Assembly Planter

Assembly Planter
N/A
Metacritic
91
Steam
72.534
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$4.99
Release date
4 August 2020
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
91 (178 votes)

A farming / automation game, that allows you to progress from a poor hard-working farmer with just a few old tools to a lazy rich guy that watches his machines do the work for him while he tries to optimize production.

Show detailed description

Assembly Planter system requirements

Minimum:

  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit versions)
  • Processor: Intel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320 or better
  • Memory: 4 GB RAM
  • Graphics: Nvidia Geforce GTX 550/equivalent or higher*
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 500 MB available space
Similar games
Popularity
Reviews
Write a new review
Ghaos
Ghaos

You make things so you can make more things. The lack of depth isn't very noticeable the first playthrough, so for that reason, I still recommend this game despite planning on literally never playing it again.

dontremb
dontremb

Incredible game. It's as idle and incremental as you want; you build your own upgrades from the soil up.

Edit:
To anyone who saw the negative review (by ಠ_ಠ) with all the UI problems; almost all of those statements are untrue. The bad review was sent in March, and the last update to this game was February, so the errors in his review are just mistakes.

Please note there ARE some UI problems that could be resolved, but they really don't hurt that much.

This is a quote from the review:
----------------------------------------------------
ಠ_ಠ The user interface is actively hostile.
There are so many things wrong with the UI it's hard to know where to start. Here's a partial list of them:

--Original Comment--
There's no hover reference for a machine's inputs and outputs or timings. You have to refer to the crafting menu to review them.

--my correction--
(Incorrect: All machines have hover over information stating their inputs, outputs, and time, if it's in your inventory. And you can label your machines whatever you want, so you can see them at a glance, if you have them placed.)

--Original Comment--
You cannot build with a crafting nor inventory windows open.

--my correction--
(True, but you can just hit tab to close them.)

--Original Comment--
No labels on the quickbar for hotkeys.

--my correction--
(If you hover over them, they have labels. Also, labels aren't really necessary. Once you've played the game for an hour or two, you know at a glance what each of the limited items are.)

--Original Comment--
Items on the quickbar are removed if you use them all up, ruining the order you might have had them in.

--my correction--
(This is true, and might be a little annoying, if you forget the point of this game. If you want to keep a certain amount of items, in the right order, on your hotbar, regardless of how many you use, you just spend 10 seconds making a machine to keep you full.)

--Original Comment--
Adding/removing items from the quickbar only adds them to the end of the quickbar, there's no way to arbitrarily arrange them without removing others.

--my correction--
(This is more or less true, except you can rearrange your items with just a few clicks. Also note, that there's only a few items you'll always keep in your hotbar, and you'll have thousands or millions of them, so they will stay where you want.)

--Original Comment--
Setting 'Puller' inputs is awful and requires multiple clicks on numerous items.

--my correction--
(This is just lack of knowledge of the game. The most complex recipe has 5-6 ingredients, meaning just 1 puller, and clicking 5 times, and maybe writing a number 5 times. But you only do this once. Then you have the machine, and you scale up from there. If this person is spending hours setting puller inputs, then they haven't really spent much time learning the game.)

--Original Comment--
You can turn off the game's pop-up icons for acquiring items, but this also turns off the display of how fast you're collecting items. There's no production graph or other output to measure your effective output.

--my correction--
(This is actually true! It would be really nice to have a centralized page displaying your total input/second for each item. But it's not really necessary for this particular game. It would just be a neat thing to look at.)

ಠ_ಠ Gameplay decisions aren't much better.

--Original Comment--
You have to have the resources for all of the items in the shrinker to build it. If you're tight on resources and need to adjust a faulty machine, this is extremely tedious. There's no 'blueprint' building like you'd have in other games.

--my correction--
(False. Every machine you build automatically has a blueprint. You literally hit 1 button, it pastes your machine in the shrinking area, and you can adjust however you want. This is SUPER clear in the very simple tutorial. How could this reviewer have missed this?)

--Original Comment--
Once a machine is 'shrunk', there's no way to adjust the pattern for that machine. You can only re-create and make a new copy.

--my correction--
(False. AND, just a repeat of the previous comment. Again, you can adjust and tweak any machine you build, faster than any factory game I've ever seen.)

There are no parameterization options for the shrinker machines. Each of the inputs must be hard-coded and a new machine created, even if you're following the same pattern.

--my correction--
(False. Again, this person didn't follow, or understand the very simple tutorial. You have complete control of every facet of your machine, and can tweak, or copy and tweak simply, and easily.)

--Original Comment--
You cannot halfway build a shrinker machine, switch to another one, and then come back to your original work. This means if you're building a machine that uses other machines, but realize halfway that a machine needs adjustment or you need to build a dependency, your work is lost.

--my correction--
(False. You can save your machine at any time, then load a different one, tweak it, then load up your unfinished one again. Also, this is a 3rd comment that says, "they don't have blueprints." Which the game does have.)

--Original Comment--
Some items, such as lower grade compost bins and sieves, are completely obsuleted by other types and can neither be upgraded nor trashed.

--my correction--
(False. Didn't follow the tutorial. All items can be trashed, granting EVERY resource that was used to make it.)

--Original Comment--
Multiple crafting benches required to build items manually, which is just tedious.

--my correction--
(There is no reason to build anything manually after the first 10 minutes of gameplay. Build a simple machine in 2 seconds that build it for you.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Almost every negative comment in that review is false. Not just false, but I honestly don't know how you could play this game for more than 20 minutes, and come to these very incorrect conclusions.

It makes me wonder if that person was paid to write a negative review.

JohnMegacycle
JohnMegacycle

This is a game that I wish I could give a 'meh' rating, or more accurately, on a scale of 1 (being bad) to 10 (being amazing), I feel this one is at a 7-ish. The UI needs some serious retooling, but this game scratched an itch that I was aiming for. I called it an 'Automation Cookie-Clicker with Recursive and Scaling Properties' which means it was complex enough for my monkey brain to calm down and concentrate over, but simple enough for me to be able to play it even when I was crazy tired.

I think this won't satisfy those Factorio/Satisfactory crazies out there, but this is a good introduction to the genre of 'Automation' and would be a good step for new folks who may get overwhelmed by being attacked or too many things going on.

