Welcome back to our Dev Deep Dive, in which we’re chatting to the team about everything that goes into bringing Modulus to life. Last time we took a look at the trickiest systems to get right and today we are diving into ways in which the community has surprised us. The Modulus community has been the backbone of development, helping us to fine tune systems, to understand what we need to improve, remove or add, and we couldn’t be more grateful for their ongoing support. So without further adieu:
Has there been a feature that surprised you in how players used it?
Preet (QA Lead): In a recent playtest I saw players using storage depots in ways we never expected. They were storing resources in them, then moving the operators to different islands so those resources could be retrieved and reused later. I only discovered it yesterday, and it honestly never occurred to me that players would do that. It was a really nice surprise.
Antoine (Art Director): For me, the big surprise was seeing how players approached the game artistically. At first, I thought people might try some voxel or pixel art within a single module. But then I saw them using conveyor belts as tiles, snapping multiple modules together and building massive pixel art creations, sometimes 20x20 in scale. Watching them use conveyors to align and place every detail blew me away. I’d never even considered that possibility.
Mick : I like how our Art Director was surprised by the artistic element, [laughs].
For me though, I had a moment of feeling like I was bad at my own game. Players figured out right away that if you combine shapes into the biggest possible form and paint them before cutting, you save loads of paint and resources. Back in the early builds, before we had a max size, that tactic was really powerful, and I never thought of it myself! Seeing players immediately grasp that logic actually changed how I play. It wasn’t just paint, either; their approaches to the order of operations completely shifted how bottlenecks move across production lines. It was a real lightbulb moment for me.
Jarvs : I love those moments. I’m not a factory game aficionado, so I often think I’ve figured something out, and then I watch someone like Thomas play and realize I’ve been doing things the least efficient way possible. It’s humbling, but also inspiring. Seeing how players (and teammates) solve problems differently is part of what makes developing and testing Modulus so exciting.
Getting to see the way the community take the game’s mechanics and run with them to make the most spectacular things is a real privilege for me. They are so creative and clever. My brain just doesn’t work that way and how they manage to make the art they create in a factory game just blows my mind. We are so lucky to have such an amazing community.
From using operators in interesting ways to creating total masterpieces, our community never fails to surprise us. We can’t wait to see what they do with all the tools in the full version of the game.
In the next part of our Dev Deep Dive, the team digs into one of the toughest design challenges: how to give players creative freedom in Modulus without breaking performance or stability.
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Catch you soon Module Makers.
Team Happy Volcano.