Been meaning to pick up shapez 2, or just missed out on the launch discount? You can now pick up the game with 25% off, the deepest discount so far!

shapez 2 uses many of the game elements of shapez, but with tons of new features and ways to play. Build in 3D on space platforms and connect everything by Space Belt or Train. See exactly what's going on inside the buildings and make a larger factory than ever before! There are many options for difficulty and map generation, an all-new Hexagon mode and big updates in the works. Check it out!

Discount is available until November 25th.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/



Shapez 2 is finally out in Early Access and we couldn't be more excited to see you all play it! We'd like to thank everyone involved with development and of course the community for all your thoughts and feedback.

Be sure to share your builds and blueprints through the channels below! We'd love to see what all of you are building :)


https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2162800/view/4357881096234065558



The best ways to report bugs and issues are through our Discord or the Steam forums:

Discord Steam forums


We'd love your feedback on the game after you had the chance to play it for a bit! The best ways are through the Discord or the Suggestions Portal:

Discord Suggestions Portal


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Hello everyone!

We’ve shared a lot of information the last couple months, so we’d like to recap everything you should know for the Early Access release of shapez 2 tomorrow.




Last week, Tobias talked you through some of the history of how shapez 2 came to be and what you should expect from Early Access tomorrow and the first few months. It’s a fun read so check it out here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2162800/view/4357881096234065558

If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check out the Gameplay Trailer! It gives you a good impression of what shapez 2 is and what content will be in the game tomorrow:



Steam Deck won't be officially supported for the Early Access release. The current state is 'okayish' as Steam identifies it as 'Playable'. Keep in mind that the game is not optimized for the Steam Deck and you could run into issues.

We do plan to improve Steam Deck compatibility in the future, we'll keep you posted!


Shapez 2 will be available for $24.99 / €23.99 / ₤19.99 and can be found here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

If you really want to show your support, you can pick up the Supporter Edition! You can either pick it up alongside the base game for $34.99 / €33.49 / ₤27.99. Want to give shapez 2 a go first? You can always upgrade later.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3075620/shapez_2_Supporter_Edition_Upgrade/

The Supporter Edition’s purpose is to give you a way to support us further if you’d like. We didn’t want to let you go empty handed though, so you’ll get something in return. Included are a Rail Loop & Rail Twister for your trains, 40 minutes of extra in-game music and the full soundtrack will be available for download. You can find the full soundtrack below:

The base game and the Supporter Edition will both have a 20% launch discount for the first two weeks! The Supporter Edition Upgrade DLC will have a 10% discount at launch.

A friendly reminder that there are no free or heavily discounted versions or copies of shapez 2 being supplied by us. Be wary of third party vendors claiming otherwise!


The astute among you may notice that some of these prices are different from what we previously communicated. After the initial announcement, we got a lot of feedback from you with concerns about the price of the game in certain currencies. We made several adjustments based on these conversations, taking account average monthly income and purchasing power (more information here).

You can find the up-to-date list of regional pricing here.


There are a couple of ways to connect with us and the community.

Discord
Our primary channel where you can connect with the community, chat with us, participate in surveys, report bugs and share blueprints.

Steam forums
Ask questions, give feedback and report bugs on the forums. You can of course use Steam’s features to upload screenshots, artworks and guides.

Suggestions Portal
Leave suggestions & feedback here and vote for others' input! Don't use this for reporting bugs.

Reddit
A shared space with shapez 1 to show your builds & blueprints, ask questions, participate in discussions and connect with the community.

YouTube
Where the trailers for all our games go. We also share news through the community tab!

X (Twitter)
Another good place to stay in the loop with what we’re working on. We share a lot of news and coverage here, and show off screenshots and footage from the game.

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That’s it, you’re up to date and ready for tomorrow! We’re super excited to finally release the game and we hope you’re just as excited as we are. See you then!

~ Jelle & the shapez 2 team

Hey guys!

Before shapez 2 releases on August 15 (that’s less than a week!) I wanted to do a personal post about the history of shapez 2 and what to expect during early access. We’ve been super transparent in the development process so far, and thus I thought it would be a great opportunity!

This post is a bit longer, but I tried to include a bunch of images and interesting insights! If you'd like to skip to the Early Access expectations part, click here.

• Shapez 2 releases August 15, 13:00 CEST
  
• It should be polished & enjoyable and basically bug-free
  
• No roadmap; Instead we will survey after the release what you want us to actually work on
  
• First update might take a few months

Back in early 2021, I was struggling to come up with new ideas for content and updates in shapez 1. The game loop felt very closed, all new ideas evolved around adding more complex shape mechanics at the end of the game, which would only benefit a fraction of the playerbase. Popular mods like shapez industries did exactly that, but they also heavily modified the early game already, which I didn’t want to change (as I felt it was already in a good place - except for blueprints being a bit late).

Performance was a frequent complaint, but there was nothing left to optimize. Shapez 1 is written in JavaScript, so it’s literally just a website. There is no support for efficient rendering, memory management or proper multithreading and the language itself is at least a magnitude slower than C++ or C#. If you look at it from this perspective, it’s actually quite insane how well the game runs up to a certain scale.

