I have many opinions about Early Access games. Nearly as many as there are EA games in fact! I would say that in most cases, EA games are interesting incubation projects and investment in that space is solely related to my desire to help a small dev team try out an idea. I am far from an angel investor, as my only return is the ability to experience that idea (and maybe, maybe, influence it). Then there are outliers, horrid ones and beautiful ones. For every Valheim there are a thousand or more bad apples. How many Stardew Valley clones do we need?

V Rising is much more like Valheim in terms of getting the essence of genres down together, in this case survival + ARPG. First and importantly, both of those genres are notoriously complex to balance. Survival is just… it’s having a moment. The concept of building things, then using those things to collect more things to build more things, all while not dying is the rage. Finding the balance between reward and challenge is the hurdle. Things like Rust where you can lose dozens of hours of progress, well that just plain sucks. Others like Enshrouded where it just rains power, maybe a bit less so. ARPGs well, that is all about the flow of moment to moment battles. If it isn’t responsive, if you can’t make out heads or tails of what’s going on, then it just doesn’t work. Where survival and ARPGs intersect is the idea of RNG loot. You can’t just get lucky and get a god sword in a survival game, it would break everything.

V Rising has found a way to balance both, where your survival and power is gated through progress on bosses. Each boss increases in difficulty (as does the area of the world in which they reside), providing more crafting options and therefore more power options. You’ll get new spells, new modifications, new weapons, new armor, new minions. It generally works. It absolutely shines as a co-op PvE game. It has the construct of PvP games (I am avoiding that altogether, for reasons). As a solo game, there are periods of very high frustration, primarily due to the lack of scaling based on number of players. That effectively means that some boss fights can go on for quite a while as a battle of attrition, as the power curve is almost always putting you at a disadvantage. With very few exceptions, each boss takes multiple attempts until you figure out their mechanics. Some take many more attempts. Some are frankly walls due to tuning, or perhaps a very clear reminder that this game is meant for 2 or more players on a boss.

Two parts to that. First, each boss has a clearly indicated power ranking. You have one as well, based on equipped gear. Improved gear comes from killing bosses and unlocking crafting options, or somehow you get RNGsus to bless you with a random recipe (that you likely cannot make due to crafting options). The end result is that you’re nearly always 5 or so power behind in each fight. But 5 you say, that’s a small number! Each point your are below, you deal 4% less damage and take 4% more, so that’s a 20% penalty both ways. Second is the environment. Some bosses are solitary, some are not. Some patrol. Some are inside or outside. No two battlefields are the same, so mechanically you are fighting the environment (and sun = death here) as much as the boss itself. This has a net effect of every boss being substantially different which is an amazing experience!

Combat mechanics are solid. A bunch of weapons, each with strengths and weaknesses that fit your style. There are a ton of spells, though I’d argue few have much use outside of niche situations. For the most part, an offense spell and defense (shield) spell are core. It takes a long time to figure out how healing can be integrated into your gameplay. This is a game that rewards tactics and drastically punishes brute force.

I think the castle building portion is extremely well done. You feel like you have a lair with flair. The progression of the various mechanical bits sort of works, but you end up with a tad too many machines for my likes, which makes the castle have a much more practical approach. The game plays on a Steam Deck, or a controller. Both put you at a serious disadvantage in complex combat due to the way the camera works and how some spells need to be lead, which is infinitely faster and more accurate with a mouse. One boss in particular was 20 failures on the Steam Deck, then a first attempt clear on the PC.

The game has a very rudimentary teleporting function, with about 10 gates strewn about a fairly large map. Rudimentary in the context of 75% of the items you can collect cannot be teleported, meaning long treks back to base. I get this construct in the first couple zones. It doesn’t impact corpse runs, so this is just the huffing-it-back-to-base part. Sure, you can move your base – which is a simple item to trigger, but honestly 30+mins to put everything back in place – but why? I’d strongly recommend that in the server setting options you allow teleporting with all items. Trust me, you’ll spend MORE than enough time corpse running, you won’t need it for farming too! That said, if you want to travel faster, find a horse with 10+ speed, and 6+ acceleration.

