I only played one route. Which I enjoyed, alot. For that price the game is a steal, and a fully voiced one.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
STEAM | October 2015 - You had me at "game ... comes to Steam".
- Thread starter jshackles
- Start date
- Status
lashman
Steam-GAF's Official Ambassador to Gaming-GAF
corrosivefrost
Member
Console only.
Finally, full circle.
Jawmuncher
Member
Dissapointing.
Nabs
Member
corrosivefrost
Member
Nyteshade517
Member
PC gets that too
https://twitter.com/larianstudios/status/599157889039728640
@larianstudios Does the local co-op/splitscreen in the Enhanced Edition come to PC too?
@seandstach Yes!
edit: beaten
Or run two separate instances of the game on one computer and output them to two different monitors.
Jawmuncher
Member
Excellent.
Nah too much work if we're in the same room and only have one copy of the game.
Now I know you guys are messing with me.
Steam Link / Streaming to a TV > Split Screen Co-op on the couch
I intend to mess with this at a friends prior to new year's partying
Dead serious. Played Borderlands 2 co-op with my best friend like that when he had been home visiting during military leave.
Whew.
After 36 hours with Infinifactory, I finally beat the final level, which took about three hours by itself.
For those who don't know, Infinifactory is a puzzle game by Zachtronics, the team behind SpaceChem, and Infinifactory has often been described as "3D SpaceChem", which, while fair, also ignores some of the key differences.
First off, for those who don't know, SpaceChem and Infinifactory (as well as a lot of Zachtronics' web-based games) are what I can best describe as "sandbox puzzle" games. You see, in most puzzle games, you're given a certain thing you have to solve, you have a limited number of pieces/moves/whatever with which to solve the thing, and you just have to figure out the correct combination. Both SpaceChem and Infinifactory take a different approach. Every level is a completely blank canvas, and you have unlimited use of all your tools. You are given a final product that you need to produce X number of, and a set of inputs, and you're left free to roam from there.
What this means is that, unlike other puzzle games, there is a HUGE element of creativity in how you approach the solution to the problem. For example, here's one of Infinifactory's early levels:
Those orange boxes on either side spit out a regular stream of a certain type of block, and in the middle is what I need to build 10 of to complete the level:
And after a little tinkering with the various conveyor belts, welders, pushers, and sensors, I end up with this (captured with the in-game GIF creation tool, a great touch):
.
Whenever you complete a level, the game scores you on the time it takes for the factory to complete the required products, how many blocks you used, and the footprint of your factory. Despite the fact that the game scores you, you don't actually have to do anything efficiently. As long as you make the correct number of the correct thing, you get to proceed. The scoring is only for bragging rights, if you're into that sort of thing. Much like with SpaceChem, too, even your ugliest, clunkiest solutions are endearing because they're yours. When you spend a couple hours tweaking a factory to get the timing of things just right, it's just so damn satisfying to sit back and watch it run. For example, here's one of the levels from a little past the halfway point of the game:
The fact that I put down every single block you see there (and that's actually only about half of the puzzle) makes it so much more satisfying than a game that just has you "filling in the blanks" to get the solution.
For those who have played SpaceChem and are curious how this differs:
- It's a lot easier. Not to say that it's easy, but for me, beating SpaceChem is one of those things I aspire to do before I die, but I do wonder if I'll ever manage it. Infinifactory never feels that tough, and the learning curve's a lot gentler. Additionally, while the main restricting factor in both games is the amount of space you have to work with, Infinifactory's a lot more lenient. While a few levels here and there take place indoors and some of the later ones require a significant amount of space to complete, you have more than enough room to work in most levels. You do have to learn to be efficient with your designs, but there's still enough room for a little messiness here and there, so that the game never feels frustrating.
- There aren't really any fail states. In SpaceChem, you couldn't have any part of the molecules leave the levels, and any collisions between molecules would bring everything to a halt. There's nothing like that in Infinifactory. The only thing that will automatically stop your factory is feeding the wrong thing to the output. Blocks can touch each other without any penalty, and the interactions between the blocks can be utilized to great effect to help solve some of the later puzzles.
- It's in 3d, duh. While this means that you have a whole other axis to work with, it also means that things can get messy to the point that you can't actually get into your own machinery any more, since you actually play as a character who's flying around these levels. Many times I've built things so compact that I couldn't actually get inside to troubleshoot them without deleting pieces. That's more a fault of my own design than the game's issue, though.