These were just a few of the factors that led me to the conclusion to focus on something new, instead of adding more content and features to the first game. Now that shapez had shown huge promise (which, by the way, was totally unexpected!) my goal was to now do it “properly” with a real engine and build a base that could be expanded for many years.

Due to personal reasons it took me a bit longer to actually start, but back in July 2022 I wrote the first line of code for shapez 2, without any clue how it’d eventually turn out.

As during that time a lot of sequels couldn’t deliver on the expectations, I was very worried and careful to make sure we build a great sequel that is both liked by existing players and potential new players. While this sometimes meant going for less experimental changes, I think we found a great compromise by now.

To determine what defines a “shapez” game, I did a survey in the shapez 1 Discord server. I wanted to avoid changing the essential things that made shapez stand out in the first place:



The results showed me what to keep and expand on, as well which mechanics we could probably exchange or get rid of entirely. For example, only 18% of players voted for the complex shape mechanics that are introduced in level 20. I never really liked the mechanic in the first place, and so we decided to remove it and add more intuitive mechanics instead.

Additionally, I wanted to find out what new features could be exciting for a sequel:



These surveys immensely helped us to determine what to focus on. If you look closely, you’ll see that we’ve implemented almost everything from the list already 🙂

Starting from day 1, I shared a lot of development progress in the shapez 1 discord. I wanted to try making a perfect game (spoiler: quite impossible) and I knew I could only do it with the help of the community.

The early community input helped a lot, and during the whole development process, many ideas were discussed and then later discarded. I never held something back, instead as soon as there was an idea or prototype (be it just a paint sketch) I tried to get feedback as soon as possible.

We even let the community decide the art style for shapez 2! I initially didn’t want to make another space-themed factory game, so we proposed a bunch of concepts:

The initial winner was D, which later evolved into the space theme

Unfortunately developing a sequel isn’t as easy as just doing a survey and implementing everything. We had to make a lot of tough choices, and sometimes even decide against the initial community response. As the discord is somewhat of an echo chamber of players that like shapez enough to be interested in the early development of a sequel, we always had to be careful to not just listen to this vocal minority and actually get different opinions and perspectives.

Some of these topics evolved in very heated discussions with more than 1000 comments. To name a few:

• Straight Stacker vs Bent Stacker (spoiler: both made it in)
  
• Art Style (CPU Theme vs Space Theme)
  
• Floating shapes (aka Level 20 Logo Shape from shapez 1)
  
• Cutters always cutting from north to south, regardless of orientation
  
• RGB vs RYB color scheme (now a setting)
  
• The name of the new ‘Diamond’ shape

If you are interested, all of these are still available in the #discussions channel on the shapez 2 discord!

In total, we did around a hundred surveys on the discord so far. I’m very happy with how it turned out, and I really like this way of developing a game together with the community instead of presenting a finished product. This way we can be sure that starting from day 1, we are moving in the right direction!

This also means despite launching into early access, the game has already been hugely impacted and improved by community feedback. The main reason we are launching into early access is to show our commitment to keep updating and improving the game even further!

I knew from the beginning that I wanted shapez 2 to be 3D, simply because I saw a lot of people not trying the game because of the simple graphics. So besides improving the gameplay, I also wanted to package the game nicer to make it appeal to a wider audience.

shapez 2 very early on in development

It also added the opportunity to make all buildings open and animated, something that sets shapez 2 apart from all other factory games: because all operations are ‘logical’, we can visualize how a shape is cut, stacked, rotated and so on. Other games only have black box machines that receive inputs and spit out the result and we believe this is something truly new to the genre (which we are very proud of!).

However, while 3D was the most prominent addition in the beginning, over the course of time so many new gameplay features and mechanics have been added that instead of calling it “shapez 1 but in 3D” it feels more like shapez 1 was a prototype for shapez 2, and shapez 2 is now the real game.

While switching, we also decided to switch to a new engine (Unity) which allowed us to use a more performant language and rendering pipeline.

Whereas shapez 1 was developed by me alone back then, I realized that shapez 2 was too ambitious to develop alone. I wouldn’t be able to focus on all areas with enough attention if I would have to work on the development, game design, marketing and art.

Over the course of the two years, the team grew to 8 full time members, which was only possible because we got funding from the German government, which we are very grateful for! Without this team, shapez 2 wouldn’t have been possible and I’m very proud of what the team has achieved together.

Since you always just see the end product, it’s easy to forget how many iterations sometimes are required to get something “right”. There are so many mechanics we tried that didn’t work out or required a major rework: Fluid packing & simulation, Trains, Platform building, Research, Shape crates, and many more.

For example, we implemented around 10 (!) different research systems until we found the current one, which we now quite like (until #11 arrives). You can read more about this journey here:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/2162800/announcements/detail/4103413768091304193

One of the biggest challenges was (and still is) balancing the puzzle part with the logistics part. Our surveys show that the player base is split, with some players preferring more complicated shape puzzles whereas others are focused on building and scaling huge factories.

