed them into a gaping void. There’s no solid reason as to why you’re doing this other than satisfaction. I’m not sure if the void is a sentient thing or just a repository.
Shapes come into the square working area on all four sides - two sides deliver circles, while the other two deliver squares. It’s then up to you to match the requested shapes and transport them to the void. On the way to the void, you can set up machines to spin them, cut them, and stack them.
I want to explain further but fear that reading it will not suffice, but I will try to give you a scenario.
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Let’s say the void needs a semi-circle. You’ll place conveyor belts to transport the circles and along the way, you’ll place ‘cutter’ stations. When the circle shape reaches these stations they are pulled in and cut in half. Half of the shape comes out the other side of the station and onto new conveyors before being taken to the void.
Simple right? Now the void is asking for a quarter of a circle. So, you connect ‘spinner’ stations to the output of the ‘cutter’ stations so the semi-circle gets rotated, then you’ll need to feed these into new ‘cutter’ stations to remove half of the semi-circle and create your quarter. This then gets ferried into the void.
As you progress the shapes get more and more complicated. Suddenly you’ll need a circle with three-quarters of a square on top of it. This is where ‘stackers’ come in and you feed a square with a quarter chopped out into the top of the stacker and a full circle in the bottom. Once the squared shape drops through the ’stacker’ onto the circle, you’ve made the requested shape.
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If that last bit sounds complicated, that’s because it is.
However, it’s nothing compared to further down the line when colours are introduced and your working area expands by over 100 times the size. Now, all of a sudden, I’ve got conveyor belts running through space to rocks mining new shape colours which then come back to the base to go through a labyrinth of belts, feeders, and stations and slowly make their way to the ever-present void.
Shapez 2 is one of those games where I tell myself I should only play for half an hour and then suddenly it’s 1am and I’m deleting all of my conveyor belts because I’ve thought of a streamlined solution to a problem that probably didn’t exist, I just wanted symmetry or a new line of stations.
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Of course, there are upgrades to invest in and new features to add to stations - like the ‘cutter’ which can be changed to output both halves of a shape rather than destroy one side as the starter machine does. This, along with many other upgrades, will increase productivity often resulting in removing large swathes of machinery and rethinking the entire setup for your ‘factory.’
I’ve now reached a point of overwhelm, which is not a bad thing. I finished up the milestones which are essentially a training section of the game taking a few hours, and the final milestone unlocked ‘space platforms.’ The original working platform appears to be floating in space - which sort of explains the void - and now I have the facilities to mine asteroids for new coloured shapes.
These will be transported back to the now-expanding platform and chopped, swapped, and changed until I can achieve a steady supply of parts for increasingly complicated patterns. I can only imagine where I go from here.
I’m now highlighting linked machinery, copying it, and pasting it down when I get rid of old systems. I’m learning keyboard shortcuts that make me feel like a planning pro and placing certain stations has become second nature, so fulfilling the void is a simple affair - once all the tutorials are done with, of course. You’ll never run out of things to do, and it’s in Early Access, so you just know there are plenty of updates coming down the line.
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While this isn’t a review - I’ve not reached a point where I’m enough of an expert to slap a number on the bottom of a deeper dive - I can wholeheartedly say that Shapez 2 has become a game I will return to as often as I can and you should all play it.