So there I was, building my factory with a nice day/night cycle... after a while I noticed that it had been perpetually night for a really long time... I chalked it up to a bug and continued building my bowl of spaghetti.

Some time later daytime came back and I was glad to have a bit of light showcasing my chaotic climate altering creation... then it caught my eye..

I saw a gigantic blue world occupying the horizon. I had initially mistaken it for the sky.

...that perpetual night was me on a moon, on the far side of the planet, being eclipsed.

Epic.

I'll keep it simple.

You should play this game if:

1) You like Factorio
2) You like Satisfactory
3) You like the Anno series (for the automated supply/demand trade system)
4) You like space and the sci-fi genre
5) You like spherical maps.
6) You like active and responsive developers.
7) You like daily or semi-daily updates to your games. Even on Sundays.
8) You like early access games that feel almost complete.
9) You like games that can become much more than the developers envisioned.
10) You like games that should be more expensive than they are, considering the amount of time you'll be enjoying them.

I have over 300 hours in this game, often playing it all day long. It's never crashed. It's never glitched out or corrupted my save game. I'm at the point where I've completed a Dyson Sphere and it's never dropped a frame despite multiple planets literally covered in production lines. Dyson Sphere Program looks absolutely beautiful.

And it's in early access.

This game is a masterpiece of coding.

Step 1: Make spaghetti factory.
Step 2: Get confused and restart.
Step 3: Try to play like Factorio.
Step 4: Realize that DSP's planetary model allows potential for things Factorio doesn't and restart again.
Step 5: Make BUS that loops all the way around the planet to create an endless cycle of moving resources.
Step 6: Fly to a different planet to find Silicon and Titanium because the starting planet never has any.
Step 7: Miss the planet and zoom off into the far reaches of the infinite void because you forgot to bring fuel and don't have enough energy left to slow down.
Step 8: Reload and try again. Take fuel that time.
Step 9: Automate solar panel production and make giant equatorial ♥♥♥♥-ring of solar panels for unlimited solar energy.
Step 10: Get kind of confused about what to do next, so you decide to make a bunch of planetary logistics systems and mass produce logistics drones in an attempt to literally cover the entire planet in an apocalyptic cloud of resource-trafficking robots.
Step 11: Realize this is a bad idea and give up.
Step 12: Look up guides on YouTube and realize that if you press tab while placing splitters you can change what type of splitter you use.
Step 13: Set about on the monumental task of redesigning your entire main BUS with this newfound game-changing knowledge so it uses up less than half the space it did before.
Step 14: Mess up at some point and break your entire factory but now you're too tired and confused to fix it because it's 4am and decide to go to bed.
Step 15: Wake up the next day and restart.

I could describe Dyson Sphere Program as "Factorio in 3D", but that wouldn't come close; perhaps "Satisfactory on more than one planet and with an actual end game goal" would be a better fit. There's so, so much more, but that's a good starting point. I hate it when someone seems like they're raving about a game, but that's what I'm about to do. There's a summary at the end, if long-winded prattle isn't your style. Saddle up, here we go...

At the time of writing this review, I have 46 hours played... and I only bought it 72 hours ago. I played it for 15 hours in my very first session, and only stopped because my wife insisted I get some sleep. I'll admit that I left it running while I slept for about 9 hours, but in my defense I was trying to break the game by flying to another star system (remember No Man's Sky?)

I am quite pleased to report that traveling to another star system is totally a thing; I was also flying there without warp capability; the game told me I needed drive tech 4 to reach it but I only had drive tech 2.
I tend to tech up slowly because I'm a "mechanics hound"; I have over 600 hours in Oxygen Not Included, but have never launched a rocket; I have over 1,000 hours in Fallout 4, two weeks of which was spent breaking the economy in survival mode with the workshop DLC... by smashing tens of thousands of lunchboxes. Nuka-Cola is too heavy to be good for commerce, but if you drink it you get a bottle cap. Pens and pencils, on the other hand, are weightless even in survival mode.

The game told me it would take roughly eleven and a half hours to get where I was going... which was surprisingly accurate. About 2 hours after I woke up this morning, I unlocked my screen to find myself close enough to the system I aimed for to check out the planets in it, and spent quite a while gleefully doing exactly that (and taking notes). I went on to visit several star systems, although none was nearly so long in journey time as the first trip. I did some IRL things while I coasted through space at a "mere" 1,000m/s for an hour or two on my way to neighboring star systems that were "only" a few light years away. As far as I can tell, the sole penalty for not using warp drive is that it takes much longer to get where you're going; I regret being too impatient to research just a bit more before I left my home system.