(Left = Puzzle , Right = Logistics)

Finding the balance has been very hard, and is one of the reasons we have added so many customization, difficulty and game modes - to make sure everybody can enjoy the game how they want to.

While talking to experienced players all day in discord, it’s easy to forget how difficult the game can be for first time players. We tried to get better insights by running a lot of playtests (we captured around 450 hours of playtest footage) with different audiences and optimizing the early game experience, but finding the perfect ‘default’ difficulty was very, well, difficult. Adding more complex game modes like the insane or hexagonal mode definitely helped though, because now you can simply adjust the difficulty to your liking.


We’ve spent a lot of time polishing the game already and are really happy how it turned out. We believe it’s in a great state and is meant to be played. With 4 game modes, there’s plenty of content to be explored. There should be at least 40 hours of content but it’s easy to get over a hundred hours or more, as our playtesters have proven already.



As we have over 1000 patrons playing the game on a regular basis already, we were able to fix a lot of bugs and issues already. There are no major issues known to us at the time of writing, except for the usual driver-related crashes (which we can’t really do anything about - except recommending a different backend like DirectX 12 / Vulkan). We also spent a lot of time on the tutorial and UI/UX, making the belt placement really easy to use and everything feel smooth (which we’ve already gotten a lot of praise for!).

That being said, there are still a bunch of things that can be further improved – we don’t stop when something is just ‘good’ but always try to go the extra mile. For example, space belt placement is missing a few quality of life tweaks like automatic tunnel placement, unfinished space pipe visuals and so on. However, all of these should be minor in the grand scheme of things – it’s more our perfectionism speaking here.

Space pipes don't look like pipes yet

We would also like to explore a few more experimental game modes, if there is demand for it. For example having to explore the map, or introducing (as an alternate game mode!) energy or power requirements.

As mentioned above, shapez 1 started to bog down after a while when scaling to huge factories. We tried to improve this for shapez 2 and are happy with the results so far.

For shapez 1, your factories would start to lag starting at around 5,000 - 10,000 buildings, and would be almost unplayable at 40,000 buildings, depending on your setup.

In shapez 2, everything should currently run very smooth until 100,000 buildings, pretty smooth until 250,000 buildings and depending on your setup somewhat smooth with 500,000 buildings (30 fps on a higher end setup). Players have built factories with up to 1,25 million buildings and above, but they encountered significant lag. For reference, the average player has around 40,000 buildings when completing the game, so we already support 12x more than that.

Recorded on Alpha 23. Contains placeholder visuals (mostly the trains)

However, keep in mind that you might encounter lag if you are GPU bound (which is independent of the simulation). You might want to experiment with lower graphic settings then if you are experiencing low FPS for smaller factories. There are also some shaders and effects that are unnecessarily complex, causing the game to use slightly more resources than necessary. While it is not too noticeable on mid and high range setups, there’s still a few things we can enhance for the lower end setups.

While we are happy with the performance - this is just the beginning. We believe we can easily make it run twice as fast, as we still have some pending optimizations like multi-threading or certain optimizations for the space belts. However, since buildings are free to place and copy/paste over and over again, there will always be a limit to how much the game can handle. The limit may be 100 times greater than what it is now, but you'll still be able to hit that limit if you really want.



You might be wondering - if we are satisfied with the game already, what will we be working on next?This is exactly the reason we are releasing the game now in Early Access - we need your input!

I don’t like launching with a roadmap immediately, especially not for early access. If the roadmap is already predetermined, what impact do players actually have?



Instead, we will be doing surveys after the release to find out what you want us to work on next! Additionally, we have a suggestions portal where you can leave feedback and suggestions, or vote on existing ones!

We haven’t set a duration for early access because it could be years in theory. This is not because the game is not ready but because we want to show our commitment to keep updating and improving the game even further.

How long the game stays in early access also depends on the success. Our dream goal would be to keep updating the game for many years while it finances the development. However, as the game industry is unpredictable, we don’t want to promise something we can’t keep.

That being said - please do not purchase the game if you don’t like it in its current state and just hope that it gets better in the future. Quoting Steam: “If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development.”



Finishing everything up for the launch has been a challenge, so we're taking it somewhat easy for a little bit. With so many big factory game releases and updates coming later this year, we wanted to make sure to hit this deadline. We will of course be monitoring the release and early reception – if a major issue pops up, we'll be sure to hotfix it.

Once the release has cooled down a bit, we plan to work on a few fundamental things that didn’t make it into the launch build due to time constraints. We want to refactor a few things that we had to hack in and also prepare the game to make it easier to expand and add new features (like multi threading). Of course, we don't know yet what you want us to work on, so we'll have to see!



However, this does mean it might take a while until the first major update. We're sure certain other factory games will keep you busy in the meantime though ;)

We're looking to use the following structure, depending on how things go:

• Major Updates: Every few months with big changes that justify picking up the game again and fit our quality standards (localized, well tested, etc.)
  
• Beta Branches: Irregular updates anyone can opt into, with previews of upcoming updates that might not be finalized yet
  
• Closed Betas: Irregular (but more frequent) builds for our patrons to try out bleeding edge features (untested and possibly broken)

Thank you for reading! We are super hyped for the release, and hope to see you there! I hope you will be able to enjoy the game as much as we do.

