I’ve done it, or rather I’ve decided I’ve done it. I’ve shipped robots in exchange of space metal.

I thought I needed tier 5, but I was wrong. The end of tier 4 unlocks assembly lines, which allow you to complete a 10 step process to create and sell robots. You need to craft torso, head, 2x arms, 2 legs, merge them, weld them, and finally paint them, in a very interesting approach to creative game play. It doesn’t really work because actually selling the robots causes a tremendous loss of resources, and it’s clunky as heck, but damn if it isn’t cool! (As it stands, you should only create 1 robot to complete the quest, and do so manually. The Firmalite cost / return is effectively a sink.)

Tier 4 and Tier 5 (which I did unlock) bring new buildings, material, and processes to the gameplay loop. You need to access a new mineral that is only found in a vein (which itself requires a massive radar to detect – which looks friggin’ cool), a deep mine, installing a mining drill, and somehow shipping it back to your main base. This mining station requires power, logistics, and a transport ship. I forgot a few pieces more than once, ran out of foundations (needed nearly 1500 total) to get it running, which was annoying. When it did run, it was entirely self-sufficient though!

This new resource has a 5 step refinement process to make CPUs, which has unbalanced ratios between buildings. CPUs are used for tier 5 science AND the parts for robots, which is a weird pain in the butt to manage. A great target for refinement and quality pass.

It would be cool if late game mining had less friction/complexity. It would be even better if research didn’t take 4 hours to complete because getting more materials to the base is still too complicated. Tier 3 belts should not require 8 hours of research – and my solar farm to power everything dwarfs my actual production line. But at the same time, what IS here is damn impressive. It takes a tad too long to unlock the space portion (which is poorly explained and missing content) and way too long to get assembly lines going (20+hrs to get there), so that the rather unique portions of this game can truly come to light.

I’ve sent in about 50 odd feedback submissions thusfar. Some are QA, where the information/labels are wrong. Some are bugs (belts that are close can do weird things). Some are related to balance (too many building types that do the same thing). And finally, some are more strategic (like how to optimize mining stations to make them easier to set up).

I’m quite hopeful to what comes out of Foundry in the long term. There’s already more here than most EA games, and the 2 new systems here have a ton of potential – Assembly Lines in particular! I wouldn’t recommend it just now, unless you REALLY LOVE production games, but I’ll certainly be back for another run at the next content patch.

Given that this is a relatively “niche” type of game, comparisons are natural. Satisfactory is its own thing, and while people will naturally compare, they have less in common than it may appear. It should however be compared to Factorio, which is the golden grandfather of the genre – everything up to tier 4 is a 3D interpretation of Factorio. If you’re looking for a 3D version Dyson Sphere Program is the top recommendation without any hesitation. Techtonica is another option that is about as close to Foundry as you can get, but still has quite a few rough edges to work out – I’d say it’s a good 6 months ahead of where Foundry is.

To close here, this game is a friendly reminder that AAA game studios bankrolling $300m dollar games, and then closing studios of amazing developers is just plain dumb. A small team was able to build a very complicated beast, and will continue to do so. Impressive.