Overall, V Rising is a rather interesting game and one that successfully navigated the Early Access quagmire to come out well ahead. The game manages to blend two complex gaming genres into something that is smooth, enjoyable, and challenging. If you can play co-op, then you’re going to have a blast! Solo work, expect a fair chunk of challenge throughout. A few more thoughts to share on this coming…

Levels. Levels everywhere.

I’ve unlock Tier 4 research, which is a rather significant milestone as the game pivots from terrestrial to space-based. Well that’s a stretch… see, you crashed from a space station and you need to build connectivity to progress. It’s a rather massive shift of objectives, where all prior efforts were simply “build more stuff”, you now have major (and massive I may add) structures to build.

The main challenge at this point is simply scale. Where before most things needed 1 to 10 material to craft, these things require hundreds. So optimization and spaghetti belts is the name of the game! Two terms that run counter to each other.

I find in most of these games you reach a point where you just simply realize your initial design is bad. Like really bad. DSP has you figure this out once you leave your planet, when you’re essentially forced to scale up and build new. It also has great tools to help. Satisfactory’s main burnout factor is exactly this, where you know hours of work in a design have to be redone because all of a sudden you need to mine 12,000 copper instead of 300.

Foundry does not yet have built-in rebuilds. You need to tear down and restart. It also doesn’t deal well with mini-factories because the raw materials are used for a ton of stuff (well, not Technum so far). Plus, if you do want to rebuild, then scale becomes a very, very interesting challenge as inventory limits (like Satisfactory) make things complicated. You’re going to need a scalable main hub. This thing has tons of belts (2 wide, one for the belt, one to split) in order to create material for later use (which you will store, or perhaps add to the belts. You may get lucky and a material is only used for one thing (say…Ignium Powder). Maybe.

The general concept is base materials, sent to belts. Then you fork off the belts (with splitters) to craft whatever items you need. Maybe you add them back to the belts if they are used down the line. So you’ll start with 4 base materials, then 8, and by the time you reach tier 4 you’ll be near 10 items (or 20 wide).

The good! news in this is that the map has no size limits, so you can build as much as you want as long as you clear the trees. The less good news is that the more you spread out, the more you need to travel (and the more belts you need). The medium news here, and frankly logistical craziness, is that you will likely need to truck from a 1000m away the base material to feed this machine.

So guess what my next plan is? Oh, it will be glorious!

I had put Satisfactory aside for a while, mainly due to the frustration of the map. That’s really what the core of it is, because getting from point A to point B is painfully long, and if you have any vertical walls to traverse, the tools are atrocious.

In something like Skyrim, you travel somewhere, unlock fast travel and sort of forget about the travel path next time. Well, maybe you don’t because there’s some sort of emergent gameplay along the path, or some random chance at something. Satisfactory has none of that. The world looks amazing, but every single thing is placed with purpose and once you’ve found that purpose, the path between points is simply padding.

So I started to think about why the map was so frustrating, or more specifically why I needed to engage with it so much. The answer boiled down to two main things. First, the world-building tools are quite limited, in particular regarding trains (the slope limits make some paths much too complex), so that you’re having to be extra creative to build things. A nuclear plant is going to be 99% over water, because it’s the only open space you can use at that size. Second, the puzzle pieces provided to build things are too limited – your inventory is simply too small. The map is so darn big that you’re going to need thousands of meters of belts, but can only carry a few hundred.