~Tobias

Hello everyone!


Almost exactly a year after the Reveal Trailer, you’ll finally be able to play the Early Access of shapez 2.




Shapez 2 will cost $24.99 / €23.99 / £19.99*. If you’re looking to support us further, consider the Supporter Edition! This would really help us out with the development of the game. The shapez 2 Supporter Edition (which includes the base game) will be $34.99 / €33.49 / £27.99*. If you’d first like to give the base game a go, you’ll be able to pick up the Supporter Edition Upgrade DLC at any time. Everything will have a 10% discount for the first two weeks after the Early Access launch!

*Pricing adjusted on Aug 1 2024

As a thank you from us for your extra support, you’ll get the Rail Loop & Twister for your trains and 40 minutes of extra soundtrack with the Supporter Edition.



https://store.steampowered.com/app/3075620/shapez_2_Supporter_Edition_Upgrade/

Before the Early Access release, we’ll have another blog with a full overview with what’s in the release build of shapez 2 so you know exactly what you’re buying.

While shapez 2 will already offer what we think is a full experience with Early Access, we want to work together with you to make the game even better and refine everything for the full release come next year. We’d love it if you’d join us!

There are only 3 more weeks to go, so be sure to wishlist the game to help us out for the release! 300,000 of you already did and we truly appreciate it.

See you soon,

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/



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Whether you’re looking for something similar to shapez or just can’t decide between shapez and Mini Metro, we have something for you. We’ve partnered up with our friends over at Dinosaur Polo Club to bring you the ‘Subways and shapez’ bundle, allowing you to pick both games with a sweet discount. After all, why not get both?

Mini Metro is all about seeing to the needs of your city’s commuters. As more stations appear, it’s up to you to connect them by subway with the limited resources available. You’ll need to adapt and redesign the system with the new assets you unlock every week. It’s in your best interest to keep everything running efficiently: if your transit network clogs up and commuters spend a long time waiting, your subway-building privileges may just be revoked.

Interested? You can now get both shapez and Mini Metro in a bundle with a nifty 10% off until August 13th! This stacks with other sales, so if you're reading this at the time of posting, you get 10% off the total price after the 90% discount on shapez and 50% discount on Mini Metro. If you already have yourself a copy of shapez, you can still get Mini Metro with the discount through the bundle.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/42865/Subways_and_shapez/

Hello everyone!

We’re getting very close to wrapping up development on the shapez 2 Early Access release build. At the end of last week we released Alpha 23 with 23.1 and 23.2 – the last Patreon-exclusive Alpha build – following shortly after. We’re moving to Beta builds where Patreons can test the release candidate and report any remaining issues they find.

In two weeks, we’ll officially reveal the exact release date (which is set in August) of shapez 2. If you don’t want to miss out, be sure to follow and wishlist the game here on Steam and join the Discord!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

If you really want to get your hands on this build before the release, be sure to check out our Patreon! You’ll also get access to the betas to help us iron out the last couple bugs, the first of which released today! Your savegame will be compatible with the Early Access build from Alpha 23.2 onward, barring any unforeseen issues.

This devlog will be a bit shorter as we’re currently very busy, but let’s walk you through what Alpha 23 brought to the game. Final note, even at this stage everything is technically still subject to change.

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As teased in the last devlog, Hexagonal shapes are now real! Added as a separate scenario, a layer now holds 6 segments (sextants), 90° Rotators now rotate 60° and there are three new shape types exclusive to this scenario:

• H – Hexagon
  
• G – Gear
  
• F – Flower

Hexagon (left), Gear (middle), Flower (right)

The shape code works as you’d expect, with an example below. We’ll leave the rest for you to explore for yourself :)





We added the Rail Loop and Twister to spice up your trains. Wildly inefficient, but I'm sure you'll be forgiven. They're unlocked as part of the shapez 2 Supporter Edition alongside a whole lot of additional soundtrack!


Gif contains some placeholders


Aside from that big ticket addition, there are a handful of other new bits of content and balancing changes.

• Added train speed and capacity upgrades, as well as an upgrade to allow you to dunk a train directly into the Vortex to deliver all its cargo at once.
  
• Rebalanced fluid buildings to be more intuitive and added more information in the panels.
  
• Supplying a different fluid to fluid buildings now makes them slowly drain and eventually consume the new fluid instead of waiting for the previous fluid forever.
  
• The same system also applies to trains loading a different shape or fluid.

We added brand new visuals for Shape Miners, Fluid Miners and their respective Extensions.



Train locomotives finally have their visual!



Added new visuals for train loaders and unloaders.



Added animations for belt/fluid launchers launchers towards space belts/pipes.



There’s a new animation for shapes going into the Vortex.



Also included are several animation fixes and improvements across the board, including improvements to fluid shaders.


As we’re finalizing a lot of things, there were lots of rendering, blueprint and simulation performance improvements. Placing blueprints and large islands should now be much faster, various issues with wire logic were fixed and we’ve vastly improved savegame loading times.

