A bit further in. There appear to be 11 tiers currently, though only 8 are needed to reach the World Engine and the “end” of this version’s content. That’s about 20 hours or so.

A set of quick thoughts here, as there’s a sort of mixed bag train of thoughts.

The Good

• This is early access and the systems are generally simplified. It makes little sense to add complexity now, get a solid foundation first.
• The buildings + flow are a reasonable size and there aren’t 2 dozen of them. Effectively, you have 1 building per number of inputs, which is extremely nice to see.
• The world itself looks and feels great. Exploration is rewarding. The pre/post flare world changes are also solid.
• Material requirements for building are simplified, which is amazing! Imagine is Satisfactory didn’t require you to have 13 different items to build 1 thing, that’s here. It allows for base building anywhere with relative ease.
• There are only a few raw material types to build with – effectively iron, copper, clay and helium for a large portion. You’re not stuck with super complicate spaghetti trains.
• The movement + combat mechanics are generally responsive. You can double jump (2xspace) and dodge (left alt), which are not explained but essential for survival.
• Building extended bases is relatively easy. A shield tower costs peanuts, and it’s dirt cheap to build a shelter with 2 clicks.
• I like the idea of LEM (slot-in stat boosts), but the implementation feels wonky. The only ones that seem to matter now are +stamina. Would be neat to see this expanded.

The So-so

• Base defence is interesting as an idea, but poorly executed. I strongly recommend never upgrading a base as that causes regular waves of attacks.
• Moving items between bases becomes a requirement with helium. The tools to do so (cargo drones) can only be setup on the launch side, but need a target built ahead of time. This should be configurable from either end.
• Enemy spawns are annoying as the world layout breaks your line of sight but not theirs. Very annoying near the world engine where multiple ranged enemies will attack you and no real ability to respond.
• World traversal takes too long, and if you trigger enemies, they follow you for way too long. +Movement items are needed.
• Rails (a version of belts) can get wonky, requiring a restart. I like the concept of a pull mechanic… more on that in a bit.
• Base construction has a high dependency on the Z plane (vertical), in that it needs to touch the ground. If you’ve played Valheim where buildings fall apart if not on a solid foundation, see that same thing here. The concept is sound, but the tools present should allow you to build sufficient supports. Not the case. Which means very weird factory layouts.
• Collecting recipes requires significant exploration. There map is a sort of L shape and you start in the bottom left. There are duplicate recipes in either direction, but actually finding those recipes feels more like luck. I don’t mind the exploration, but would be nice to have a sort of hot/cold mini game to pinpoint the ones you want.
• Further to this, the only purpose of exploration is for a dozen or so recipes.
• While I don’t mind the size of weapon clips (for reloads), the ammo stacks are too small. 300 currently, should be 1000.
• Dying has you lose your weapon and items. If you died it’s 99% because of enemies and likely you will die during a corpse run. Creating a new weapon + ammo means you need to create storage boxes at every base. Meh.

The Bad

• Base defence in general when facing repetitive waves of enemies. I have a large dislike for PvE in my factory games, it disrupts the zen. I can manage it to a degree if the automated tools present can be configured to manage that threat. For now, I would hope they add a toggle to remove wave spawns until the defensive options are overhauled.
• Hunger / Thirst mechanics just don’t work here. They aren’t meaningful, the items you can produce are all worse than their raw ingredients, and provide no added game context. Having 12 different food items as raw ingredients counters the good of the game (simple).
• The amount of items that can be crafted as you progress is, well, concerning due to factory design challenges.

There is a ton of cool stuff here, and it’s different enough to bring some interesting ideas to the table. It addresses a ton of the issues present in the genre, both with simplicity and continual goals to work on. Tons of potential here.