The answer to this is mods. Or was mods. So:

• Increased inventory. Found a mod that gives 300 inventory slots. It is crazy how useful this mod is.
• SMART! which allows building multiple buildings at once. It used to provide the ability to link belts too, but that broke in v8. This cuts factory build time by a good 75%, especially if I want to line up splitters/mergers above ground.
• Teleporters. Once you unlock plastic, you can unlock the ability to build teleporters. I cannot explain how amazing this is. I remember having to walk nearly 10 minutes from one corner of the map to another. Amazing.
• Flight. Ok, this was a mod but has been a game option since v8. It makes building things so much more fun and removes the inventory management nightmare of the actual jetpack. It does trivialize Power Slug collection. Which I am ok with because you never needed it at the start of play anyways, and by end game, you had near infinite jetpack fuel.
• Unlock all alternate recipes. This was a mod, not an option in v8. Alternate recipes are variants to construction that provide alternatives depending on your available materials. Some are absolute bangers in improvements, some are more of a mess. Unlocking them meant exploring, pulling power cables all over the map, and having inventory of dumb things… then waiting 10 minutes for RNG to unlock something. I get doing it once, but it’s a good 8-10 hours saved.
• Docile creatures. The PvE elements in this game are pointless. Effectively it knocks you down cliffs. So turn this off. Also a game setting thankfully.

I am conscious that most of this reduces the value of the bespoke world building the devs have applied here. Things were placed with purpose, and the first time I went exploring, it was a truly fun journey. But this is like a puzzle, the first time you get it done, it feels great. But if I put that puzzle as a requirement to open your fridge, then you would have a different opinion quickly.

Does it allow me to focus on the parts I enjoy, like building big factories? Heck yeah! Is that one of the best parts of this game? Double heck yeah! Is laying belts and running out of material and having to trek 20 minutes back and forth fun? Anyone? If I’ve got the mats, let me use the mats! Especially when we’re talking about laying out factories with 40+ smelters.

Tangent – I still think not having the ability to pre-fab buildings is a bad choice, but also realize that it’s made entirely because of inventory / scaling issues. I’d rather have 15 manufacturers in my bag than the mats for 15. Also means that you’ll build a wall of containers holding mats to collect from.

Back to the topic. Exploration is good. Once it’s explored, it doesn’t need exploring anymore. I want to conquer that exploration, to tame it, or to simply avoid it altogether. This isn’t Valheim where the environment itself is the challenge, and you gradually get better at defending against it. I want to build factories that reach the sky! That sprawl to the end of view! That pump out so many iron plates that the planet’s gravity shifts as a result! Thank goodness for an absolutely rock star mod community.

I like production optimization games, what can I say?

Foundry is a voxel based production optimization game, a sort of weird hybrid of Minecraft and Factorio. It had a sneak peek demo of sorts last October, and I’ve been somewhat intrigued since. I like both of those games, and the dev company is a relatively small Canadian one, so why not give it a go.

At their core, this genre of game is Excel with graphics. The goals are about making numbers go up, which feed into other numbers, who also need to go up. And then somewhere in the middle realizing “what a sec, I need WAY more numbers” and truly appreciating the scale of the games.

One important part about Excel (or math in general) is that every new variable added can exponentially increase complexity. So the pace of added variables has to be one that’s controlled and mathematically sound. You can’t have one recipe need 5x and the next one need 100x. It’s also bad form to add so many variables and the inability to balance them – which is mostly found through a starter bus. In these games you need to produce everything (foundations, belts, smelters, etc..) and the number of variables is directly related to the ability to ingest. e.g. If a machine can only accept 2 materials, you can only have 2 materials.

So what does Foundry bring to the table?

• Voxels, which is a fancy word for grid-based exploration in 3D. Think Minecraft.
• Tons and tons of decorations, all from the start. Neat.
• Procedurally generated worlds. Every world is different, so there should be inherently less complex construction as the world is variable.
• Multi-player. While I haven’t done this, I can see tremendous value.
• Exhaustible resource nodes. You can’t just mine the same spot forever.
• Foundations to power everything. You need factory floors, which is a very annoying bit as your character can only jump 1 voxel.
• Loaders. These are initially limited to 1 space, then within an hour 2. The 3 space loader takes a while to unlock.
• Many machine types. Smelters, miners, assemblers, casters, pumps, etc…Many. Frankly, too many.
• Storage and the ability to limit. Used for buffering. This is great!
• Farming. Sort of. It takes more energy than it produces, not sure of the point yet.
• Research cores and stations. This is how you move along the tech tree to unlock more things to do.
• Low voltage and High voltage power. I dislike this a lot, more on it later.
• Subterranean mining. This is is interesting.
• Tasks. Not much for now, but an attempt at world-building.