To show off the current state of performance optimization, here's the game running on a Mac Book Pro M1 Max at full HD with 420,000 buildings. The goal is still 1 million buildings at 60 fps, but we're happy with our progress!

Video contains some placeholders


The origin point (the part of a building that’s placed where your cursor is) of the Painter and Crystal Generator buildings was moved to the conveyor belt instead of the tank. This makes placing these buildings feel a lot better, but it does break any blueprint made prior to Alpha 23 that uses them.

There’s now a button to clear the selected platform, space belt/pipe or train (un)loader of all its contents.

Additionally, rail placement and the Feedback dialogue have been improved, the latter of which now has a link to report translation issues. Speaking of translations, the translations for almost all of the languages we wanted to include were added.

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That’s it! As we said, a shorter devlog this time. The Beta has started in order to hunt down the last issues. Once that’s done, we can freeze development on the Early Access release build. We’re super excited to finally release shapez 2 next month, so be sure you have the game wishlisted (sorry for asking so often) and we’ll see you again with a big announcement in two weeks.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/


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https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2162800/view/4220517501549404713

Hello everyone!

With the Early Access release of shapez 2 set for August, we’re creeping ever closer to finishing development. Our current focus lies on remaining visuals and polish, especially when it comes to the UI. However, we still have some exciting new content additions to show you, so today we’ll walk you through what we’ve been working on lately.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/



Last week we released Alpha version 22 for our Patreon supporters, which includes most of what we'll cover in this blog. If anything here makes you want to check out the game immediately and want to give us feedback, consider supporting us!


As always, a lot you see in this devlog is still subject to change. We’d love to hear your thoughts on everything, but if anything still looks a bit rough around the edges its likely still being worked on. For more info on what to expect from the Early Access release build, be sure to check out our previous blog.

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We’ve added more scenarios to the savegame customization options. These scenarios affect the shapes you’ll need to deliver to the Vortex in order to progress. The higher the difficulty, the more shape types, layers and colors you’ll need to put together.

The types of shapes you’ll need to deliver are unique to their scenarios. We’re not talking small differences – these goals are completely different designs. We had a lot of fun making these challenges so we hope you’ll enjoy them as well!

Do keep in mind that unlike the difficulty Setting, scenarios are permanent and cannot be changed after the savegame has been created. You'll need to start a new savegame to play a different scenario.

Operator Certification
We highly recommend new Operators to obtain their Operator Certification before you do your own thing! You’ll be guided through building your very first factory with extra information and hints. The Operator Certification uses the default scenario settings, but you can customize the difficulty before you get started. Once you’re deemed worthy of the Certificate, you get to choose between continuing with the normal scenario or the hard scenario – more on them later. Your progress is fully transferred, including buildings and unlocked upgrades.



Factory - Normal
This is the default scenario and recommended for players unfamiliar with shapez. Eases you into newly-unlocked mechanics and shape goals are relatively straightforward.

Factory - Hard
Recommended for players who have already done a playthrough and are looking for an extra challenge. If you’re here from shapez 1, this scenario may be a good fit for you! Shape goals get more difficult faster, requiring additional cutting, stacking or painting when compared to the normal scenario.

Factory - Insane
If you’re a very experienced player and you’d like to push your brain to the limit, this scenario is for you. Will require game knowledge, precise planning and thinking ahead: shape goals need many different shapes and colors, often stacked to the maximum amount of layers – which for this scenario goes up to 5!

There's a lot of room for us to add more scenarios to the list and we already have some ideas in mind. Here's a teaser:

[expand type=spoiler]

This is not in the game yet and we can't guarantee it'll make it in for Early Access release, but it's something we're working on![/expand]

Scenario customization
This option allows you to customize the settings of any of the previously mentioned scenarios. You still need to select one of them, but you can then customize map generation (as highlighted in this blog) and set additional savegame rules of which there are more now! If the Insane scenario isn’t insane enough for you, you can make it even more difficult here :)




Keep delivering previously unlocked shape goals to increase your Operator Level! Every level unlocks additional chunks and research points to aid you in growing your factory! Completing a goal will allow you to complete it again, but with an increased amount of shapes needed. Be sure to diversify!

Operator Levels allow your old factories to remain useful after completing their milestones. Instead of quickly building something and to get rid of it once you advance, this incentivises to expand instead of replace and long-term solutions instead of quick and dirty ones. We want to see big and tidy factories!



If you want to go the extra mile, you can also produce the Randomized Goal! This requires less shapes to produce in order to level up, but you’ll need to switch up your factory frequently to adapt to the new goal. Or, just set up a Make Anything Machine!


Remember two weeks ago when we said we probably wouldn’t be able to add Blueprint Icons before the Early Access release? Yeah, about that…

Introducing Blueprint Icons! You can now customize your Blueprints with up to 4 icons at a time to make it easier to tell them apart in lists and hotbars. There’s a big list of icons already used elsewhere in the game and a couple of preset shapes. You can also add custom shape icons with Shape Codes!




Platform and platform blueprints can now be mirrored! We’ve also expanded the tutorial (now Operator Certification) and expanded the Knowledge Panel with all milestones, mechanics, example videos and translations.


