Just another factory game?
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Much of what I could start off saying about shapez 2 I've previously said about: shapez, the original.

This is a simple concept done with some impressive depth and a well presented learning curve through most of it.

There's no story or hooks beyond just the satisfaction of making efficient machines set up to deliver the requested shapes and colors.

The learning curve is gentle and efficient, but does get steep by the time the training wheels come off. After that you're left with an infinite world and a need to meet ever more complex shape and speed of delivery demands.

Where this takes over from shapez is in both scale and polish. They've taken what could be an absurdly simple premise and brought it to such a high level of quality and scale that it sits as a stand out example of gaming for the sake of gaming.

The absolute focus on delivering a pure authentic logic puzzle in an open concept layout while being completely uncoupled from the need to engage emotional story hooks or trying to solve mysteries is replaced with a truly authentic focus on the purity of mechanical decision making and logistical delivery.

There's factory games that include exploration. There's factory games that challenge you under combat. There's factory games that try to test your management and tycoon brand building skills. And then there's shapez, which just removes all the clutter and noise for the absolute relaxation of just exploring your own perfection in delivering shapes of various sizes and colors.

And shapez 2 somehow manages to make it better with more options, more depth of layered systems, more options for movement and delivery and more relaxing music. They took what already felt like an infinite world and somehow made it feel even larger.

It would be easy to dismiss this game as a classic time waster on par with Tetris, Bejewled, Minesweeper and so on. And maybe that in itself is also praise worthy, since all of those games have been successful for decades. But shapez 2 manages to exceed those by letting you feel like you accomplished something. You're not just stacking shapes (like Tetris) you're moving them around, cutting them up, coloring them and making something new out of them all in an effort to… well, why do we play games at all?

The answer here is relax, but if and only if you can relax with a passion for logical puzzle solving on a scale that is incredibly vast, yet approachable.

I don't say this often, but I'm impressed.
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Pointless rambling engage:

I'm struggling here, because without a story and without huge leaps in graphics or tech, what am I supposed to praise? I'm going to keep coming back to the basics of game design so let me present an abstract:

You've eaten a lot of food in your life, right? Cheap food? Good food? Bad food?

Have you ever gone to a restaurant that truly stood out for you, but it was something simple done extremely well?

You ever have that moment where you're like, well I've eaten 100 of this before at so many places and yet THIS ONE from that one special place is just somehow a little better than the rest. The basics, but elevated.

That's the nuance here.

I'm sitting here feeding squirrels on my back porch trying to find words to praise a factory game and just pondering the simple pleasures of life.

Sometimes you wonder if you live in a world gone mad. Sometimes you just feed some squirrels and play a factory game that is done so well you kinda forget your troubles, and maybe the world isn't so bad after all.
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Bottom line: This is a pure factory and design game without any story or clutter to distract you and yet it's done with an impressive level of polish and charm.
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