TheRealFlo
TheRealFlo

Amazing automation game! Can be slightly tedius at times, but still - 4$-5$ is a Steal

Ellynanna
Ellynanna

I thoroughly enjoy this game. It's a relaxing and good factory builder.
The colours are nice, the audio is nice. Even the music is pleasant, though I usually have it off.

As in any factory builder, you can craft machines from recipes, and move around ingredients and products on assembly lines.

But this game also has a feature where you use a "shrinker" to make more complex or more efficient machines by combining machines you already have. Basically you can shrink an entire factory of machines and turn it into a single new machine.

This feature is awesome.

The game is all about scaling up your production. Build more machines, so you can make more products, so you can make more machines so you can make more...

It takes a lot of scaling up to reach the end-game.

You can do it like a perfectionist through and through, every machine perfectly placed, every machine properly proportioned to the others, so no second of any working machine goes to waste.

Or you can just throw machines together ignore their ratios and just get that product you want made right now without spending much time building a machine for it.

If say you don't have enough wood to design the next machine you have in mind, you can go grab a cup of coffee while waiting for more wood from your existing machines, like an idler, or you can build and place some more wood crafting machines!

(Note: My review was originally more mixed, but since then the game was updated and certain game mechanics were changed, now there is nothing mixed about my opinion of this game. I love it through and through.)

Jeebs
Jeebs

Simple premise of automate gathering resources and crafting items. Gets more intricate when you unlock the "shrinker" which turns your production lines into a 1x1 item. This process is recursive meaning you can then turn several of those machines into a 1x1 etc etc

NajaTheNaja
NajaTheNaja

My ONLY complaint is that the camera doesn't zoom. otherwise its a great automation game that keeps hooking you with new stuff every goal you hit. well designed, but probably needs some polish still.

Just completed every achievement and objective in the game, solid 29 hours of gameplay there. good stuff.

Explosive Taco
Explosive Taco

Good game. Simple and cheap, and a easy way into the Automation genre!

ilrian
ilrian

It's satisfyingly addictive.

I wish this wasn't 3D because it's unnecessarily heavy on the resources which will turn potential players away that owns low-end/budget PC like me.

kmod
kmod

Very appealing game, has some fresh mechanics and it's fun to play. Not a ton of content, but at this price it's a great value.

gabrieleyre116
gabrieleyre116

I Love this game, bugs and everything. it used to be a small game, about making coins on itch.io, and now it has become this. This is a beutifull game and I really hope you would love it as much as I do. I'm really proud of the creator(s), no matter what you say.

jamesttuk
jamesttuk

Great fun, I definitely got my moneys worth and the leveling keeps it interesting

Tom
Tom

I was about to give this a glowing review after having played around 6-8 hours offline. But when I started it up to build the 15 minutes so I could leave a review, it reverted me to where I was a couple of hours ago, all progress lost. The only save option is "save and quit", so there's no manual way to save or load a game, you get exactly one shot, and apparently that process has a severe bug in it.

The game is fun, but I'm not so sure I want to redo the last two hours to continue.

Originally I left this as a negative review, but I changed my mind given the price and that it's early access. I got maybe 8 hours out of it, that's not bad for the price.

I do have one big complaint - the hotbar scrolls backwards from most games, please give an option on which way to scroll.

Skignovilous
Skignovilous

My experience with the game was great. I hesitated buying for some time due to the graphic style (that I ended up liking it) but, let me tell you, the gameplay compensates for it.

The game isn't very complex and it's very forgiving with the designs you make. There is no pressure, as in time or enemies to fight, the only pressure is "how much of X I want to make per second".

This is where the game shines for me, the scale of it. At first you deal with small quantities, but the game gives you end-game machines and tools that, if you put time to learn how they function properly, you can indefinitely scale production. That really appealed to me. It was really fun to reach the last level and see 1 billion wood being produced per sec and remember how I didn't have enough of it for machines in the beginning.

In Factorio (the king of automation games) the scale comes (mostly) from the size of the factory itself. Here you are limited to a smaller map, but, the scale is still there, due to creative gameplay mechanics that keep you always pursuing more and more throughput of materials.

You can expect content for at least 12 hours of gameplay, but as all automation games are addicting, this one is no different, so, that time can greatly increase.

There are achievements to pursue and to get them all took me 16 hours.

I would say that more content is welcome but not necessary to make the game enjoyable, because it IS already really good.

I really enjoyed my time and I couldn't recommend it enough. If you like automation, scaling production and resource management, this game is for you. Don’t make the same mistake as I did and wait because the game “looks simple”. I guarantee you will find lots of love in this creative gem.

Starweaver
Starweaver

Excellent game for introductory assembly-type games. Good graphics and fun game play. That being said, it has a ways to go to really flesh out details and QoL improvements. I won't list them all here as my list is still growing as far as what this game needs to improve it and make it more user friendly. Hoping they're being worked on as I do love the game.

TaosChagic
TaosChagic

This game was a surprising gem. Short I beat it in about a day once I grasped all the mechanics, but really cool. I really hope for more content, but It is definitely worth the 4.99.

Beans
Beans

Really cool automation game! It gets rid of all the fluff and focuses on the core mechanics that make automation and production line game great.

Sir Toastie
Sir Toastie

Factorio = scale up. Assembly Planter = recurse down. A truly unique game concept in an otherwise repetitive genre.

Concept and gameplay: 4/5 - Unique and enjoyable
Graphics: 4/5 - Perfect for what the game is
Controls: 2/5 - Needs polish
Replayability: 5/5 - Will definitely be coming back
Required skill level: A healthy interest in optimization and automation games required

For 3.99 EUR as of writing, it's 100% worth it if you're thinking about it.

PROS:

- Makes you think, but not in a grindy or frustrating way. If you're used to automation games, you're probably used to scaling up and repeating things over and over. Assembly Planter takes a rather unique approach and forces you to think in terms of recursion and putting things inside one another, forming exponential growth (with exponential cost!). Not that it's required, but if you're a ratio nerd with other games such as Mindustry and Factorio, this is ABSOLUTELY your game.
- Cute. Not over-engineered but certainly not anything I'd consider amateur.
- Mechanics are quite easy to understand after the small initial learning curve.
- Seems rather solid. I did face one CTD but a reload made it go away.

