shapez 2 News

Hello everyone!

The Early Access launch of shapez 2 went exceedingly well, so to celebrate the first month we thought it'd be fun to share some stats and share what we are already working on behind the scenes!

PS: Be sure to also check out the new content at the bottom of this post!

[h2]Early Access Launch Statistics[/h2]

[h3]Sales & Player counts[/h3]

In total, shapez 2 sold 273.000 units within the first month. Compared to our projection of 90.000 units, we were completely overwhelmed and surprised by the response and success of the game!

Putting this into context, with all games released in the past 3 years on Steam that are tagged as 'Automation', removing the non-factory related games and use the review count as an indicator of copies sold, this means shapez 2 already surpassed all factory games released within the past 3 years, within just a month. It also has the highest review score out of theses with 98.5% positive reviews (!).

As we are automation game fans ourselves and really enjoy those other amazing games, this really feels a bit surreal.

Games tagged 'Automation' (top 5 tags) and initially released on Steam within the past 3 years, ordered by review count.

A few days after launch, we hit the milestone of 18,806 concurrent players, and 79,119 daily active users!



Out of these players, 2.9% were playing on macOS and 1.9% on Linux. Unfortunately, it seems that Linux players had by far the most issues on launch, with sound problems and some crashes that could be resolved with an Unity update in version 0.0.8 eventually.

As we already stated in a previous devlog, we chose to cut the game length a bit in order to be able to deliver a more polished product on release. Still, we are very satisfied with the average playtime of almost 20 hours, as we expect that to grow a lot over time and with future updates!




[h3]Community Stats[/h3]

Here's a little insight into the community side as well. It's safe to say there's a lot more of you now!

The shapez 2 Discord server almost doubled in size through August, from 16,000 to 30,000! From the release of the game until now, it's up from 19,000 to 32,000. Throughout August, 82,000 messages were sent by 2,000 people (up from 14,700 by 250) and there was 45,000 minutes of voice chatting going on.

Sadly Discord analytics is having some issues, so we had to make our own graph. Shout out to one of our mods Loupau38 for the data points!

r/shapezio is booming as well, with the monthly posts going up from 99 to 1,212 and monthly comments from 740 to 8,800! The community got 1,269,000 views and 79,000 unique visits, up from 136,000 and 16,000 respectively.



Back home on Steam, our blogs used to get around 30,000-40,000 impressions and 2,500 reads each. Since the release, there are a lot more of you! The Release blog got 780,000 impressions and 33,000 reads, the Update 0.0.8 blog got 550,000 impressions and 72,000 reads!

[h2]Future Plans[/h2]

The success of shapez 2 so far allows us to expand the company by getting new people on board! Hopefully, this will allow us to more efficiently go through all your feedback and suggestions, as there's a lot of it!

We also working to adjust some of the initial plans we had for after the release, as we feel like we can do a lot more with shapez 2 than we initially expected. It's still too early to talk about this though, just know that you shouldn't look back to the plans we outlined before the release as they're likely outdated.

However, there's a few things we are already working on that we wanted to give you a sneak preview on!

[h3]New Content[/h3]

We are currently brainstorming how we can introduce new content that justifies starting a new savegame. It's still too early to share details and we are not sure if it'll actually happen, but currently we are thinking about a new game mode that adds a significant twist, like building away from the vortex instead of towards.

(Early draft of a new game mode)

[h3]Multithreading[/h3]

Right now, the game supports roughly up to 500,000 buildings, depending on your setup and factory structure. Some players have pushed the game to its limit already though, building factories with over 1.5 million structures.

Currently the simulation and rendering both run on just a single thread. With this change, we are offloading the whole simulation to separate cores. We designed the simulation to work with this constraints, which made it harder to implement, but hopefully pays off now!

Performance improvements on a i7-10700 CPU - From 0.8 FPS to 43.7 FPS

As a disclaimer - actual improvements may vary a lot, and other bottlenecks might occur. We also haven't been able to fully test it yet, so it will take a lot of effort to ensure the game runs stable. While we are trying to include it in the next major update, unexpected issues can already arise that force us to push it back. We'll most likely start by rolling out the build to our Patrons once we have a version that seems roughly stable.


[h3]New Space Belt Visuals[/h3]

The art team is currently reworking the space belt (and in the future space pipe) visuals, with the intention to make it more clear that shapes are delivered on separate layers. Here are already some concepts:




[h3]Vertical T-Pipes/Wires[/h3]

Some frequent feedback we got were about the limitations of vertical pipes / wires. Making them more flexible required a huge internal refactoring to support buildings accepting inputs from the top / bottom. We finished a big part of the refactoring this week, and now need to add the actual support for these connections. In practice, this means being able to split a pipe to the side for example that is also going up!

[h3]Further Improvements[/h3]

While we haven't managed to go through all your suggestions & feedback yet, we feel we already have a good initial understanding of the current improvements that could be done, for example a Statistics Page, more train controls, improved space pipe visuals and so on.

We will work through these over time and try to include a bunch of them as part of every major update! Be sure to keep suggesting and upvoting them on our Suggestions Portal!


[hr][/hr]

Thank you for being part of the statistics and we hope you enjoyed this little insight! We'll see you again soon.

