Hello everyone! Today we’d like to officially announce that the shapez 2 Demo is now officially taking part in the Steam Next Fest.
If you’ve already played the demo, the following segment may not be too interesting for you. Feel free to skip to Initial Feedback!
What to expect from the Demo
The Shapez 2 Demo will feature about 2 hours’ worth of content, depending on how minimalistic or elaborate you build. However, there’s no limit to how long you can play!
Everything up to and including space platforms is unlockable, which is done by completing specified shape delivery goals. Rewards include destroyers, rotators, stackers and a second building layer to go with it. You’ll unlock basic access to blueprints to duplicate production lines or share them with your friends or the community. Most main goals come with one or more side goals that give you various upgrades and buildings to further optimize your factory with. Additionally, you’ll encounter some Demo-exclusive challenges to rack your brain over once you’ve unlocked everything!
The Demo is fully fledged with a tutorial, tips that appear while you play as well as a Knowledge Panel in case you’re stuck. It fully supports English, German, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional) and Japanese. Additionally, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Russian and Thai are supported through community translations. Keep in mind that the quality of community translations may vary, so be sure to let us know if anything could be improved.
Please note that Demo save files will not be compatible with the Early Access version of the game, planned for later this year. Blueprint save file compatibility is likely but not guaranteed.
Grab the demo here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/
Initial Feedback
We’ve received a lot of glowing feedback from everyone so far! Of course, it’s not perfect yet, but we’re really happy to hear a lot of you are happy with the quality we’re aiming for. We will continue aiming for this level of quality and polish working on Early Access.
We have a couple of bigger changes in mind. We’re planning to poll them so you can let us know how you feel about these changes before we put our time and resources into it. Yesterday, a survey went out with proposals for reworking the research system, adding an energy resource to balance blueprints and trains, making the map unlockable instead of being accessible immediately and making the starting platform around the Vortex modular for more flexibility. You can find this survey and future polls or surveys in #discussions in our Discord server.
There are a couple of known issues, including some that prevent players from launching the Demo. Please read through our known issues forum thread to check for potential solutions. If none of them work, please join our Discord server, check #troubleshooting and start a thread in #bug-reports there so we can assist you!
Our Plans
Currently, we’re evaluating our options for Early Access. We’re happy with the feedback and the quality we provided in the Demo, but there’s still plenty for us to change and iron out, including the things that will be polled and so may or may not make it in the game.
We have a couple of internal scenarios to consider as 2024 seems to be a busy year for the factory building genre, so we’ll keep you updated on the estimated release window!
We would like to thank everyone who has already tried out the demo already. Your support has been amazing and keep the feedback coming!
If you haven’t tried the demo yet, don’t wait too long! It will be available until February 26th.
~ Tobias & the shapez 2 team