- While I never had this issue, I've heard that some people have had problems with how the early levels handle the tutorial stuff. Basically, you're dumped in a level and are given access to a new block, with the only clue as to what it does being an Ikea-styled drawing of the block in question. I was able to figure them all out fairly quickly, but I have seen some people grumbling about them. The game does give you a complete written description of the block(s) as soon as you beat the level, so as long as you can stumble through the initial level of it, it shouldn't be an issue.
Also, as much as I love the game, I do have a few minor issues:
- It's not a huge problem in the early levels, but the game could really use a faster fast-forward. You see, when you have your factory running, you can hold F to make it run at around double-time. This is more than quick enough for most of the levels, but even with fast-forwarding, some of the later levels can take 10 seconds or so to complete one item. This makes tinkering with the larger levels a tad tiresome, especially since you can't actually place blocks when the factory's running. This leads to many situations where you're trying to get a certain block in just the right place, so you have to run the factory for 10 seconds, pause it at just the right time, make a visual note of where you need to place your block relative to the thing you're constructing, stop the factory (which makes the things under production disappear), place the block, hoping you're in the right spot, then re-run the factory for the 10 seconds to see if you got it right. Like I said, it's really only a huge issue towards the end of the game, when you have to make some really large and complicated stuff (gif of a solution to a later level). SpaceChem had multiple levels of fast-forward, as well as a "pause" feature that would automatically pause things once they reached a certain point, wihch meant that you could just use the insane-speed fast-forward and not have to worry about overshooting where you wanted to stop things. Both of those would have been nice to have here.
- The way conveyor belts are handled when it comes to large objects is a little weird. Take a look at this:
The thing I'm moving basically has a 3x2 footprint. Notice that when it's moving up it starts to move left as soon as the first block hits the left-moving conveyor, but it starts moving back up again once the LAST block hits the up-moving one. Apparently the game has a system where it prioritizes which conveyor belts take priority based on arbitrary directions in each level. I get that this might make things simpler when it comes to potentially conflicting directions, but it was a little annoying in the beginning when I was trying to figure out the rules that the game followed, and the conveyor belts seemed to behave differently every time. I eventually got around it by not having solid runs of conveyor belts and placing the single conveyors carefully enough so that they'd force the thing I was moving to go the way that I wanted. So it's not insurmountable, just kind of annoying.
Other than that, though, I can't really think of much bad to say about Infinifactory. If you like puzzle games at all, get it. If you liked the idea of SpaceChem, but found it a bit too punishingly difficult, Infinifactory's a much more pleasant experience.
Absolutely highly recommended, and mostly likely my GOTY.
After 36 hours with Infinifactory, I finally beat the final level, which took about three hours by itself.
For those who don't know, Infinifactory is a puzzle game by Zachtronics, the team behind SpaceChem, and Infinifactory has often been described as "3D SpaceChem", which, while fair, also ignores some of the key differences.
First off, for those who don't know, SpaceChem and Infinifactory (as well as a lot of Zachtronics' web-based games) are what I can best describe as "sandbox puzzle" games. You see, in most puzzle games, you're given a certain thing you have to solve, you have a limited number of pieces/moves/whatever with which to solve the thing, and you just have to figure out the correct combination. Both SpaceChem and Infinifactory take a different approach. Every level is a completely blank canvas, and you have unlimited use of all your tools. You are given a final product that you need to produce X number of, and a set of inputs, and you're left free to roam from there.
What this means is that, unlike other puzzle games, there is a HUGE element of creativity in how you approach the solution to the problem. For example, here's one of Infinifactory's early levels:
Those orange boxes on either side spit out a regular stream of a certain type of block, and in the middle is what I need to build 10 of to complete the level:
And after a little tinkering with the various conveyor belts, welders, pushers, and sensors, I end up with this (captured with the in-game GIF creation tool, a great touch):
Whenever you complete a level, the game scores you on the time it takes for the factory to complete the required products, how many blocks you used, and the footprint of your factory. Despite the fact that the game scores you, you don't actually have to do anything efficiently. As long as you make the correct number of the correct thing, you get to proceed. The scoring is only for bragging rights, if you're into that sort of thing. Much like with SpaceChem, too, even your ugliest, clunkiest solutions are endearing because they're yours. When you spend a couple hours tweaking a factory to get the timing of things just right, it's just so damn satisfying to sit back and watch it run. For example, here's one of the levels from a little past the halfway point of the game:
The fact that I put down every single block you see there (and that's actually only about half of the puzzle) makes it so much more satisfying than a game that just has you "filling in the blanks" to get the solution.