We’re working with new Rail visuals! Rails now look a lot less bulky and it clearly indicates which direction trains can travel. All the other visuals for trains are still work in progress though, so you’ll have to wait a bit longer to see everything else!




We’ve done a big simulation refactoring pass to improve simulation accuracy and stability. There have also been several more performance and rendering improvements.

DirectX 11 is now the default rendering backend on Windows systems, as we got a lot of feedback on the demo about some issues caused by Vulkan.

Factories outside of your view are now simulated at lower tick rates for up to 20x simulation performance improvements. This will prevent the simulation from struggling with huge factories, as only what you’re currently looking at is fully simulated. Your factory will continue to run perfectly fine if you’re not there to keep watch! It’s not like the belts start slacking off the second the manager is busy elsewhere. Or so they tell us.


You read that right! We’ve begun to sprinkle bits and pieces of lore around the game to give it some flair. This includes the aforementioned Operator Certification, but you’ll be able to find lore and flavor text around various places in the game.





As we’re getting closer to the Early Access release and most of it is ready, a lot of the remaining work consists of UI and UX changes. Here’s a list of what we’ve done!

• Cleaned up train toolbar & icons
  
• Added new 'conflicts' visualization: Whenever an issue is detected – like belts moving in opposite directions – an exclamation mark will appear at the location. There’s a button in the bottom right of the UI to toggle conflict warnings, though we suspect turning the warning off won’t fix the problem.

• Merged Upgrades and Shop into one shared tab: Allows you to shop for upgrades

• Added the option to clear all fluids in all fluid buildings
  
• Added setting to disable chromatic aberration
  
• Added setting to disable vignette: there will still be some vignette, but a lot less
  
• Added setting to choose the target display: for your sextuple monitor setups
  
• Added setting to reduce input latency: this may make the game feel more responsive, but will increase CPU load and may result in a lower frame rate.
  
• Disabled auto-rotation for large buildings, like the Painter
  
• Added setting to disable custom cursor (will make us sad)
  
• Splitters and Mergers are automatically placed when connecting or disconnecting belts or pipes.
  
• Added glow indicator for shapes that are actively being delivered
  
• Improved difficulty & scenario selection screen (see related section above)
  
• You’re no longer required to hold 'Shift' to replace conveyor belts / transport structures
  
• Transitions between waypoints or moving to the vortex are now animated
  
• Added placement indicators for fluid & wire buildings to better show inputs / outputs
  
• Improved fluid miner placement indicators
  
• Updated game logo: we gave it a real good scrub

• Added a button to take you directly to the relevant knowledge panel entry while placing or selecting a building
  
• Updates to the wire icons
  
• Improved & fixed belt launcher placement indicators & logic
  
• Added a setting to toggle toolbar selection mode between ‘deselect’ and ‘cycle’, with ‘deselect’ being the new default.
  
• Improved space belt & pipe placement, now should behave similar to belts but at a much larger scale (more improvements coming)
  
• Removed confirmation when purchasing speed upgrades: We know you got a need for speed
  
• Indicators for wrong connections are introduced for Buildings, Wires, and Pipes: These are the checkered blockers and separate from conflicts, though currently serve largely the same purpose.

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That’s it for now! Only a couple devlogs left to go before you get to play shapez 2 for yourself in August. We’re very excited (and very busy) and we hope you’ll join us again for the next devlog.

See you then!

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 team



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https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2162800/view/4149584538797983676

Hello everyone!

Put it in your calendar, our Early Access release should be in Mid-August! We’re 97% sure we’ll make that, so while the odds are very good it’s not completely impossible that we’ll still need to reschedule.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

What can you expect from the Early Access version of the game? We’re glad you asked!

Generally, we think the game is in great shape with plenty of polish already! There are so many improvements over the first game that shapez 1 now feels more like a prototype for shapez 2.

In no particular order, there are:

• Multi-layer factories
  
• Trains
  
• New research system
  
• Fluids
  
• Blueprint library & toolbar
  
• Lots of quality of life improvements
  
• Crystals
  
• Pins
  
• Multiple progressions,
  
• Customizable map generation,
  
• Mirrorable buildings,
  
• Platforms
  
• Undo/redo
  
• So much more!

We also have a very high quality standard that we want to meet, so we have invested a lot of time in optimizing the user interface, onboarding & tutorial and making sure you have a smooth experience!



We are now aiming to launch in Mid August. This is around 97% confirmed so while we are pretty certain, please don’t be mad if we have to reschedule it!


Generally, we think the best time to get started with the game is already during Early Access. During Early Access, we will be mostly working on adding big new content iterations every few months that justify picking up the game again. We will of course release hotfixes and so on, but we believe fewer, bigger releases make more sense than more numerous smaller increments. Less frequent releases also allow us to work more effectively on bigger updates.

For these bigger updates we want to try more experimental things like new game modes with bold changes that we didn’t want to try for the main game mode. However, we will decide what to work on based on surveys that we’ll run after the release! After all, we want to work on things you actually care about!

Of course there may be issues (minor bugs, unfinished or non-optimised visuals, etc) but we’re not using Early Access to put out an unfinished game for testing - for us Early Access is a way to get feedback and show our commitment to updating the game!

