Multi Techtonica - First person co-op factory automation in space (PC/Xbox Gamepass)

[Ben]

This game just came out today on Steam Early Access and Xbox Gamepass, and while I haven't actually gotten a chance to play it yet, I thought I'd make a quick post anyway since one of my best friends (and the mother of my first son) works for Fire Hose Games and was a senior producer on this game! She's been sharing as much as she can throughout development and they finally reached their launch date so she's stoked.

Factory simulation games are my jam but they're always lacking something. Satisfactory was awesome, but there wasn't a narrative and the combat kinda sucked. She's promised me this will scratch all of my automation itches and then some. Factory building is multilayered but flows smoother, the terrain is destructible, there's no combat and there's a story line.

Techtonica on Steam

Techtonica is a first-person factory automation game set beneath the surface of an alien planet. Work alone or in co-op to build factories, gather resources, research new technologies, mold the destructible terrain, establish a base of operations, and uncover long-forgotten secrets.

I'm foreseeing myself putting an unhealthy amount of time into this, so if anyone else loves making imaginary machines do things by themselves, I'd be down for some co-op.

 

[Raine]

Oh, cool! Looks pretty good. My partner also spends entirely too much tinkering with games like this, so I'll have to pass it along.

 

[aiat_gamer]

Me and my friends spent a good chunk of time of Satisfactory and this seems pretty familiar. Definitely we will give it try asap.

 

[Ben]

So after having put a few hours into this and getting a feel for it, it's definitely delivering on all points it sold itself on. The gameplay is pretty familiar if you've played anything else in the genre, but there's a story to push you forward instead of just purely working up a tech tree. It's got a Subnautica vibe in that sense, where you're trying to work out what happened to everyone else, as well as familiar things like having a scanner to catalog all of the different resources. I got tripped up expecting Satisfactory building rules for the machines in thinking I could connect a conveyor directly to a machine instead of using an inserter to move stuff, but it's otherwise been quite intuitive. The terraforming gives me Red Faction flashbacks with tunneling through the rock, and being able to get a wall out of my way so I can place conveyors has been lovely. There isn't any wildlife to speak of so my one criticism is that the locations feel just a little still, but that'd have been hard to manage along with terrain manipulation and it being pretty CPU heavy. I'm also not that far in, so this could the environment could still change.

I'll be playing this for quite some time.

 

[Tommy Boy]

So after having put a few hours into this and getting a feel for it, it's definitely delivering on all points it sold itself on. The gameplay is pretty familiar if you've played anything else in the genre, but there's a story to push you forward instead of just purely working up a tech tree. It's got a Subnautica vibe in that sense, where you're trying to work out what happened to everyone else, as well as familiar things like having a scanner to catalog all of the different resources. I got tripped up expecting Satisfactory building rules for the machines in thinking I could connect a conveyor directly to a machine instead of using an inserter to move stuff, but it's otherwise been quite intuitive. The terraforming gives me Red Faction flashbacks with tunneling through the rock, and being able to get a wall out of my way so I can place conveyors has been lovely. There isn't any wildlife to speak of so my one criticism is that the locations feel just a little still, but that'd have been hard to manage along with terrain manipulation and it being pretty CPU heavy. I'm also not that far in, so this could the environment could still change.

I'll be playing this for quite some time.

No combat but with a storyline? More of these games please. I loved Astroneer but it had barely any story.