Modulus: Factory Automation by developer Happy Volcano and publisher Kwalee—PC (Steam) review written by Susan N. with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
From the creators of You Suck at Parking and The Almost Gone comes a new factory game called Modulus: Factory Automation. Since Happy Volcano has dipped their toes into a couple of different genres, fans of the factory building games were sure to be interested in another entry to it - especially if it offered something unique. I mean, factory games are rather addicting! And frankly my initial impression of Modulus: Factory Automation is quite positive.
But before we go into that, I want to quickly talk about the game Shapez since I do compare aspects of Modulus to it. So, if some of you are unfamiliar with the title, I will explain a bit so we are all on the same page. Your task is to make different shapes out of a few starting ones like circles and squares. These circles are made out of four smaller units with one rounded corner and the squares are simply made up of four smaller squares. With those shapes you have to chop them, paint them, and reassemble them into new shapes that you have to send into the center - the shipping point. In order to chop the initial shapes and paint them, you will have to place buildings down that perform the functions you need. This is important to know because the factory building process is similar in Modulus.
With that out of the way, we can continue on. At first one might think that Modulus is just another factory game where you put down miners on Polyrock, your main resource, and link those to machines with conveyor belts. However, there is a little bit more at play here. Unlike other factory games where players choose the item they wish to produce by erecting smelters and assemblers to craft the final products (for example, a motor), you instead create pieces of a puzzle through the use of cutters, assemblers, and painters - similar to the Shapez games. And as such, the game focusses less on the technicalities present in other factory games where machines have varying cycle times depending on the item, and it instead focusses on crafting parts efficiently within a fixed sized area.
Aside from the above, you will note that Modulus is unique because it cleverly combines aspects of building design from Shapez and factory design from games like Satisfactory or Factorio or Dyson Sphere Program. However, another difference between all of those mentioned titles, is Modulus restricts your building space where the others generally do not. And although you have unlimited resources at your disposal, you will have to buy more islands (again similar to Shapez) to have access to other resources needed to complete your objectives.
Because Modulus is set up to produce a final product by slicing cubes into smaller sections, the challenge comes from figuring out the best way to achieve that. At first, you will need to construct pieces to assemble a new floor of a building, but over time you can begin production of optional parts to be sent to the Delivery Dock for research points - again similar to Shapez - and if you send enough parts, you will gain access to new cosmetic items. These research points allow you to upgrade your factory by increasing the speed of conveyor belts or unlocking larger building to produce more parts.
The research tree itself lets you unlock new buildings or capacity increases. But before you can unlock some of the upgrades, you need the correct data cubes and the required level to attain them. Players cannot simply full ham the game without hitting those targets even if you have the right amount of research points to do so. Once you hit the requirements, Modulus becomes your oyster since you are not restricted by a time limit nor creatures attempting to complicate your progression. Thus, you can work as quickly or as leisurely as you wish with no penalty.
On the topic of research points, you are going to need to expand to different islands since the Hexacrystal to make blue pigment isn't available on the first island. Blue paint is used to color parts that you will put together in an assembler. This is necessary to progress further into the game. Later on, you will have to get some yellow pigment as well. Though, you don't begin with access to all of the islands. You will have to buy an island with the resources you need in order to fulfill your delivery targets. And if you're wondering, in order to get those new objects over to the delivery dock you will require the use of skylines. The skylines are essentially conveyor belts that travel over large gaps similar to bridges.
Now, the challenge of Modulus doesn't lie solely within the creation of parts, it also relies on how you lay out your factory because each island has a different layout. Some of them will have polyrock and hexacrystals whereas others only have polyrock. It's important to also note that each island can have unique resource locations that can make for some interesting games of tetris lest ye fall to the spaghetti gods of factory building games. Ask me how I know ;)
Once you get to blue research items, you'll be able to unlock blueprints which will make factory design much easier. Since you don't have to worry about some of the specifics, it will be easier to improve efficiency when you start needing more colors to make parts. And I don't even want to think about the parts that require yellow paint...
Now, we've talked a bunch about gameplay, but we haven't talked about anything else like the graphics or the UI or the overall experience of the game. At first, I was enamored about how easy it was to place operators down to get a nice production line going. It's even easier to delete a whole section and start anew, especially once you unlock other useful items like the splitters. Another amazing feature is the ability to seemlessly switch between operator functions and directions. For example, the splitter and the sorter are both located on the number '3' on the keyboard. Pressing the key once gives me the splitter but pressing it a second time switches to the sorter.
One of the handy aspects of the UI is it's overall design. Aside from the above mentioned feature, there are a couple of tabs that you can switch between to place operators for specific block productions. The first tab is your all purpose hotbar with conveyors, splitters, sorters, cutters, assemblers, and stampers. On the second hotbar tab are all the operators used for production of the white and black pieces. The third tab is the same as the second but are buildings that require parts that have some blue paint. The fourth tab covers all the buildings required for the production of parts with yellow paint. The final two contain decorative blocks that you unlock through the delivery of parts.
While we are on the topic of the UI, I really love the fact that everything is easily displayed without cluttering up the screen too much. On the left hand side of the screen you will see your objectives and the hotkeys to copying sections or deleting operators and conveyors. On the right, you will see a small graphic of each piece you have pinned to the side so that you can craft them more easily. This means you won't have to memorize how one is supposed to look. And if one of the pieces you need to make is in a set, as they often are, you can press one button to pin all three of them instead of manually doing it. This makes building your next project part more easily than other factory games.
At the top of the screen on the left displays your current rank and experience level. Next to that are four crucial buttons which give you statistics on your progression in the game, how many parts drones you've delivered, what the next challenges are in order of difficulty, and the tech tree. Each page gives you enough information on what you need to do and need to focus on so that you can achieve your goals. And as time goes on, a mysterious entity will communicate with you. This entity gives you a couple of additional tasks that will take quite a bit to solve, not to mention a sizeable amount of research points to unlock!
Modulus also has a bar that displays how many research points you've acquired which makes it easy for you to build up while you are working on the next project you have going on. But one of the aspects I enjoy about the game beyond everything I've already talked about is the ability to switch between the day time and the night time. I love this button in particular because Modulus looks stunning at night time. Each building is designed in such a way that you can physically see where some of the parts will go to make the walls of the buildings. And all of the buildings have different lighting that will turn on when the night sky has revealed itself. As such, I've taken a number of screenshots just because of how beautiful the game looks.
Overall, I adore Modulus for so many reasons. I like figuring out how to craft the parts to erect buildings. I love the mechanic of having to buy other islands in order to expand your operation. I love that there is a mysterious entity that gives you a task or two that will take quite a bit of work to complete - and I'm curious as to what the story is behind the entity. And I love how easy it is to dive right into the game because you can quite literally lose yourself for hours putting together the perfect production line. It doesn't hurt that the robots you create are rather cute!
In fact, while I know that some of the production gets to be a little dull due to repetition of parts, I am rather impressed with Modulus. It scratches the itch of solving puzzles without a complicated storyline or high stakes. You can boot up the game at any time and continue where you left off without scratching your head each time. I will lose a ton more hours to this game as a result, and that is what I call a good thing. Thus, my overall rating on cute robot production, intrigue about the entity, puzzle solving, and stunning graphics, Modulus earns an easy 9 out of 10.
Score: 9 out of 10
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