Looking at the above, you can see a ton in common with Factorio, Techtonica and Dyson Sphere Program. There isn’t much in common with Satisfactory here.

Voxels – This is more related to world construction & destruction. You’re given a hand drill and you get to drill (or blow up) blocks to make open spaces. It’s also used to clear trees and rocks, that block foundations. In 99% of cases, your lack of vertical mobility means you need to go through things rather than above them (e.g. mountains). It’s interesting but finicky, in particular when laying down belts.

Procedurally Generated World – The map is infinite in size. “Seed hunting” make little sense. There’s no long-term travel options (e.g. trains or others), which means belts everywhere!

Foundations – You need a LOT. And when you think you have enough, you need more.

Loaders – They initially only grab 1 space away, then you get a 2 space loader which is essential for a main bus. The 3 space loader is a long ways out, and generally not needed.

Research Cores – I really like this model. You can self-direct the path of advancement. The research tree needs some serious QA work. One panel for crafting, one panel for mech, one panel for decorations would be ideal. Research is also a major bottleneck near mid-game, where the scale of later (tier 3+) items require a TON of material.

Machines – All machines have a config panel that is placed in such a way that if you put loaders in front, you cannot read it. They do what you think they do. It would be nice to have throughput data more obvious than 4pt text. Machine ratios can be a bit weird.

Low Voltage – High Voltage – This is how you power things. Most basic things need low voltage, which is simple enough to manage. You can also convert high voltage to low, which replaces early tech. Cool. You cannot convert low to high, and the only way to transport high is through power poles & wires, which have a 15 square limit. So like 50 power poles to get to from a generator to an extractor, which is 2-3x more than it should be. I’m sure this will be tweaked. Oh, and a platform can only take 1 transformer at a time, which is 25MW, which means “pods” of power. It breaks up foundations for a purpose I have yet to grasp. Oh, and power pole can’t clip, so your best bet is to dig them underground. I guess this is the ‘new to the genre’ part.

Belts – This is a weird thing to me. Straight belts are fine. Want to turn, you need to manually select. If you want to go up or down though, you need a different type of belt and cannot click-drag them in place. If you want to split or merge, you need a specific tool. It’s finicky. And you need a ton of them.

Advanced Pieces – The concept of a main bus lasts about 1 hour, until you need to build mk 2 belts due to insufficient plate throughput. You’ll quickly need to build those upgraded belts, but to actually do so needs some ninja belt pasta because it’s an offshoot of the main bus. Once you unlock steel production, you’ll simply conclude that a main bus doesn’t work here in the traditional sense, and you’ll have “pods” of construction. This is advanced logistics, and while I do expect it, it comes a little too early here.

Elevators – I think this is a really cool part of the game, where conceptually you dig a giant hole, put an elevator, then mine below ground. I say conceptually. Digging that hole requires explosives, and the field of view means you’re likely to fall into said hole with no way out (Jetpack is the only practical option). Then actually putting an elevator in needs substantially more room than you would think as it will be blocked by seemingly random things. And finally, once you do have an elevator in the hole…now you need a cave to mine and power within. The finicky parts of this are just ooooozing potential.

I’m curious as to how this game as an EA will move forward. It really doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from its peers, where I’d argue Techtonica is the closest comparison and is a few years ahead. On the very positive side – it doesn’t crash, is fairly well optimized, has good art style, is fluid, and has generally “good bones”. If my gripes are all about quality of life, I think that’s an amazing achievement.