Foundry Hands-On Preview: "Endless Opportunities For Efficiency"

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is a futuristic factory building sandbox that offers players nearly endless opportunities for efficiency. It's the debut title from Channel 3 Entertainment, which was founded by developers that have worked on titles like and , and published by Paradox Interactive, known for franchises like and. It's about to enter early access next month, and even for an unfinalized version of the game, shows an immense amount of potential.

The game sees players taking on the role of a robot sent to a resource-rich moon as part of the Foundry Initiative, with the goal of converting it into a manufacturing hub. In some ways, feels similar to games like , offering a more modernized twist on crafting and base building. Players are afforded many robotic benefits, like no stamina bar and no need for sleep, as well as satisfying ways to build and demolish areas en masse, all of which relieve many of the frustrations commonly found in the genre.

Much like, the world of is procedurally generated in voxel style, and is easily malleable at the hands of a well-equipped robot. There are several different biomes that dot the map and unique resources to discover both above and below ground, and the sprawling landscapes have a lot of beauty to be found as well. The moon currently doesn't have any creatures inhabiting it, but it's possible some will come along in a future update.

is purposefully a game with few explicit goals. There are tasks given by AI companion Carl and the adorably rotund robot C3-BB, but for the most part, players dictate how they wish to move forward. The narrative of the Foundry Initiative does continue after landing, and is certainly part of what drives the constant evolution of production lines, but it somewhat takes a backseat to players' own goals.

ramps things up much faster than other crafting games — while in games like automation and assembly lines are late-game notions, here they're just a jumping off point for what's to come. For example, one of the first tasks