We want to make sure that you can make an informed decision about whether to jump in with the Early Access launch, so here’s an overview of what to expect…


We are happy with how the game design is going. The overall progression and balancing feels very nice already. Obviously this is always an on-going part of development and we will continue to fine tune based on your feedback.

We also got way more done than initially planned - if everything goes well, we will launch with 3 progression modes - Normal, Hard, Hexagonal. This does depend on how the final weeks leading up to the launch go, but we’re hopeful!

We have invested a lot of time to make sure the belt placement & general UI/UX is as smooth as possible. There might be an initial learning curve, but after that it should feel pretty natural - even elegant!



We are also currently working on doing the same improvements to the Space Belts & Trains and are confident we’ll get that in for the Early Access launch as well. A few minor things might not make it, but we have them tracked and will do our best to fix them as soon as possible.

The game is very stable and you shouldn’t see much in the way of crashes. However, it’s not impossible that you will encounter some issues with DirectX 11. If that does happen, you can try switching to Vulkan or DirectX12. We don’t do anything vastly different to other Unity games, so if you can run most Unity games fine you should not run into any trouble with shapez 2.

We are also still planning improvements to our input system for people who want to use exotic configurations or rebind modifier keys like ‘Shift+C’, which will cause issues in the initial Early Access release.

We are already very satisfied with the rendering performance, and we are constantly improving the simulation performance, with the ultimate goal of simulating around 500k-1 million buildings well. To put that in perspective, you need about 15k to complete the game, and currently we can simulate around 100-200k.



Rendering performance is another area we will continue working on, but with average setups you should already enjoy smooth performance. However, on low end setups, you might have to reduce the graphical settings to achieve your desired frame rates, since additional effects or very detailed 3D geometry can drag down the performance. There are also some individual animations which are not yet optimized for performance (like the vortex animation), causing unnecessary high GPU load. These will of course be improved.

Also, every setup, driver, OS is different, and we need more data from players to optimize the game for all the different combinations, so please let us know if not everything is running smoothly for you yet!

Already vastly improved since the demo, there are even more big improvements planned for the Early Access release. We don’t know exactly how far we’ll get with this by the time of the release, but we will of course be working to make things even better throughout the Early Access period. In fact we are already working on a new “Operators Badge” mechanic that will also improve this, but more on that later!

We initially thought wires would not make it into Early Access, but a fun weekend of prototyping them changed that! The wire system has grown quite a bit but never got the attention it deserved, which is why there are a few issues we still need to iron out. So to be clear, they are fully functional, but lacking a lot of quality of life features.

Our patrons are already building Make Anything Machines with them, even for crystals. There’s around 25 wire buildings, although that number is inflated by logic gates and simulated buildings.

Here’s what we still need to polish:

• Update order is not deterministic, so you might run into issues when you build memory cells or attempt to build a CPU with wires.
  
• The art is placeholder, so don’t expect anything fancy - and there are issues like buildings not showing where exactly which output goes (i.e. where does the fluid input go and where does the shape go) making them harder to use than they should be.
  
• There is no tutorial or knowledge panel entry for wires yet, so you are a bit more on your own on them. However, they are also in no way required to complete or enjoy the game.
  
• The Vortex does not output the current shape signal yet, so if you want to build a MaM you have to manually input a signal.

Some wiring and a XOR Logic Gate. Signals are represented in light green (active), green (connected but inactive), dark green (not connected) and red (conflict)

There are a few areas (mostly visual and audio) where more work is needed or placeholders are still in use and we don’t have final assets yet. These will be updated and added during Early Access.

This is a technical issue and we will need to refactor a good chunk of the game before we can implement something like an ‘L’ shaped pipe and actually split the pipe up into two structures. Right now every building can only have 4 outputs (right, left, up, down) and we would need 2 more (upper, lower) to support this. This is a lot of work however, so it won’t be there for the Early Access launch and may even take until after Early Access.



There are a few items in the game that simply didn’t get their art pass in time, so they might have placeholder visuals or at least don’t live up to our standards on release:

• Pin pusher
  
• Crystal generator & Crystal shapes
  
• Space pipes (They just re-use the space belt visuals for now)
  
• 2-Layer Conveyor Lifts
  
• A rare visual glitch with shapes on splitters - this one is actually a tricky logic issue, but we’re working on it

We have a few items on our todo list for blueprints which probably won’t be done by the time we launch into Early Access.

• Blueprints don’t support icons yet, and there is no preview in the library, making it harder to distinguish than necessary.
  
• The blueprint toolbar configuration is not saved when you exit the game (a minor issue, but still).
  
• Blueprint placement indicators of platforms could be further improved, for example computing & showing arrows on notch inputs / outputs to make them feel more like buildings again.
  
• Placing huge blueprints is slower in performance terms than required right now - once placed, they should run fine though.

Most buildings from the demo in the game have sound, but we didn’t get to add sound to the new mechanics like fluids, trains and wires yet. Sound in general is something we want to improve during Early Access.

