Satisfactory Review in Progress

ign.com:

This has been a hard review to write. Not because I don't know what to say, but because every time I dip back into Satisfactory to look up an item name or confirm some detail, I find myself checking in on the state of my workshop, just for a moment, and then several hours have suddenly flown by. That’s the magic of this seemingly benign, inexplicably alluring factory simulator. Whether I’m pulling my hair out trying to troubleshoot a problem on the factory floor or running away from very disrespectful fireball-spitting aliens, every moment spent in this beautifully complex simulator has been worthwhile. Combining the creativity and exploration of Minecraft with the spreadsheet-inducing planning and optimization of Factorio, Satisfactory is not only the best game I’ve played this year, but my favorite automation game of all time – and that’s without even having reached its final engineering challenges after going hard on a fresh world in its 1.0 build for more than 90 hours. Unless the final stretch of leveling up my factory takes an unexpectedly nightmarish turn for the worse, so far Satisfactory has been an unbelievably good time.

Satisfactory is an immediately compelling factory simulator where you and up to three friends are dropped on an alien planet and told you need to establish a base and produce increasingly complicated materials and launch them into outer space to appease your boss. In order to do so, you’ll need to harvest natural resources, develop new technologies, and become a master of conveyor belts, pipelines, and eventually even locomotive operations as you triumphantly grow your tiny headquarters into a planet-encompassing labyrinth of moving parts. More and more is asked of you as you go, and what starts out as a simple process of gathering leaves and mining iron to make basic tools quickly spirals into a convoluted whirlwind of refineries, manufacturing plants, and nuclear power grids, where you’re producing everything from computer chips to