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shapez.io review
by NafaryusDestiny

I initially had a lot of fun with this on the website shapez.io. If you're interested in this game, check it out there first. It's free and you can transfer your save to Steam if you want to purchase it.

shapez.io is a minimalist take on Factorio, where you aren't restricted by resources, but rather only by your imagination. There's a certain zen to its simplicity. You build factories that chop up, paint, stack, and piece together various shapes. You start with only a few options for building, but quickly unlock more as your deliver the required materials. Many are direct upgrades, allowing you to retrofit or rebuild old factories with new technologies. Eventually you unlock circuits that allow you to automate things further, creating completely independent factories.

At a certain point, Shapez's simple premise takes a turn for the worse, adding in unintuitive puzzle-like mechanics to the previously simple shapebuilding. Floating parts, empty layers, and a weird set of logic behind it all makes it more frustrating than rewarding. It doesn't help that the system for stacking shapes is bug-ridden, sometimes locking you out of progressing if you happen to have made a mistake in a stacking formula. This system is purposefully obtuse, with prominent community members claiming these puzzle-like aspects "make the game worth playing." To me, they keep it from being something I want to continue playing.

It's cheap, so I still recommend it. If you enjoy what you played online, and you're okay with some bad design choices and bugs, it's worth the $5 pricetag.