MEH's:

- Reconstructing things and readjusting was rather tedious. It's not incredibly bad, but it's also a bit slow for my taste. I don't have a lot of time to play games so I wish I could have progressed quite a bit further in the 2.5 hours I played. The logistics aspects seemed fine, but any sort of manual labor felt horrendously slow.
- Some of the UI is confusing at first. For example, it isn't clear (I suppose unless you read all of the manual, which I don't really do...) that the numbers in the Puller interface are items per second.
- Overflowing a belt destroys items. I have two minds about this, but it means that everything has to be PERFECT in order to see much growth. I personally prefer back-pressure and forcing things to back up so I can visually see where bottlenecks or overproduction occurs.
- It's not always clear where some items come from (e.g. sand).
- The music got a bit tedious after a while. I wish it cycled between a few completely different tracks to bring a bit of variance.

CONS:

- Seriously, the lack of backpressure is quite frustrating. Having no graphs or over/under meters to tell me if my ratios are off, along with no way to adjust shrinked machines after they've been placed, is very frustrating.
- Navigation of the world itself feels clostrophobic. I can't figure out how to tilt up or down or zoom in or out effectively and it makes for a bit of cognitive strain. I hope there is some polish coming for that at some point.
- Progression is very linear. There is only one way to progress (it seems so far) and that is through rigid level-up functionality instead of giving the user much choice as to how they want to optimize their farm.
- A few unexpected interactions, such as breaking a shrinked machine doesn't just pick it up but instead destroys it into its component pieces, requiring that I go back to the workbench and re-craft it >.> rather annoying.

Don't be dissuaded by the MEH's/CONS; they are slight criticisms that I wish would be tweaked but by no means are showstoppers. Quite the contrary - the game over is very much worth it and enjoyable.

Myverne
Myverne

Amazing value for it's price. This game gives the satisfaction that a lot of automation games can't give, because you don't have to remake all of your systems 50+ times, you can just press a button and the "mini-factory" is popped right into your inventory.

Pungent Bonfire
Pungent Bonfire

Seemed pretty fun at first, but near the end you unlock something that basically shoves you into a singularity and stifles all ingenuity. Putting aside that the last two achievements didn't unlock due to this, the rest of the game seems fairly solid until you start poking around in unintended ways, which often causes minor issues here and there. For the price it's worthwhile for a short jaunt, but I probably overstayed my welcome and idled quite a lot.

tl;dr Plant plants, gain resources, break spacetime and the game.

JOHNNY GUEGGU
JOHNNY GUEGGU

The tutorial SUCKS.

I made it to level 4 until I uninstalled & refunded the game.

I can't figure out what to do. In the tutorial. It's THAT BAD.

I should be spoonfed the basic mechanics in the beginning. Nice and simple.

Love the coding / automating games, because of their complex mechanics. But if you make me search stuff and the goal is not clear - mind you, in the tutorial - I immediately uninstall and refund your clunky piece of "biomass", as they call it in this game.

Good riddance!

NoonKnight
NoonKnight

Enjoyed this game so much! It's a bit short but worth the price. During end game play turning off item popups and sound is a must. I still replay it once in a while too.

UnverFuss
UnverFuss

Great game, Super addicting. Its a great game and I wish more people knew about it! I also hope that in the future there can be a co-op mode or a animal DLC.

JayDeezus
JayDeezus

Found this via a feature in the Unreal Engine marketplace, so I decided to take a look for some insight into logistic puzzle game design.

Shrink UI is a bit clunky and crashes on occasion, which is where you spend a lot of time designing logistic subunits. A decent concept but implementation can be done better. At least I wouldn't release it as final in the state it's in, this is definitely early access quality.

AJ1AJ
AJ1AJ

Nice game. Around what I expected for what I got it for.

(since i already finished it, its as short as i expected too - i don't regret buying it one/two days ago though: it was still fun)

Cnida
Cnida

Nice progression. It starts simple, then you automate everything and break the game. Finished it in 12 hours, which is about what I expected for a game of this price.

DrSquick
DrSquick

Great game if you like automating things and making input and output ratios just perfect.

The game starts out like you'd expect - you plant some seeds, wait a few seconds, and harvest them. Then you get automated planters and harvesters. Then the real game opens up! You get a smaller grid (that can be grown over time) that you build a self contained operation, such as sift dirt, make a type of seed, plant the seeds, harvest the result. And then you shrink it down to a single square!

One of the things that makes this game unique is you can put your one-square mini-factories inside another shrinker. So inside a single square you can end up with a machine that produces hundreds or thousands of an item!

W
W

Simple, cheap, self-contained automation game with a clear ending.

Zebulan
Zebulan

This may be a rather short game (currently) but it's a formula done right; prepare to be addicted! Manually farm "crops" in your garden and turn those grown resources into automation tools to farm, hands-free!

The game incrementally increases your resource output by a creative "shrinking" feature, where you can condense an automated layout into a single tile (and even condense multiple of these single tile factories into a new single-tile factory; an automationception!).

Genzume
Genzume

A fun game that scratches the automation itch. It surprised me how many hours I played, great value.

SockDog
SockDog

Do you like farming?
Do you like automation?
Do you like both of those without the fingering of dirty holes and man handling greasy nuts?

If you answered Yes to at least the first two, then you're only a few bucks away from auto-farming heaven.

Given the price I came into the game with low expectations and these were swiftly exceeded. Sure there is some rough edges in the interface, graphics and depth but would you really expect a Factorio or Satisfactory? If you want a chill game, with some thought required, but isn't that taxing, this is it!

Palasferas
Palasferas

Do you like optimization games, but don't want to have 20 wiki tabs open just to play the game? I know I do.

The game is relatively simple and quite addicting. The first hour is a bit slow, but after that I kept wanting to build just one more machine...
There aren't too many different resources, but still enough to keep you entertained for a few hours. I took my time and fully broke the game after 25 hours, but all the achievements can be done in less. The time just flew by.