Stars are rated by their letter, just like in reality. The letters (roughly) follow the alphabet in scale. As an example, Sol (our sun, aka the star in our own solar system) is a G type star, as is the star you start on in any new game. F type stars are slightly hotter, K are slightly cooler... relatively speaking.

Things I have learned in my travels through half a dozen or so star systems in this game:
The planets in G type star systems tend to be quite comfortable, and there tend to be more of them. They also tend to have large chunks of "basic" resources on them. F type stars seem to be likely to have a relatively good selection of basic resources, and to also be relatively comfortable, if slightly less densely populated by planets than G type stars' systems. K and M stars seem to have more rare minerals, but the very few planets are... let's just say, "less hospitable". Lava or ice were prevalent features on many, if not most that I visited during my journey. B-type stars have amazing amounts of resources on a fair-to-middling number of planets, but those planets tend to also be slightly less pleasant than would be ideal; "Warm and dry" would be a good descriptor, although less hostile in general than the "fire and ice" I found at the K/M end of the scale. The only water oceans I found were in orbit around F or G stars.

I saw, but did not visit, both a neutron star and a black hole as well as several red giants and white dwarf stars. I'm looking forward to visiting those, but did not feel like 30+ real-world hours of travel time could possibly result in a payoff that would be worth it. I may come back and update after I achieve warp travel, but don't hold your breath.

My takeaway from my brief sojourn across the galaxy (and the Wikipedia entry on Stellar Classification): Stay as close to G type stars as you can in the early game, leaning toward F type rather than K type if you have the option. Skip M type and B type until you've got a solid logistics system and/or can bring a "base in a bucket" with you. Don't forget to bring fuel for the return journey unless your plan to get home is "load a save file".

Oh, and research warp drive before heading for another star; It makes the journey *much* faster.

Getting back to the review...
The music is excellent, sound effects are stellar, and positional audio is *so* immersive (thank you, devs). The graphics are top-notch for an Early Access title. It's obvious that a lot of time and effort went into the art assets, and I don't actually feel like anything is missing, at least in what I've experienced so far. Oh, I did encounter an unimplemented technology in the research tree, but it's labeled "Work in progress", it's not selectable, and skipping it doesn't prevent other techs from being researched, so the actual impact on gameplay is practically non-existent.

The translations to English are bit sketchy, and the grammar is kinda gnarly in places, but I would imagine that will be polished to perfection when they get around to it... and it still manages to mostly get the point across, although I did have to read a few phrases more than once to understand the intended meaning. To be fair, I've seen worse spelling and grammar in titles that only had English as a language option, so this is perhaps another point to be impressed by, rather than an actual issue.

Summary:
I've seen AAA titles with less polish and less functional gameplay. If this is early access (and guessing by the versioning info, about 60% complete?) then I can't wait to see what it looks like once it's actually finished. Well worth the money I paid for it in its present state, and knowing what I know now, I would easily have paid twice as much. Buy it before the price goes up; this one is phenomenal.

I agree with a previous comment , this is " a master piece ", lovely fluid game play ,addictive , challenging ,but not impossibly difficult for a 70 year old like me . Well worth the money superb !!

WARNING: This game will eat your time. There were so many moments i wanted to exit then the sun rose and i saw what i had made, then played for at least 2 or 3 more hours. I have some quality of life issues but jesus this game is too good to dwell on those. Buy this is you like factorio and satisfactory but make sure you have a clear schedule.

"I started playing at 6pm, and before I knew it, it was 7pm. What a productive 25 hours."

If you decide to play this game, I encourage you to play it without watching guides or any 'let's play' first. The feeling of exploration and discovery in this game only happens once and it's done really well... don't spoil it for yourself.

I'm still trying out but this game seems fun. Those who said that this game chews away time is obviously untrue.
When I started playing this game the sky is dark. Now that I stop and rest for a while the sky is still dark. I even have my system log as proof.

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Edit: I finally 'finished' the game! It took me around 800 hours to explore all the current mechanisms, and I certainly recommend it! Jokes aside, it does suck away a huge amount of time per session. Handle with care.