The game already supports custom progressions (there’s even a community created editor!) but it only works by copying a JSON file to the appropriate folder. Later we want to integrate Steam Workshop support and add the ability to create Code-Based mods - this is something we’ve prototyped, but it’s not ready for release yet.

That should give you all the info you need to tell if you want to join our Early Access! See you again in two weeks!

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 team


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https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2162800/view/4174352435291228979

Hello everyone!

We got quite a few requests in our devlog feedback survey to talk about Fluids! It's a subject we haven't really talked about much before, mostly in passing and progress. So, let's have a look through what we're working with right now!

As always, a lot you’ll see in the devlog is work in progress. The mechanics are there and almost at 100%, but the visuals are in various stages of development.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

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Fluids are what you’ll use to give shapes different colors. If you’ve played the first shapez, you’ll remember mining colors and transporting them by belt. For shapez 2 though, we wanted something different. Colors have been turned into colored fluids, which you move around through Pipes. This adds some visual variety and a couple of new challenges. In short, coloring shapes should be more exciting!


The process of gathering and transporting fluids starts off very similar to regular shapes, though you’ll need the fluid variants of the regular buildings you’d use:

• Fluid Miner instead of Shape Miner
  
• Fluid Miner Extension instead of Shape Miner Extension
  
• Pumps instead of Extractors
  
• (Space) Pipes instead of (Space) Belts
  
• Fluid Wagons instead of Shape Wagons

All the specialized fluid variants behave the same as their shape counterpart. Pipes have some differences though.

When placing, Pipes currently behave mostly the same as belts. They have the same placement limitations: They can split off horizontally in every direction. We plan to add more flexibility to the pipes, allowing you to branch them off of vertical parts, but this is planned for later.



To get fluids across a gap, you can place a Fluid Launcher. This version of the Launcher will accumulate fluid to create a blob that it will launch to the other side. It can store two blobs-worth of paint, scaling with painting speed. One fluid launcher will be enough to support one full belt of painters.



Unlike shapes and belts however, there’s currently no limit to throughput for pipes. Pipes do not have capacity of their own: if there’s fluid available in the buffer of the output building, it will show the fluid in the pipes. When this buffer is empty, the pipes will be empty as well. Essentially, any paints used by another building will be taken directly out of the Painter buildings. The pipes determine where the building can get paint from.



We plan to make some improvements for this, like a limit to throughput would be introduced to make pipes behave more realistically. However, there is no advanced fluid simulation planned. Adding flow / pressure-based simulation would add a lot of complexity to the game without major added gameplay value. We want you to be able to focus on solving shapes, instead of having to worry about fluids getting stuck in pipes.

Then there’s the Fluid Tank. This building holds up to 1,800 liters and works as a buffer between out- and inputs to make sure the flow continues to flow for a while when your Painters run dry. They give you room for error, but can be optimized out of the system if you’d like!




To paint a shape, you have the Painter building. This building can paint any shape you send through it, but only the top layer. To paint multiple layers, you’ll need to paint first, stack later. It has a buffer of 20 liters and has inputs on three sides for extra flexibility. Painting a layer uses 10 liters.



In previous builds, we had a Full Painter building that painted every layer of the shapes you run through it. However, we recently removed it as it was not very useful for the challenges we set.


With default world settings, you’ll only be able to find Red, Green and Blue fluids throughout your world. To get the secondary colors and the tertiary, you’ll need to mix the fluids. For this, you have the Color Mixer! This building has two inputs next to each other, and one output on the opposite side. Colors are mixed as followed:

• RGB: Additive color mixing, works like light
  
• RYB: Subtractive color mixing, works like paint
  
• CMYK: Subtractive color mixing, works like printer ink
  
• Colorblind: RGB with textures, with additive textures (dots mixed with lines becomes dots with lines)

All three buffers have a capacity of 50 liters each. The ratio is 1:1, so 25 liters of each input fluid makes 50 liters of the output fluid.

Visuals are work in progress


Towards the later stages of the game, you’ll start to run into Crystals. We did a deep dive into Crystals last year, though a lot of it is quite outdated by now.

To summarize, Crystals are made by providing fluids to the Crystal Generator. This building will pump the fluid into any Empty or Pin quadrants up until the top layer of the shape you run through it. This paint will then harden into Crystal, matching the color of the fluid used. The problem with Crystals is that when you try to separate two adjacent Crystal quadrants or try to stack it on top of another shape, it will shatter and disappear. You can separate Crystal from a regular shape and stack shapes on top of Crystals, however.

Filling a shape uses 20 liters of fluid, regardless of the amount of quadrants it has to fill.

Both the building and crystals themselves are still work in progress


The fluids fully support the newly added Color Schemes, including Colorblind RGB!



When generating a new world, you have the option to include secondary and tertiary colors, allowing you to gather them using Pumps. If you choose to include all colors in the world, the Mixer becomes optional. You can also choose to remove primary colors, but some patches of primary color fluids will remain near the Vortex to allow you to progress.

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That’s about everything! We hope the new fluids make for a more interesting system than using belts to move colors. Let us know what you think!

See you next time!

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 team



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https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2162800/view/4173225900655549931