The game crashed once when using the shrinker for the first time, but due to auto-save I did not lose any progress. This was the only bug/crash I encountered. It seems the developer knows there are some bugs and is working on fixing them.

I bought this for two euros, but it's definitely worth the full price.
Which is still only four euros.
For about 20 hours of gameplay.
...
If you're now trying to figure out how many cents per hour that is, this game is for you.

tl;dr: Highly recommended if you like the genre and are looking for a more casual experience.

Hade
Hade

Worst tutorial of any game I've ever played. Incredibly hard to understand.
Tutorial wouldn't move on once you complete the instruction, YOU are expected to know what to do next and then it moves to that step.
Eventually you'll come to figure out this game is mission based and you must follow the intended course or restart over and over.
I had to restart many times, remember what I did, so I could move on to the next step. It's really easy to make mistakes.
After restarting for the unteenth time, I had enough and refunded it.

King Melons
King Melons

Its a great game may feel grindy at fist but is very rewarding

markakeen
markakeen

Great game. 25 hours of entertainment for £1.99 (sale). 100% achievement reached!

kujak
kujak

nice game if you like automation. new idea with how to get ressources, liked it. at a certain point you only have to watch builders building material for new builders. after reaching lvl 15 and have over 15Bil storage the itemcounter swap between pos and neg and it is tricky to build any further.

trevor_the_geek
trevor_the_geek

I love automation, and to break games. This offers both within a small amount of time (took me 20 hours).
The progression is smooth, but challenging, and rewarding as you unlock further tiers and machines.
Fair warning to not increase item stack capacity to, or past 32 signed binary integer, or 2,147,483,648 :)

nastika
nastika

Very nice and simple game.
It scratches an itch for automation and factory development.
This game thou, instead of follow the logic of other factory games with "factory must grow", has a different approach "Factory must shrink!"

So good luck shrinking your factory making it smallest possible with biggest output possible!

Dmosn
Dmosn

Moderately buggy (save often) but a great game especially if you like puns. Not a very long game so don't worry about needing to be super invested.

jgrose
jgrose

this game is so good 10/10 buy this game

Scythe1344
Scythe1344

Oi Boi, I can't wait for more content, or a second game.
After about 20-30 hours of game, if you don't challenge yourself (limit expansion).
The late game unlocks very really surprising, but the last unlock felt a bit rushed (not really a challenge anymore, just larger numbers).
All in all, most of the goals felt like small puzzles to connect in a larger frame.

Zelow
Zelow

If you love automation this game is your jam. You can make machines and then make machines with those machines inside of it. Takes a little getting used to at first, but then the worlds your oyster. Very simple concept with oceans of depth. Current live version (as of 1/29/2021) has some pretty annoying end game bugs involving the stack overflow from in32, but developer already has a beta version in the works with a fix for it and much more planed. As the game is now I would give it about 9/10, but once the next update hits this game is easily gonna be a 10/10 and at $5 there is no reason not to try this. I accumulated almost 100 hours in my first week. Very addicting.

ido_bach
ido_bach

nice little cheap game , had a bit of a hard time starting automation going . 30 hours in
and i've completed all the achievements so i guess i'm done.

Paladio
Paladio

I don't want to be too hard on this game as it appears that the developer is a one-person shop (or very few persons in any case).

There are some interesting things about the game which make it engaging, however it also has some areas where it could use more polish.

The overall premise of working in a garden gets stretched thin pretty much out of the gate. Even by video game logic the association is pretty limited to the fact that the bounds of the play area are bordered in a grown over back yard. Getting into the problem solving and sandbox creation aspects of the game accentuates not being in a garden, but it's not important.

Some of the mechanics are not intuitive.

When a specific item loses focus, the icon for the item still remains as the cursor and in many instances that blocks out portions of other controls. Screens that open up the inventory and screens for the active items are side by side usually, but again, unexpected behavior when closing one and not the other - the y appear to get out of sync. Selection of items in general and configuration of items which allow it feels like it's defaulting to a shared class of screen display which isn't doing justice to the selection items.

The progression of items and building materials is not intuitive, especially wood to brass items, etc.

The joins on the conveyor belts on my game do not seamless sync at all, and I couldn't get a rounded corner either.

I don't want to beat up on this game too much as it feels like the developer(s) have been working their tails off on this, most likely as a labor of love.

The way the developer handled bringing items out of the inventory onto the action bar for on screen utilization, done dynamically was interesting and novel. It wasn't perfect, but I definitely liked the direction they were going.

The upshot is that it feels like it's the second round of beta and still got some kinks to work out. It's balanced by the modest price, so I felt it was fair. There's enough game play and interest there worth the $5. I think is good start with potential.

I definitely feel this is a mixed endorsement as I think putting out $5 to support an indy is almost an obligation for those of us who regularly consume Triple-A titles. So I urge support and purchase of this game to support small games in general and this developer and team in particular. I wish them the best and hope they keep at it. There's some some neat stuff, and obvious hard work and effort.

Mastertobi
Mastertobi

Feb 2021 Update nerf the game the biggest one was when you destroy one of your automation mechine you would get all the thing you used to make it. Now once you have that machine is final meaning all the over power lvl 2 time machine i have in there are gone unless i kill the blue print. That's what put be off hard but what make it worse i can not longer make any time machine. Than you ask me to make 100 automato that take 8 sec to make when dirt take 2 secs and seed take 2 sec all in under 8 secs now i have look up how that is even possible as i'm not even aloud to use time machines to do it. Im now in a game where i have stupid amounts of things making but i cant use because the update like na fam your not that good anymore. Prob go back to it when im ready to relearn all the new stuff dreading when my 100 hour plus game might have to be restarted but hopeful that there are new things at the lower lvl that make the climb easier in the next update. Still a fun game if you like large scale smile math or just like watching number climb rapidly like making 250k of something a sec and have your whole screen covered bye flying resources XD. No joke the only way i know where i was in my base was the names of all my stuff as i could not see the ground...

What Zit Tooya
What Zit Tooya

Fun factory simulator with a unique shrinking mechanic that encourages optimization without resulting in sprawling networks you have to manage. UI is a little clunky and the music gets repetitive.

Marot
Marot

Interesting game about designing perpetum mobile and time machine.

