Satisfactory Early Access (PC) | 3 Minute Game Reviews

A detailed review of Satisfactory in about 3 minutes!
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Satisfactory is a first person open world factory management and exploration game currently being developed by coffee stain studios. As the player your goal is to build the most efficient factory possible on an alien and I think it's fair to say dangerous planet, due to the amount of wild fire-spitting animals that want to eat you for breakfast, and that's if you havn't already fallen off a massive cliff or inhaled abit too much poison gas while out exploring.

You can play it singleplayer or online with a maximum of 4 players but there can be abit of de-sync in multiplayer and the devs are still working out the kinks so just keep that in mind if you're thinking of getting it to play with friends and you'll definately wanna turn the network quality to maximum in the in-game menu to get the best experience.

When you first begin your journey as a Ficsit engineer your objective is to colonize the world and exploit its resources in the name of profit for your corporate overlords. You're given very little in the way of tools or resources, but finding the basics like iron, copper and limestone is made easy thanks to your built-in mineral scanner that points you towards nearby nodes, so it doesn't take long to begin mining and setting up your base fairly quickly.
As you continue to gather resources and build up your factory you're given a set of tasks that require you to produce a set amount of certain products like iron sheets and copper wire.

Each time you meet one of the goals you unlock new technologies and perks that you can use to grow your factory, like upgrading your powergrid from burning wood to coal which requires alot less micromanagement and a lightsaber-esque sword to better defend yourself when you're out exploring the world and setting up new supply chains.

I really like the idea of needing to complete mandatory production goals in order to unlock more advanced technologies. It does a really good job of keeping you interested and preventing you from getting overwhelmed by the occasionally mind boggling supply chains because you always have something tangable to work towards.

The main challenge of the game is trying to efficiently plan your production lines which can get crazy advanced due to the huge amount of products you can make. I'm talking about everything from simple iron and copper ingots all the way up to refined oil products, computers and nuclear power, all often taking place simoultaniously across multiple floors inside a huge gigafactory.

With only a limited amount of space available you're often forced to build vertically, although it's also possible to build a huge flat platform in the sky or over a lake if you'd rather keep it all on one level. It's worth mentioning though that there's no shortage of conveyors, stairs and resource lifts so building vertically is actually really easy to do and not a huge hassle like you might expect.

The world itself is hand-crafted rather than procedurally generated which means the map looks the same for everyone and the overall graphics and atmosphere are insanely good. Everything looks lush and full of life and when you combine the visuals with the eerie ambient sound effects and cheerful but alien background music it's easy to get immersed in the enviroment.

Going from one biome to another can feel like two entirely different planets and I never knew quite what to expect each time I stepped into an area i'd never been in before. Needless to say I died alot during my 120 hours of playtime.

Something I really like is the fact that you not only can drive vehicles like buggies, trucks and trains but you're able to automate them aswell, so if you don't want to clutter up the map with a million miles of conveyor belts and power poles, you can just assign the route to a truck and as long as it's able to refuel at the depot it'll just keep transporting stuff from point A to point B and back again.

As I mentioned at the start of this review the game is still in early access so it's too early to judge it like a fully released game, but right now it feels really polished and it's alot of fun to play if you're in to problem solving and factory management in general.

It runs great, it looks great and there's literally hundreds of hours worth of content to play through and for 29.99€ we absolutely recommend it. Oh yeah, there's mods too!

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