Satisfactory

Satisfactory offers a new take on the factory building genre, giving players a sprawling map and total freedom to construct the most efficient factory possible, or to leave the ground covered in what is known by the community as 'conveyor belt spaghetti', where raw resources may or may not end up being constructed into increasingly complex components. Developed by Swedish developers Coffee Stain Studios, Satisfactory was a totally new direction for the company. Coffee Stain acknowledged their lack of experience in the factory building genre, launching the game in Early Access in 2019 to test whether players wanted a 3D factory building game and receive player feedback before its 1.0 release in September 2024. Satisfactory differs massively from other giants of the genre, such as Factorio or Dyson Sphere Program. While other competitors often combine factory construction with a survival aspect, Satisfactory chooses to ignore this trope, offering no defence mechanics. Furthermore, every resource node offers an unlimited supply of ores, gases or oils to exploit. During my playtime, I found Satisfactory consistently fun and engaging, purely due to the freedom the game offers. Get bored of building a factory? You can explore the vast, hand-crafted map. Or inflict your wrath on the local fauna, using their 'resources' to exchange for coupons in the 'A.W.E.S.O.M.E' shop. Satisfactory drops the player, or Pioneer, onto planet Massage-2(A-B)b with a simple task: construction, collection and exploitation for the massive mystery company FICSIT. While the game offers some story as of its 1.0 release, it does not dominate the experience. In my opinion, Satisfactory shares the learning curve of other factory building games, being easy to learn, but much harder to master. While it is possible to brute force the game, that would be inefficient, and FICSIT does not approve of inefficiency. To build a fully efficient factory, you will learn about conveyor belt manifolds, input and output balance and power management. By the end of the game you may be combining four inputs to produce a component. Simply said, if you aren't very good with maths, you definitely will be by the time you finish Satisfactory. On average, Satisfactory takes over 100 hours to complete, with some taking well over 200 hours. Despite having a single, hand-crafted map rather than a procedurally generated one, Satisfactory has close to infinite replayability. You could change a factory design, build in a new location or set yourself a restriction. Developers also added settings allowing players to randomise resource node locations and purity, as well as change milestone, build and energy costs. Although Satisfactory lacks dedicated mod support, a massive part of the community makes it easy to integrate mods. While having only been available on PC during Early Access, Satisfactory has recently become available on consoles following its 1.0 release. It takes up between 25 and 35GB of storage. At around £35 normally, I would argue that Satisfactory excels in value for money, and it is frequently discounted on platforms like Steam, sometimes dropping to £25. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, Satisfactory has amazing graphics. Coffee Stain has hand-crafted the whole map, featuring hidden areas and incredible attention to detail. This is also found in the buildings themselves, with every building and machine featuring detailed animations and textures that add another layer of immersion. Satisfactory features incredible sound design, conveying both the natural beauty of exploring the alien world and the industrial efficiency of building a factory. Featuring an entirely original OST, Satisfactory has a soundtrack for every mood, and players can build a boombox to play cassettes found around the map. As your industrial might grows, so does the strain on your PC or console. While the developers have made optimisations, this issue will mainly arise in the late game, or if you are trying to follow in the footsteps of Let's Game It Out. Satisfactory features dedicated multiplayer, and while it can be a little finicky at times, it offers the chance to build the factory of your dreams with all your friends. While Satisfactory is certainly not the most challenging game in the factory building series, it is most certainly my favourite of the genre, and one of my favourite games, period. The slow build from basic mining to the construction of supercomputers and warp drives, combined with exploring an alien world and finding new resources to exploit and play around with, is something you don't find in gaming. Despite the performance issues, Coffee Stain is constantly working to improve the game, and I still believe it deserves a 10. Satisfactory has become one of my favourite games of all time, and giving it anything other than a 10 would simply be inefficient

I love Satisfactory! What I love most about this game is the progression. You start with almost nothing, and as you unlock new tools, machines, technologies, and transportation, you entire world changes. The new update production multiplier has made the game even better for me. I dont feel like I have to produce massive amounts of every item just to because I can. I can lower the production requirements and build at a pace that feels comfortable. it actually makes the game feel surprisingly cozy and less stressful for me. I can focus on building and enjoying my factory instead of constantly worrying about whether I'm producing enough. Controller support is another huge win for me. feels incredibly comfortable and natural on controller. I also love watching my factory grow.