Calisthra
Calisthra

The premise is not particularly new but the twist in concept is, I like it.
Dev team appears to be engaged with the progression of the project, also good.
Some peculiar graphics hard-freeze issues appear to be a plague, but very early access.
If you're easily annoyed by early-access bug infestations then wait, otherwise it's a good play.

blue HoneyBadger
blue HoneyBadger

the ideas are interesting. so far i experienced no bugs.
the implementation has some good ideas and some that are not so good.

not so good:
1.
at some lvl you unlock a "gold seed" the game shows you just a picture of what you should use to make the gold seed. no name for the item.
at the same time a few items that require gold are also unlocked.
after searching on the internet, i found out that the item is "compacted sand" that can be made in the advanced table... on lvl 15 or something. the game fails to say anything about that so i lost alot of time wondering how to get the item and if the game is bugged.
2.
backup of the supply. there is no such thing. items just amass in the crafter / planter / etc, while other crafter / planters are starving. if max storage is reached (pretty often at the start, less often later) for a stack of that item, no second stack is created. extra items that exceed the max stack just disappear.
at least the player can place a crafter of any type and put the stack in it
conclusion: un-necessary micro-management
3.
creating a crafter for an item that you want to make continuously is easy. suplying it is decently easy (in terms of filters and conveyor belts). however in the table where you can make the item manually you are shown the receipe, while in the crafter the receipe is not shown
4.
miniaturization is an interesting idea. it suffers even more because of 2.
it has just an imput item and quantity. the output will NOT give you the overflow items. so you can't even take the extra items left and redistribute them, and you end up with wasting either miniaturization space because you supply too little and some of them starve part of the time or you end up wasting resources
what i mean by that?
i made a miniaturization that takes biomass, makes it dirt, from dirt sandelion seeds, plants them, harvests them, uses the filter conveyor belts as explained below, outputs biomass, makes compactus seeds from the sand, plants it harvests it and outputs the results.

the good:
1.
the miniaturization is a cool toy.
2.
the filter conveyors are awesome. they are actually almost smart enough to wish for them in factorio and satisfactory. (their downfall is that items stack on top of each other so i have no idea at a glance if the whole thing is backing up from too much, or is starving part of the time. this applies to all conveyors).
what do i mean that they are awesome? imagine you have an output line of harvesters . to the far left you place an output box, to the far right a sieve. the output line of harvesters is giving biomass and sand.
the player can configure the filter conveyor belts so that ALL the biomass goes to the left and almost all the sand to the right (i say almost all because the corner harvester outputs directly in the output box, not on the conveyor)
that way the conveyor belt acts like 2 conveyor belts in the same space, going in oposite directions.
3.
it is not an exponential increase game. each new adition (like a new like of planter + harvester) costs the same as the one before and produces the same as the one before.

conclusion: it is not the greatest game i played. i think it is worth it, for a few hours.

EklyM [Hi af rn]
EklyM [Hi af rn]

TL;DR: Simple enough, but ends up being a numbers game where you're constantly just reorganizing farms you've already set up slowing your progress.

**The only bug I've noticed is that Packed Sand is not included in the filter splitter options.** Devs, please fix.

So basically, you start out "farming" on your own. Then you unlock machines that plant and harvest for you as well as collect all the drops. Then you get an area to design a new machine where you can put the planters and harvesters so the new machine automatically produces items for you. Then, you can expand that area to allow you to produce even more items! (the reorganizing farms idea from above) The machines and setting them up are not that complicated either. There's really no "fancy" setups. It's really simple, but it then turns into a numbers game of "this machine produces 5/s, but this machine needs 6/s so I can waste 1/s or build 3 of this one and 4 of this one and split this output into 3 and then 2 and then divert these over to this machine...." and it's just unfun at that point. You pretty much progress towards a "re inserter collector" and then you redo your machines. Then, you get a transmutation table that turns dirt into wood or wood into copper or copper into iron, etc and you have to redo your machines again. In my honest opinion, they need to get rid of the transmutation table. I think if you are to play this game, do not use the transmutation table and you will have more fun. I'm just going to do that on my next run.

The game could use with some improvements, but overall, I'd recommend it. It was only $5. I'm at 28 hours at the time of writing and I haven't really gotten "end game". I'm going to try on my next run so maybe about 35 hours for me. If you do everything correctly, it's a good 10 hours per run.

CarmaGuy
CarmaGuy

My god what a wonderful twist!

Though it was a tad too limited for my insatiable gaming frenzy :P

Roughly 32 hours in I stepped it up a little. Set time dilation to 2 cuz This Mans gotta work too.
And started fresh with all the basic knowledge from start to finish.

Round 2 went so amazing that I kinda botched it..
Just as I was gettin on a serious roll in endgam..
I hit the limit.. :sob:

1.000Q is all she has folks!

All in all a really nice addition to the automation and perhaps even idle genres.

Vance Renadi
Vance Renadi

Very fun automation/idle game, could benefit from some kind of prestige mechanic, but balancing production of the various materials in an efficient manner is very fun.

Ellie
Ellie

Very fun and addictive, recommend for anyone who's a fan of Factorio. Not quite as much depth, but for £4, more than worth its price. Pick it up if you want to lose a weekend. There's also some difficulty options that might make it worth playing a second time.

Music too in your face for a game that you want to spend hours and hours in just hyperfocusing on perfecting ratios and blueprints, turned it off after just 20 minutes of gameplay, the sound effects are nice though, I kept them on a very low volume the entire time, very satisfying pops.

Spoilers for the endgame:

Once you unlock automating starcores, and by extension, time machines, unless you specifically try to not abuse them, you can stack a small producer of each resource inside the shrinker, and then just keep adding time machines on each new shrinker layer until you reach ridiculous numbers that produce faster than you could ever build them.

I think I reached the 13th layer (so 7 time machines a layer, 128x multiplier for each layer, a casual 2.475 OCTILLION multiplier on the production), at which point the game broke and crashed.

Gameplay wise maybe they could've made it so you couldn't stack time machines in the shrinker to prevent this, but honestly when you reach those sorts of numbers anyway you're basically done making interesting blueprints, and it becomes more of a clicker game where you just buy more things to produce more things that you can buy more things with.