For those who have played SpaceChem and are curious how this differs:
- It's a lot easier. Not to say that it's easy, but for me, beating SpaceChem is one of those things I aspire to do before I die, but I do wonder if I'll ever manage it. Infinifactory never feels that tough, and the learning curve's a lot gentler. Additionally, while the main restricting factor in both games is the amount of space you have to work with, Infinifactory's a lot more lenient. While a few levels here and there take place indoors and some of the later ones require a significant amount of space to complete, you have more than enough room to work in most levels. You do have to learn to be efficient with your designs, but there's still enough room for a little messiness here and there, so that the game never feels frustrating.
- There aren't really any fail states. In SpaceChem, you couldn't have any part of the molecules leave the levels, and any collisions between molecules would bring everything to a halt. There's nothing like that in Infinifactory. The only thing that will automatically stop your factory is feeding the wrong thing to the output. Blocks can touch each other without any penalty, and the interactions between the blocks can be utilized to great effect to help solve some of the later puzzles.
- It's in 3d, duh. While this means that you have a whole other axis to work with, it also means that things can get messy to the point that you can't actually get into your own machinery any more, since you actually play as a character who's flying around these levels. Many times I've built things so compact that I couldn't actually get inside to troubleshoot them without deleting pieces. That's more a fault of my own design than the game's issue, though.
- While I never had this issue, I've heard that some people have had problems with how the early levels handle the tutorial stuff. Basically, you're dumped in a level and are given access to a new block, with the only clue as to what it does being an Ikea-styled drawing of the block in question. I was able to figure them all out fairly quickly, but I have seen some people grumbling about them. The game does give you a complete written description of the block(s) as soon as you beat the level, so as long as you can stumble through the initial level of it, it shouldn't be an issue.
Also, as much as I love the game, I do have a few minor issues:
- It's not a huge problem in the early levels, but the game could really use a faster fast-forward. You see, when you have your factory running, you can hold F to make it run at around double-time. This is more than quick enough for most of the levels, but even with fast-forwarding, some of the later levels can take 10 seconds or so to complete one item. This makes tinkering with the larger levels a tad tiresome, especially since you can't actually place blocks when the factory's running. This leads to many situations where you're trying to get a certain block in just the right place, so you have to run the factory for 10 seconds, pause it at just the right time, make a visual note of where you need to place your block relative to the thing you're constructing, stop the factory (which makes the things under production disappear), place the block, hoping you're in the right spot, then re-run the factory for the 10 seconds to see if you got it right. Like I said, it's really only a huge issue towards the end of the game, when you have to make some really large and complicated stuff (gif of a solution to a later level). SpaceChem had multiple levels of fast-forward, as well as a "pause" feature that would automatically pause things once they reached a certain point, wihch meant that you could just use the insane-speed fast-forward and not have to worry about overshooting where you wanted to stop things. Both of those would have been nice to have here.
- The way conveyor belts are handled when it comes to large objects is a little weird. Take a look at this:
The thing I'm moving basically has a 3x2 footprint. Notice that when it's moving up it starts to move left as soon as the first block hits the left-moving conveyor, but it starts moving back up again once the LAST block hits the up-moving one. Apparently the game has a system where it prioritizes which conveyor belts take priority based on arbitrary directions in each level. I get that this might make things simpler when it comes to potentially conflicting directions, but it was a little annoying in the beginning when I was trying to figure out the rules that the game followed, and the conveyor belts seemed to behave differently every time. I eventually got around it by not having solid runs of conveyor belts and placing the single conveyors carefully enough so that they'd force the thing I was moving to go the way that I wanted. So it's not insurmountable, just kind of annoying.
Other than that, though, I can't really think of much bad to say about Infinifactory. If you like puzzle games at all, get it. If you liked the idea of SpaceChem, but found it a bit too punishingly difficult, Infinifactory's a much more pleasant experience.
Absolutely highly recommended, and mostly likely my GOTY.
lashman
Steam-GAF's Official Ambassador to Gaming-GAF
corrosivefrost
Member
What's disappointing is that you missed the joke... :lol
This guy. This guy gets it.
But then you only get half the game... think of all the stuff you should be seeing but won't cause your "friend" is eating up half your screen when he's off checking every corner of the map for potions in jars...
Plug HDMI into TV > Split Screen Co-op on the couch... for $50 less. Hell, you could probably buy a second copy of the game to do the LAN party for full PC experience for less than the Steam Link will run you. And I'm guessing that most people will be using wi-fi for one of their Steam Link'ed devices... which means latency, which is less responsive, so why even bother...
