Ahead of today's 1.0 release of Shapez 2, its lead developer acknowledges that his first attempt to launch an answer to Factorio didn't go quite as smoothly as his second. The sequel has already secured thousands of overwhelmingly positive reviews during its 20 months in early access - but for the first Shapez, Springer admits that "everything that you should do" for a successful launch, "I ignored."
Unsurprisingly, Springer's journey to creating his own factory sim series started with Factorio. Annoyed by the hordes of insect enemies that plagued his carefully laid-out conveyor belts, however, he decided to build his own game. Planned out as a hobby project made solely in Springer's free time over just a few months, the game that would kickstart the Shapez series was initially made with "no commercial intent" whatsoever.