However, it is a strangely satisfying ending to the game.
You could almost analyse it as a meta-commentary on endless growth being unsustainable and argue that the game is a criticism of capitalism, and for that alone I'm giving it a 10/10.

Pallien
Pallien

good but if you have multiple computers or play on a friends the game cannot save to the cloud not too bad but i lost my first 11 hrs of playtime

Vodnikus
Vodnikus

Pretty fun game. Definitely worth 5 bucks. Only change I'd request is to be able to delete items and machines out of the inventory and the toolbar/inventory interface is clunky. I don't like not being able to place items directly from the inventory.

straker503
straker503

Really fun game. It's a lot like shapez.io but with limited room to build your machines, and with the Shinker ability you're able to re-use factories and chain them together. This meant I needed to go back and optimize older layouts to be more resource efficient as my factories grew bigger, which I like doing.

A few notes for first time players:

1. You cannot place items while the inventory is open (tripped me up for a good minute).
2. Right clicking on the Conveyor Splitter will change its shape (I missed that part until way later in the game).

nucleomancer
nucleomancer

What an absolutely great game. I've been playing it all day. :)
The learning curve is pleasant. And after you build your knowledge, the game gently informs you that you had it wrong all along. :)
This is one of those games that I'm going to recommend to my students to learn how to think like a programmer.

If you want to learn how to program. This game will format your brain to accept the correct concepts.

Lurch456
Lurch456

ok this game was good well... so i was going through then got to use planters... to automate planting but since the stack size is infinity one can take all the seeds you wanted to be shared out to all of them so you can't automate on a big scale and an automation game where you cannot automate properly is not a proper automation game i like this game but im not keeping it if the main features DON'T WORK PROPERLY and if there is a way to solve this problem cool but the game play is also REPETITIVE

the game is REPETITIVE and you can't AUTOMATE ON A BIG SCALE (the reason i play automation games)

CitricBase
CitricBase

Worth every cent!

Love this game. I have already received more play time than I expected for $5, and I know I still have more time to invest in this game. I love automation games, but I have never come across another game like this one. Some of the more complex game mechanics take some time to figure out/fully understand, but the tutorial has come a long way and explains the basics quite nicely. Totally worth the $5!!

Duros001
Duros001

A fantastic active Incremental game, so many layers of automation, and each level-up introduces fantastic new options to streamline and increase efficiency.

😬 Vang
😬 Vang

A simple and great little automation game! Looks great and feels well made, and it is super cheap!

Definitely worth to buy if you like sandboxy automation

florian.benning
florian.benning

this is one of my favourite games. it makes the automation a lot of fun where you start with nothing and it will take some time to even get a bit of automtion an that makes everything so much more rewarding. had a blast playing, gonna replay just because it ws so good. 11/10 would recommend to anyone i know

chaosz911
chaosz911

I bought this game expecting to have an hour of fun, but what a nice surprise this game is! It's challenging and there are a ton of upgrades and there is more to it than you'd think.
Quite a gem!

maddyn99
maddyn99

For the price you would think this would be a great game. Unfortunately the documentation and end game are not explained nor do the make much sense. The in-game book or quest is less than helpful. There is apparently a discord channel for help. Most of the users are obtuse and/or toxic.

Ahmed
Ahmed

If you are into games like Cookie Clicker or any Idle game.. then this game is nothing but Glorified IDLE clicker simulator.

PROS --

> It is simple to understand and little bit trick but still simple to master
> it expands exponentially upon unlocking items via research
> literally anything you do manually can be eventually be automated

CONS --
> The concept of manually adding more space in a not so controlled fashion for the player to build setups makes game unnecessarily tedious.. thus limiting the concept of expandability or grand scale automations such as main bus setup etc...., thus forcing me to refund. i will go play Factorio and contemplate my life choices..

> The concept of limited inventory space that has to be expanded via placing crates on land which will self destruct and magically add space to an inventory space that exists in another plane of existence is very weird, having storage chests that can be tiled and expanded will be just great

> I believe the sorting of inventory is strictly based on the count of items you have at any given time.. filter within the inventory window to only look for tools or resource would be great (Terraria style)

> No HUD indicators for howmuch items we have of each recipe forces me to FIND that item in my invetory and get annoyed cauz i now have to dedicated a setup in a already cramped space makes this game un-playable (in a nutshell it all lands to wasting time to get multiple resources slowely... OR wasting time to get 1 resource very fast and deconstructing it to get others.. makes this game very hard at an early-game stage)

> Right click on the slicers once placed.. ( Thank me later 🙂)

---

Yes, this is an early access game & that is exactly why i have decided to give it a well deserved time for making QOL improvements.

Absolutely Flabulous
Absolutely Flabulous

I wish Steam would allow me to simply leave a thumbs up without having to write bibble babble.
It's a good game. It's well worth the price. I think it deserves more players and more downloads.

I have nothing else to say because I think games like this should be enjoyed completely blind without watching/reading tutorials. If you like automation games, you'll like this. Play it blind, work it all out yourself and you'll have a great time with lots of eureka! moments.

jerdol123
jerdol123

I really enjoy the game it is a lot of fun. its quite relaxing. As simple as the basic automation is with the addition of making shrinker you can make very advantaged systems quite quick and easily, i do recomment some planning before hand but its not hard to fix a mistack.

Notes for Developer: (only on level 16, dont know if it comes in later levels)
I recommend adding some quality of life changes:
copy, cut and Paste of pullers and/or being able to select an area to copy the block and with all the settings (pulling from inventory)
the ability to not have something in your hand, just like a pointer finger or a curse.
The ability to turn on and off, and change the activation interval of putter on the main grid.
a changeable table that would track the average over the least 10 sec, 1 min, 10 mins of items entering and leaving your inventory - to track whats being made and how much of each resource is being used.

From the updates it looks like your still making bug fixes and adding more content and i think your a one person or a small team, but i want to say thanks, this is a good game, well done.

Sky Hunter
Sky Hunter

Honestly well worth it and the endgame is as satisfying as the game starts. 10/10

thorn
thorn

plant grow. plant help. plant life. plant give. plant love. plant give love.
kill plant. cry.

