This is a "wish I could leave it a neutral review" review. Came to this game looking for a fresher Satisfactory, having plumbed the depths of that game. This game is... bare bones. Now, truly, I played Satisfactory in early access too when it was also bare bones, and came back and started over in full launch. I'll probably do the same for this game. BUT!

The major problems I have with this game aren't the bugs that I know will be stomped in time, or things like enemy behaviours that need tweaking, or the emptiness of the big, pretty world they've given us. Those are all things that can be worked on. The things that give me pause are more structural.

Firstly, the smaller one. Automation is disappointing. You make a production line, put a storage at the end, ship off a given number of those items, and then that production line sits dead and listless until you much later find a higher tier blueprint that requries that part. 90 per cent of my production lines are sitting there doing precisely nothing while I wander around looking for some random bottle-necking blueprint that could be literally ANYwhere in the whole game world, which takes even longer because every searchable point of interest is guarded by waves of (largely easy and boring) insect enemies.
In addition, this isn't really a numbers game. Probably it's possible to calculate input materials vs output product, but there's so far no point in doing so. As I say, you build one production line, it will make everything, you won't use most of the things again until you find a blueprint that lets you make the next tier. If you ever (somehow) find yourself in need of extra raw materials, you can just walk over and build a new mining rig a few metres over. No need to worry your pretty head about the numbers.

The second gripe I have is the base upgrade system. When you start a build project, first you have to put down a base core. This core "overheats" if you build too much or too complexly near it. The logical thing of course is to upgrade your core as the game asks you to build more complex and costly machines. Problem is, as soon as you upgrade your base core, you start getting attacked. Not once, but continuously, in waves. Why? I can't imagine. One would think that a single big, epic battle that you have to win to earn your upgrade would be enough to a) check your progression on defenses and armaments and b) provide a bookmark in your story. Instead all you earn is continuous crippling, extremely annoying, and unrewarding waves of attackers that never stop. The enemies are just not interesting or rewarding enough to be bothered with any of that. And base defenses amount to "build one big gun and stand near it feeding it bullets", which have both a limited cache of ammo and no way of autofeeding from your bullet producing machines! Again, why? But the icing on this cake is that it's all perfectly pointless! You will never, ever, need to upgrade your base core. Ever. Because if you run out of "heat" allowance, you can just walk a few dozen steps over and build another core, and continue building. So half the game loop is just broken. You do it once for the lols, then reload a previous save when you get bored with it. And you WILL get bored with it.

But the real kicker, the real head scratcher, the absolute "seems like a great idea but have you play tested it?" nail in the coffin is the actual central premise of the game.
Star rupture. It's absolutely the worst.
What happens when Ruptura, the star in question, ruptures? An aboslutely gorgeous explosion of fire and brimstone booming forth from the sky above that annihilates every single thing on the face of the planet and sends you scurrying for cover inside your un-singeable habitat, only to watch the world burn to a cinder through your indestructable windows, feeling very much like a roast duck inside an oven. This is the day cycle of StarRupture. No night, just ash and smoke and flaming debris. You walk out into a world transformed into a blasted hellscape, and then slowly experience the world regenerate itself back into greenery and trickling water (and respawned insects). That's awesome, right?! It is!!... the first time. Even the second and third time. By the twentieth time you're starting to get a bit fed up with it. By the fiftieth you're alt tabbed watching youtube videos while you wait for the world to finish being on fire. There's just nothing to do during a rupture. You sit inside your base and stare at a wall and wait. You can't access the resources outside in your storages, you can't build with your drones, you can't even restock your defenses' ammo. All you can do is browse the seemingly endless catalogue of corporate "rewards" you still can't access or unlock because you haven't found the blueprint to make chemicals yet, and can't even go look for the damned thing because of the aforementioned hellfire.

How are the devs going to fix all this? I don't know. I would hope they'd give you actual tasks to do inside your base, like base design, decorating, working on production strategies. Maybe give you a map table you can use to build base blueprints to set your buliding drones onto when the rupture is over. My fear is that they'll just remove the rupture event entirely, or rework it in such a way that curtails it's world changing effects, which would all just be sad. It is actually a super impressive thing to see, and one of the games' few truly unique elements. The base upgrades are a simple fix. Just have each tier unlock trigger a single enemy wave, of higher difficulty each time, to gear check you and test your defenses. And for gods sake make the gun emplacements autofeed ammo stock.

I will be playing a little more on this game, and I'll be back to check it out again in a few updates time. There's a lot to like here at this stage. But I can't in good conscience recommend spending money on it yet, and my fear is that in an effort to rush a "fix", the uniqueness the game does have will be sucked out for the sake of expediency. If I'm wrong (and I hope I am), I'll change this review to reflect it. Again, I wish I could leave a neutral review, as I want the game to have a chance, and I had a lot of negative things to say about very early Satisfactory too. I wish the devs the best of luck, and look forward to seeing where they take the game.

I want to like this game, I really do, but the performance is just not there. Even cranking my settings down to low (mind you the whole game is noticeably blurry on these settings to the point I can't tell what I'm looking at) and running the game at 1080p on a fresh save, the game struggles with keeping a steady frame rate, and when there is a whole factory, the game stutters and lags pretty badly. I spent ~5 hours tinkering with performance without any success, and after the most recent update, the framerate struggles even on a fresh save.
I genuinely hope the game can be optimized, because I *do* enjoy the gameplay.

After Update 1, a game that was entirely playable if factories were kept moderate in size, is now entirely unplayable at literally any graphics setting I choose. The almost constant lags and stuttering were not present even on epic settings, and now not even low or moderate settings will reduce the disruptions to a playable level.

This would not bother me except that it aligns with Creepy Jar's track record. In their last title, Green Hell, they introduced DLC expansions that were so poorly optimized that they caused tremendous stutter, frame drops, and crashes... exactly like what we are seeing now.

Prior to Update 1, I loved this game and could enjoy all of its content on relatively high settings with very reasonable adjustments in my playstyle. However, Creepy Jar has taken an abrupt turn in apparently rushing the release of Update 1 to the unmanageable detriment of the entire game, previous content and new material alike.

I cannot recommend StarRupture in its current state, as we seem to be going through the same Green Hell again.