I just can't recommend this game to anyone.

The game takes a concept that is unfun to people - managing the real industrial side of something like a factory, and then simplifies it so that even the most industrial people don't enjoy it. On top of that, it tries to help you with tools that are massively detrimental to your factory like the billboard system.

I wouldn't recommend this game to someone looking for a sim/tycoon type game because the core mechanics and concepts aren't really fun to play and interact with. I also can't recommend this game to someone who wants a deeper simulation that offers the possibility of finding unique solutions to complex problems, like Factorio. If you want to optimize a factory, this game won't scratch the itch, and that was not the impression that the game gave me from the description.

So one example is that I was creating massive amounts of toy food. This takes three injection molding machines and three paint booths. Each operation takes the same amount of time and the same amount of components. I happened to have a room with exactly this, and all stations linked to a billboard. This lets you assign tasks to a billboard, which will then distribute the tasks to each workshop. The logical thing in for the game to do would be to assign one task to each work station, allowing three people to work at the same time doing injection molding, then as they finish, three people paint, and as they finish someone will assemble. Similar to an actual factory. Instead what happens is that each work station will re-tool, workers will go on break, then each of them create a similar number of each component, go on break, then retool, and repeat for all three processes while the painters do the same thing. This creates a gigantic bottleneck and stops all production.

So the tools you're provided for management are useless. Instead you have to micromanage, which would be fine normally. This shifts the game from a more casual play to more in depth, but then you don't have enough control to actually take advantage of this. You can have a worker specialize in metal working for instance, but he's still going to hop on in and start cutting wood instead of welding for some reason. You need to assign logistics for storage, but you can't actually fine tune it past marking something as input or output. You can hire people to work as haulers, but they're not going to actually move product between workshops to storage, they just unload trucks.

Also a huge focus of the game is decorating. You keep morale up by placing arcade machines inside your factory, and putting vending machines in closets all over. I don't really care for this at all, it feels like a chore to add hurdles and content instead of capitalizing on the one thing that's being advertised - optimizing a factory. Then there's the random events, mostly spies infiltrating your work force. These guys go around breaking things and you need to sort through maybe 50 employees to actually pick out which ones are not your employees based on their actions. This just feels like a time waster while you wait on things to finish being made, something that you could be using to design more products and optimize your factory if the game actually put any real weight into that. You can at least turn off the random events, however.

Oh man I totally forgot to mention machines breaking and having to constantly manually inspect them to see their condition, even if you have people who are dedicated just to being repair techs. This has to be the worst game mechanic aside from the sloppy break mechanic.

tl;dr

The game fails to give you the tools to manage your factory, ruining any depth that you could hope to have and attempts to make the game much more casual and laid back. The game then fails to give you a relaxing laid back experience by packing the game full of tedious mechanics.

I wasn't going to give it a bad review because I assumed things would be fixed closer to release, and then realized that the game was not early access. This game offers so many things that I really wanted to enjoy, but doesn't actually follow through on any of it.

I just can't recommend this game to anyone. The game takes a concept that is unfun to people - managing the real industrial side of something like a factory, and then simplifies it so that even the most industrial people don't enjoy it. On top of that, it tries to help you with tools that are massively detrimental to your factory like the billboard system. I wouldn't recommend this game to someone looking for a sim/tycoon type game because the core mechanics and concepts aren't really fun to play and interact with. I also can't recommend this game to someone who wants a deeper simulation that offers the possibility of finding unique solutions to complex problems, like Factorio. If you want to optimize a factory, this game won't scratch the itch, and that was not the impression that the game gave me from the description. So one example is that I was creating massive amounts of toy food. This takes three injection molding machines and three paint booths. Each operation takes the same amount of time and the same amount of components. I happened to have a room with exactly this, and all stations linked to a billboard. This lets you assign tasks to a billboard, which will then distribute the tasks to each workshop. The logical thing in for the game to do would be to assign one task to each work station, allowing three people to work at the same time doing injection molding, then as they finish, three people paint, and as they finish someone will assemble. Similar to an actual factory. Instead what happens is that each work station will re-tool, workers will go on break, then each of them create a similar number of each component, go on break, then retool, and repeat for all three processes while the painters do the same thing. This creates a gigantic bottleneck and stops all production. So the tools you're provided for management are useless. Instead you have to micromanage, which would be fine normally. This shifts the game from a more casual play to more in depth, but then you don't have enough control to actually take advantage of this. You can have a worker specialize in metal working for instance, but he's still going to hop on in and start cutting wood instead of welding for some reason. You need to assign logistics for storage, but you can't actually fine tune it past marking something as input or output. You can hire people to work as haulers, but they're not going to actually move product between workshops to storage, they just unload trucks. Also a huge focus of the game is decorating. You keep morale up by placing arcade machines inside your factory, and putting vending machines in closets all over. I don't really care for this at all, it feels like a chore to add hurdles and content instead of capitalizing on the one thing that's being advertised - optimizing a factory. Then there's the random events, mostly spies infiltrating your work force. These guys go around breaking things and you need to sort through maybe 50 employees to actually pick out which ones are not your employees based on their actions. This just feels like a time waster while you wait on things to finish being made, something that you could be using to design more products and optimize your factory if the game actually put any real weight into that. You can at least turn off the random events, however. Oh man I totally forgot to mention machines breaking and having to constantly manually inspect them to see their condition, even if you have people who are dedicated just to being repair techs. This has to be the worst game mechanic aside from the sloppy break mechanic. tl;dr The game fails to give you the tools to manage your factory, ruining any depth that you could hope to have and attempts to make the game much more casual and laid back. The game then fails to give you a relaxing laid back experience by packing the game full of tedious mechanics. I wasn't going to give it a bad review because I assumed things would be fixed closer to release, and then realized that the game was not early access. This game offers so many things that I really wanted to enjoy, but doesn't actually follow through on any of it.