Devilglory
Devilglory

i enjoyed this game but only because its an automation game where you create at your own pace and the game doesnt penalty you with enemys breaking your stuff every 5 mins

so all in all a good game

tatertacoma
tatertacoma

---{Graphics}---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Not to bad...
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe

---{Gameplay}---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It‘s just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Starring at walls is better
☐ Just don‘t

---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ Not too bad
☐ Meh
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape

---{Audience}---
☑ Everyone
☐ Teen
☐ Mature
☐ Adult

---{Maturity}---
☐ Violence
☐ Cartoon Violence
☐ Swearing
☐ Heavy Swearing

---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boiiiiii
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{Difficulity}---
☐ Just press ‚A‘
☑ Easy
☐ Significant brain usage
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{Grind}---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leader-boards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☑ Too much grind
☐ You‘ll need a second live for grinding
(It comes with the territory of games like this...)

---{Story}---
☑ Story?
☐ Text or Audio floating around
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It‘ll replace your life

---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond

---{Replayability}---
☐ No, Not needed
☐ I didn't even finish the game
☐ 1 Full playthrough, probobly not going to play again
☐ Maybe went in to try out some things or something
☐ Maybe 2 full playthroughs
☐ 3 Playthroughs
☐ Infinite Playability
I don't know where the end it so yea...

---{Price}---
☐ It’s free!
☑ Worth the price...
☑ ...If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{Bugs}---
☐ Never heard of
☑ (Very) Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

--{Players}--
☑ Single Player
☐ Multiplayer only
☐ Better with friends
☐ Server Based
☐ Local multiplayer

--{Size}--
☐ Hardly Noticeable (~100mb)
☑ Small (~1gb)
☐ Sizeable (~10gb)
☐ Large (~35gb)
☐ Huge (~50gb)
☐ Destiny 2 (~80-100gb)
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved (150-200+gb)

--{User Generated Content}--
☐ No, doesn't need it
☑ No
☐ Game Modifiers / Addons
☐ MP text chat
☐ MP voice chat
☐ 3rd Party Modding (Not through Steam/Not developer run, community run)

If you like games like Factorio that this is it, and it's a really good little game! I'm suprised that it is as niche as it is... If you are on the edge get it! It a nice little game.

DoDo6600
DoDo6600

26 hours and more to come. really nice automation game. not perfekt but does make fun!

kevin
kevin

Why does the game ask for access through the firewall? That doesn't seem necessary for this game and is extremely suspicious.

It also asks for Administrator privileges when starting, which also should not be necessary just to play a simple game like this, but I've found that is more common among some games.

Romu Lichdevoihr
Romu Lichdevoihr

Factorio not addictive enough for you? numbers not high enough? are graphics secondary? then this might be a game enjoy for you!

Martdogg3000
Martdogg3000

This game makes my brain crackle the same way Factorio does. I'm always chasing new games that accomplish that- that make you get so laser focused that time ceases to matter. And it has to get me in that zone right away, I've played plenty of games for 5 minutes then just decided I was never going to play it again. This game got me pulled in right away. I didn't actually know how deep the automation would go, whether it was more going to be like a farming game with technology, or a technology game that just happened to be set in an open field. It's the second one. The pacing is enjoyable all the way through, giving you the nice feeling of gaining momentum. And the shrinker system is AWESOME. I don't know if that's ever been in another game, but I've not seen it, and it is an absolute treat once you start to figure it out. It took a while before I really started to abuse it, but once I made that my focus the game got crazy. I managed to beat the game in a little over 20 hours, your mileage may vary, but I spent like 4 dollars on the game and it was 1000$ worth it. This is actually a situation where I'm a little dissapointed the game ISN'T in early access, because I'd love to come back to it later after it's been expanded, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards. The game has some annoyances, some you can work around, some you can't really, but they don't make the game unplayable. I just wish it was something I could be confident was going to be fixed in the future.

Either way, if you pick it up on sale, it's very worth the money. It's not got the depth of some other factory games, but as a game to play over a couple days it's awesome.

mailion135
mailion135

its way of making you want more while giving like no reword entertains me

mp101w
mp101w

You can break the game under 20 hours, and its worth every second.

Epurd
Epurd

Endgame was not what i thought was fun. Many QoL features added would make the game more fun as its a bit "janky".

Specialblaze7777
Specialblaze7777

IT RESET ALL MY PROGRESS BIG FAT DISLIKE >:(

Legonut
Legonut

Great game, scales nicely, and you don't get stuck in a waiting game if you know what your doing.

admira
admira

This is a simple but engaging factory game. I love the shrinker feature, which allows you to design an isolated machine layout and compact it into a single block. There are some quality-of-life features that I'd love to see added to the game, but this game already provides a lot of content for just $5. I can easily see myself sinking 50-100 active hours into the game.

Pros: Simple mechanics that are easy to learn, straightforward recipes, shrinker feature
Cons: Blueprint management is difficult when you have a lot of them (though you can search by name), unable to change splitter ratios.

TL;DR is that it is a good, affordable automation game without distracting enemies or complicated mechanics.

Aglet Green
Aglet Green

This is a tough review to write: I am not sure what to make of this game. I am giving it a thumbs-up because of its unique gimmick, but I feel that the execution of this gimmick is badly implemented. That is to say, this game has 20 levels, and the first dozen or so can be done as a farming game, where you literally farm ingredients using a hoe and a knife. These levels also can be done in a few hours. Then suddenly, the 'shrinking barn' is opened, and a relaxing farm game suddenly becomes a factory game of machines and conveyor belts. And then in level 18 the game turns into a timed puzzle game where you have to manufacture 1000 wood in under 5 seconds and stuff like that.

I promised myself that if I solved the puzzles at the end-- which I did-- then I'd give the game a thumb's up as all achievements are doable and I certainly got many hours out of it. However, the game has many flaws beyond the schizoid level design, so buyer beware: the manual is terrible. The U.I. is terrible. Adding ingredients to a machine is a pain in the rear end. Trying to figure out how to build your first machine on your own was beyond me, so I had to look at a guide; turns out I had the right concept and idea, but the game is finicky about which machine can be connected to which. Also, a set-up that works great in the field may work terribly in the barn, and vice-versa. (And the game sometimes crashes, but this is an Unreal issue, so it may work fine for you.) Finally, the reason my number of hours in the game is so high is that it took me four tries to crack it. I played once a year ago, gave up, and only picked it up again a month back on a whim, determined to figure it out.