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 Team

[h3]Join the community:[/h3]

Discord Reddit Suggestions Portal X / Twitter YouTube

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

Hello everyone,

We just released update 0.0.8, which includes a bunch of improvements and fixes based on your initial feedback already. Thank you for taking the time to help us out!

This does not yet include anything from the Roadmap Survey. We just started going over the 13,000 responses (!) so that will take a while ..

If the update doesn't automatically download, be sure to restart steam. It should show '0.0.8-rc3' in lower right of the main menu.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

[h3]General[/h3]

• Updated Unity version to resolve various issues with DirectX 12, Wayland, sound on Linux and many more.
  

[h3]Balancing & New Content[/h3]

• Added Pipe Gate, allowing you to control the flow of fluids with logical signals.
  
• Added Virtual Pin Pusher
  

[h3]Visuals[/h3]

• Improved train loader / unloader package icon meshes
  

[h3]UI/UX[/h3]

• Space Belts / Pipes and Train Rails now automatically place tunnels while dragging.

• Added 'Save As' option as well as 'Replace' for an improved blueprint editing workflow

• Added visualizations for Trains.

• Added visualization for map markers in Overview Mode.

• Dragging a Rail towards the Vortex now automatically places a Train Launcher (once unlocked).
  
• Allow pasting blueprints directly in the library with 'Ctrl + V'.
  
• Added setting to control animation quality/fps when zooming out.
  
• Properly display conflict indicators for Rails if blocked by an adjacent Platform.
  
• Disable research points 'flashing' reminder for 15 minutes when clicking it.
  
• Added 'Invert Y Axis' option.
  

[h3]Localization[/h3]

• Improved Bent Stacker description to mention it's faster than the normal Stacker (now you know).
  
• Fixed inconsistent names between 'Halves Swapper' and 'Swapper' as well as 'Halves Destroyer' vs 'Half Destroyer'.
  
• Fixed inconsistent wording for Train upgrades.
  

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• Fixed Space Belts / Pipes sometimes not accepting / delivering items at expected throughput.
  
• Fixed Train Unloaders producing a small gap when switching packages.
  
• Fixed Fluid Catcher not transferring fluid to other launcher when the former is on a platform edge.
  
• Fixed blueprint toolbar not updating when changing folder contents.
  
• Fixed crash when connecting item producer directly to Trash.
  
• Fixed research progression statistic showing 100% during tutorial.
  
• Fixed overriding blueprints with different case not working as expected.
  
• Fixed invalid Space Pipe throughput display.
  
• Fixed various pipe/wire path placement issues.
  
• Fixed Fluid Launchers not always displaying throughput / contents.
  
• Fixed screenshots being stored in wrong folder, now saved in user pictures folder.
  
• Fixed some specific space belt loops crashing the game.
  
• Fixed blueprints drag-n-drop in library not working when folder list was scrollable.
  
• Fixed rare crash when analytics failed to init.
  
• Fixed incorrect fluid providing flow.
  

[hr][/hr]
[h3]Join the community:[/h3]

Discord Reddit Suggestions Portal X / Twitter YouTube

Hello everyone!

As we mentioned before, we didn't want to start Early Access with a static roadmap. As a developer, it can be easy to focus on things that we think might be super important, but are actually minor while there might be other severe topics that we should look into first!

While we are still overwhelmed with the reception of the game as well as the amount of feedback we got (Around 1.700 feedback form responses, 10.000 new discord members, 600 bug reports and over 1000 Suggestions), we thought it would be a good time to now ask what we should prioritize for the next major update!

[h3]Roadmap Survey[/h3]

So, please fill out our first Roadmap Survey:

[h2]➡ Fill out the survey here! ⬅[/h2]

[h3]The next steps[/h3]

Currently we are finalizing 0.0.8 and we are aiming for roughly this Thursday or next Tuesday if everything goes as planned (fingers crossed!). It improves blueprint editing, adds auto-tunnel-placement for space belts & rails, marker visualizations & much more! You can already give it a try on the experimental 0.0.8 branch on Steam (although please backup your savegames!).

Automatic Tunnel Placement coming in Update 0.0.8

For the first major update, we want to introduce some bigger changes & content, so it's unlikely we'll finish it this year. Our current prediction would be Q1 2025, so 0.0.8 would probably stay around for a while (unless severe issues arise).

We want every major update to make it worth picking up the game again. You can expect every major update to include new content, quality of life improvements as well as bug fixes & performance improvements. We also want to make sure it's exciting enough to pick up the game again; while we plan to add more endgame content, we are also aiming to add new scenarios that let you experience the game in a different way again or new mechanics that add a twist to the game.

We are aware that the current shapez 2 experience might be shorter (50-150 hours depending on your playstyle) compared to other long-established factory games. In order to create shapez 2, I had to cut one of these: content, quality or time. To launch shapez 2 within a reasonable time into early access, we decided it's better to focus on creating a very solid baseline for the game that we can then expand for many years.

Over the course of time, our goals is to increase the amount of content within the game, until we reach the point were you can just constantly keep playing between the updates.

That's it! Thank you for taking the time to fill out the survey - We're very excited to see what exactly the roadmap will end up looking like!

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 Team


[h3]Join the community:[/h3]

Discord Reddit Suggestions Portal X / Twitter YouTube