MoteMancer

I want to love this game... and it may be more enjoyable in a future state when it's not EA. I've got enough hours into it that I won't refund it. It's good. However, in a field of factory sims, it's missing a few things. First, the good: It's beautiful and I love the elemental take on the systems, resource transits, and general idea of it. You can get used to the hex easily enough, but that's also where things start getting unwieldy. The systems they DO have are built solidly and nearly bugfree. To "win" you end up building 6 factories, which is a really neat idea. The parts that frustrate me: In almost all factory simulators, you get a level of control as to what you're doing when. One of my biggest gripes in this game is not being able to disable recipes. Feeders will grab whatever they can to make whatever they can try to make, which outputs into sushi belt results if you're not feeding very specific things constantly. The issue with this model is you need bussing to bring early items (think Factorio busses which still needed iron for end game items) to build the next thing. You end up with massive amounts of materials flowing from x to y to z and no way to control …

After spending thousands of hours across at least a dozen different factory building games, I can confidently say this is in my top 3 alongside Factorio and Satisfactory. Once it releases with 1.0, I wouldn't be surprised if it surpasses Satisfactory to take the #2 spot. The hex grid layout changes gameplay way more than I anticipated and provides a new, fresh challenge. It scratches the Factorio itch, but changes the mechanics enough to feel like more than just an overhaul/reskin. My only complaint is that the difficulty feels a bit frontloaded. Once you adjust to the hex-grid and fixed-length undergrounds, it gets a lot easier (although still about as challenging as base-game Factorio). To top it all off, the solo dev of this game, Cyan Avatar is super active on the game's discord server and is extremely receptive to feedback and very kind. I cannot recommend this game enough, and it's an absolute shame it isn't talked about more

I tend to enjoy factory builders, and puzzle games. This game is both. Every element has its own style for how buildings are shaped, creating interesting puzzles where you need to work around the chasms spread across each plane, but also with the shape of each building, especially since unlike most games the grid here is hexagonal. Devs are very active in discord and respond to bugs/suggestions/questions, and I genuinely love the design of the worldbuilding. Elements opposing each other can't be built on the other one's plane (think fire vs water), but also don't tend to fit quite right together on planes where they can both be built further selling the concept of them not working together.

I can see myself sink many more Hours into this Game. If you like Factorio you will probably like this game aswell. The Hexagonal style gives the whole Puzzle of Automation games a nice twist. The Music is phenomenal and fits every elemental plane very well. I think Artstyle is lovely, very fitting with every elemental Plane At currently 50 Hours i "think" i'm slightly over halfway done, but i also slowed myself done by just sitting back and enjoying the music while pondering. There is certainly room to megabase and optimize the hell out of Productionlines, Lategame Research adds Structures that make you want to redesign everything from scratch, and when you journey to another plane you will always face a different challenge. Cant wait for the full release of this Game.

This game has a dedicated dev, plentiful updates, beautifully painted artwork, a gorgeous living world, and a solid premise. The puzzling nature of production lines and layouts is revamped by the hex-grid format, and the diversity of options for problem-solving to create the next reagent is delightful. Instead of brute-forcing solutions by throwing endless numbers of resource into a void, you're challenged to thoughtfully lay out a logistics solution that will slowly bear fruit, whilst you work on growing your next objective. If you like 2D factory builders, try this game (demo was full of content when I tried it). Worth it at full price even in EA, and definitely worth it if it's on sale. tl;dr: Magic Factorio - but a hexgrid! Worth every penny.

Motemancer is a great variation on a factory game without deviating too much from quality of life or other mechanical expectations to be frustrating. There's a lot of creativity here in how the different elemental planes work and synergies in research. The "entropy" (which is the game's threat you need to manage and/or exploit, instead of enemies) is also a pretty solid mechanic and I like how there's a whole reward tree for dealing with it. Some of the planes' mechanics, however, don't really land too well for me, and after a quick tl;dr, the rest of this review is going to be me griping about some things I didn't find fun. First, some basic good and less-good observations: Good: - Creative elemental stuff taken to its logical extension - Hex grid and the neat stuff that can be done with it - Entropy as a threat to manage - Game runs well and has enough quality of life (e.g. decent blueprints, pipetting, etc.) to avoid frustrations Less Good: - Elemental limitations on planes is a severe double-edged sword (forces exploring new mechanics, disappoints by forcing unique blueprints on every plane due to elemental restrictions) - Clearing entropy with spells is only fu…