And I did, but you might not have my patience or willingness to grind, honed from many years of playing tower-defense games, roguelike games and idle/clicker games. If you're not in the mood for an endless grind of conveyor belts, then this game isn't for you.

ಠ_ಠ
ಠ_ಠ

A factory reject, the atrocious UI keeps this game's concept from taking off

Assembly Planter isn't worth the hard drive space, even if someone were to give it to you for free. I usually try to complete games like this, but fighting the user interface is an uphill battle and it finally wore me down. I gave up.

The concept is unique and interesting.
Assembly Planter isn't your typical farming nor logistics game. Each use of the shrinking machine is effectively programming a custom function for your other machines to call. This is probably the game's sole redeeming feature.

ಠ_ಠ The user interface is actively hostile.
There are so many things wrong with the UI it's hard to know where to start. Here's a partial list of them:

    • There's no hover reference for a machine's inputs and outputs or timings. You have to refer to the crafting menu to review them.
    • You cannot build with a crafting nor inventory windows open.
    • No labels on the quickbar for hotkeys.
    • Items on the quickbar are removed if you use them all up, ruining the order you might have had them in.
    • Adding/removing items from the quickbar only adds them to the end of the quickbar, there's no way to arbitrarily arrange them without removing others.
    • Setting 'Puller' inputs is awful and requires multiple clicks on numerous items.
    • You can turn off the game's pop-up icons for acquiring items, but this also turns off the display of how fast you're collecting items. There's no production graph or other output to measure your effective output.

ಠ_ಠ Gameplay decisions aren't much better.

    • You have to have the resources for all of the items in the shrinker to build it. If you're tight on resources and need to adjust a faulty machine, this is extremely tedious. There's no 'blueprint' building like you'd have in other games.
    • Once a machine is 'shrunk', there's no way to adjust the pattern for that machine. You can only re-create and make a new copy.
    • There are no parameterization options for the shrinker machines. Each of the inputs must be hard-coded and a new machine created, even if you're following the same pattern.
    • You cannot halfway build a shrinker machine, switch to another one, and then come back to your original work. This means if you're building a machine that uses other machines, but realize halfway that a machine needs adjustment or you need to build a dependency, your work is lost.
    • Some items, such as lower grade compost bins and sieves, are completely obsuleted by other types and can neither be upgraded nor trashed.
    • Multiple crafting benches required to build items manually, which is just tedious.

Once you dig past the resource-balancing and recursive nature of the game, there's nothing else.
Beyond the game's core concept, there's little other gameplay to be had. There's no logic components, little further variety of crops or demand. There's only further layering machines out to make your numbers go up. If the game had a halfway-decent UI, you could burn through it entirely within a couple hours. Most of the game's time is consumed fighting the user interface, which is actively not fun.

For more reviews like this one, follow the ಠ_ಠ Reviews Curator page.
Specializing in brutally honest critique of VR and Engineering games.

oPENmILK
oPENmILK

i played the whole game, i want more

Man
Man

$5 for this is a great deal, if you like automation based games.

Decker
Decker

This is like... Factorio in a box; with Factorissimo mod.
I dunno that's an understatement... it's got the pleasure of idle clickers, but every click has a new meaning (mostly)...
Don't find this helpful :) But ya it's a good time sink.

Khalory
Khalory

A bit short, but it ramps up really nicely the whole way through

Axanthic
Axanthic

Desperately needs Inventory Tabs, Search, Trash button, and only filling machines with how many items they need.

Equitime77
Equitime77

A fun game that can suck you into a lot of simple mathematical thinking if you aren't careful. But then I really enjoyed a game that makes me think. I was watching Flexible Games on Youtube who got me into this game.

Belisama
Belisama

Inventory micromanagement hell.

nathaliaines86
nathaliaines86

haven't played for that long but it's fun and if you like coin factory you will likely like this and the other way around

Terral
Terral

Assembly Planter is a distillation of the factory genre down into almost becoming a clicker, and it's impressively effective. Instead of needing to do a bunch of planning and exploration and work to advance, you recursively compress your factory and grow by orders of magnitude. The pressure is low, iteration is easy, and optimization is just as fun as any other factory game.

As long as expectations are measured accordingly, Assembly Planter is well worth playing for anyone who's gotten as far as checking reviews, because you're almost certainly someone who would enjoy it.

Professor Gilgamesh
Professor Gilgamesh

Definitely worth the price for 20ish hours of gameplay.

barbrady123
barbrady123

Great little game, I have no idea what people are talking about with a lot of the complaints. If you look at my negative reviews I bash UIs on the regular...I bash clunky or 1999-ish feeling menus, interfaces, etc....I didn't get any of that here, I thought everything was quite responsive, satisfactory, and gave decent feedback. I didn't have any issues with the "shrink" portion, in fact that's my favorite part...thought it was pretty intuitive and it never crashed, so...YMMV i guess. My only complaint is that you need tooltips that show inputs/outputs for the various machines/recipes/etc in A LOT more places...it's a pain going to the specific crafting buildings to find them.

Anyway....I thought the transition from "manual" to "automated" to "scaled up automation via shrinking" was well done/paced....a lot of fun! I ended up having to make a google sheet for tracking resources, which is always the sign of a good game :) I think the only thing I thought was "weird" that as you get far enough into the game to really push the size of the main play area, you really don't need it at all. I have something like 500M-1B of every resource and I'm using like maybe 15% of the space...if you understand the shrinking aspect you really need no space to do A LOT of stuff...that's literally the point.

Wish this was early access though, there's way more that could be done, only 20 levels was kind of a disappointment, but for the money it's plenty of hours of fun! Hope there's a part 2 coming!

nothere41
nothere41

Awesome game.
The secret is this.
1 puller and 1 sieve per item.

Sirberus
Sirberus

Despite UI polish issues, this is one of the finest games I have ever played.