Fair enough. Even if real PC gamers have no use for it, at least nobody can say it wasn't "as good as or better than" the console version now.
Yeah, Larian would certainly not leave a feature out of the PC version for no reason.
freshVeggie
Member
Splendid. Only thing left is now to find any friends...
One apparently keeps the game forever when "getting" in in the next 24hrs. Very cool, had it on my wl for a while even.
Happy birthday buddy.
Do
?
thanks for the read, i was very interested but considering that spacechem kicked my ass i was a bit weary, so it's raelly nice to hear it's a bit easier and has less GIANT PROGRESS WALLS
will need to get my hands on it one of these days, tho human resource machine seems like the more fitting programming puzzler for me, specially since it's cheaper
AHA-Lambda
Member
Finished the first Witcher game, very mixed feelings on it overall; garbage combat system.
But I've now got 52 games completed
But I've now got 52 games completed
Yeah, the limited amount of room to work in SpaceChem, combined with the whole "can't let anything collide" restriction really does make you be a lot more efficient. I never had that same overwhelmed feeling while playing Infinifactory. Some of the later levels require you to really compartmentalize the solution (make four of these out of individual blocks, combine them into two of this other thing, bolt those to the side of a third thing, etc), but you have so much room to stretch out that it never feels quite as harrowing. There were a few times when I was working on a larger level that I'd take a break after finishing a certain section, yet go back two minutes later because I had an idea about how to do the next part.
Oh, that does look interesting, and I'll definitely check that out at some point. I wouldn't say that Infinifactory is really much of a "programming puzzler", though. You actually can rig up some basic logic gates using loose blocks and sensors, but it's really just pushing blocks around and assembling stuff visually. Still, I didn't realize that the current price for Infinifactory was $25. I picked it up during the Summer sale for around $10 right before it left Early Access, and I've gotten more than my money's worth out of it.
A Fish Aficionado
I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
"Hey let's play some "___" tonight. Alright, I'll see you on steam"
Let's go back when gamers were gamers.
Let's go back when gamers were gamers.
Why would you assume that it wouldn't be Halloween sale?
If I remembered correctly people used to guess when big sales occur by seeing when the weeklong sale dates ended and it was accurate. So if the sales ended earlier than the whole week then it meant that the big sale would be happening at that date. The alternative would be that a Halloween Sale happens on 2nd Nov.
Halloween sale isn't big, tho.
Jawmuncher
Member
Wow someone doesn't believe in the Great Pumpkin.
Well, the Halloween sale is not a store-wide promotion like the other sales so I don't think that reasoning applies.
Exactly my thought
lashman
Steam-GAF's Official Ambassador to Gaming-GAF
We are going to have a All Souls Day sale this time but only Souls game will have discounts.
Yes.
Baron_Calamity
Member
I need to get this and push the developers to add making porno movies to the sim.
CheesecakeRecipe
Stormy Grey
The Halloween sale will be the spookiest yet this year! Forget your Alan Wakes, DreadOuts, Close Your Eyes' and NaissanceEs. All discounts will be applied to nothing but random pickings that you, the community, have greenlit! You made this bed. Now you'll sleep in it. Forever.
i wanted to say something bad about the graphics, but it has Euros as currency.
EU! EU! EU! *pounds the steeldrums*
What i don't get about the Payday 2 thing and the responses by the devs is this news from March:
Overkill Will Keep Supporting Payday 2 for Two More Years
Why did they risk adding these kinds of MTAs when 505 Games are still pumping money to Payday 2?
Overkill Will Keep Supporting Payday 2 for Two More Years
Why did they risk adding these kinds of MTAs when 505 Games are still pumping money to Payday 2?
A Fish Aficionado
I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
2spoopy4me
Watch. It'll just be all Sakura games. Now THAT, would be absolutely terrifying, at leaat if your name is Chariot.
CheesecakeRecipe
Stormy Grey
There's a lot of things which don't add up. Publicly available reports show that Overkill is doing incredibly well financially, and aren't really in the type of danger Almir likes to say they are. Between the influx of cashflow from the Overkill/Completely Overkill packs, steady money from cheap DLC packs and funds allocated from 505, it all makes the PR spin much more obvious and hollow.
Greed is eating away their minds like the black death devoured countries. And like him they will ultimately end and wither away. We humans have overcome worse. We survived until now. We won't bend our knees before Overkill.
MMBosstones86
Member
- Status