Production Line

I think the game is neat overall but it has some serious issues that could be easily fixed. The game itself plays well despite the weird random bug popups and not enough is explained regarding how to put features on but that's not my main issue with the game. Issues: 1. Difficulty Options. You're basically limited to three choices. No challenge and super easy, same but with all techs researched, and brutal AI competitors. Initially you'll get going but the AI will eat you alive and you can't catch up. The AI starts selling top of the line cars right away while you're stuck in the budget car area. When you try to get into mid-range and putting features on you're super far behind and the AI now selling all 4 types of cars with options and unless you have 100 research offices you'll always be behind. 2. Sound. I'm not sure who thought it was a great idea to have a loud hum over everything. It gets old so super fast that within an hour I had to turn it off it was just so annoying to hear. It's just a repeated loud hum that is on like a 5 sec cycle that just gets to ya. Sad part is, in order to turn off this hum you have to turn of all game sounds. 3. Conveyors. You can't easily switch directions or tell you want to go in multiple without endless destroying and recreating. Later on you can get smart versions but that takes a long time to research just to make 1 click easier. 4. Financial. The game will tell you how much an item will cost up front but not a general sense of how much per hour upkeep will be. Why this is important is later on you want to break up your systems slots(Body, Paint, Engine, Accessories) from just 1 into many as according to the game this is very fast and efficient. Problem is 1 big system only requires lets say 2 workers. If you break it up into 3 underlying systems, each of those new smaller systems together require 11 workers and you are charged for each worker. Without proper data you could lose a lot of money without realizing it.

For a game about efficiency, the game itself is maddeningly inefficient. Examples: - The tutorial cannot be disabled, regardless of how many times you've played. - Despite there being a sandbox mode, the "medium" and "large" maps are disabled. I have no idea why. After 3 hours playing the small map, there's been no explanation as to why this is. - Pausing is essential in order not to go bankrupt, and yet the game will frequently ignore pauses for no obvious reason. For example, the research screen locks you out of the game controls but ALSO unpauses the game when you access it - at a time when you not only can't see the main game, but also disabled the keyboard shortcuts to pause. - Pressing Escape doesn't bring up the game menu, it only quits. In order to save or alter game settings, you need to use the individual buttons from the main game interface - at which point the game will again unpause. As this isn't Early Access any more, I can only assume these are all intentional design choices and therefore cannot recommend this game. T

I am a huge fan of the predecessor: Big Pharma. And I find the topic of producing cars much more interesting! Unfortunately, the gameplay mechanics is worse, here. - The good gameplay of puzzling together production steps is still present and fun. Here, you do no more have to find out 'which' machines to combine and order them optimally, and put them into your factory respecting the given space - but you only have to respect the space. The rest is fixed by the game. It takes two thirds of the fun from building the production line. - While in Big Pharma, the game started easy and became more complex over time, it starts already very complex, here. Thus it is hard to find into the game. - The tech tree feels like a huge feature creep. I do not see a reason to have different tech trees for new car designs and car upgrades. And they need different research stations to be built. It simply makes no sense. - There are huge fluctuations in demand of the cars per class. You need to decide which car to build long before production is finished. But you get too few indicators or help in this choice. Finally it is probable that you end up with lots of unsold cars of one class, while demand is huge for another class. This is simply not satisfying. I guess this is implemented for better 'realism', but it results in a worse game experince. - Technically the visualization is great. Playing on a 4K screen is possible without frame drops, although like 50 different car skeletons are processed at the same time. - Car pricing feels like a gamble. Do not listen to the advisors, but raise the price for each new feature in the car, and reduce it only if cars stay unsold. Conclusion: The programmers did a great job at implementing a badly designed game, which would have needed few more iterations to find a good feature balance.

The concept is great. I love games like that. The execution is also interesting. I had a great 20 hour run. But there were a lot of obvious bugs and glitches and the whole feeling was a bit amateurish. Pros: - Great game idea and decent execution - Balanced abstraction that keep the core idea but leaves out the boring stuff and micromanagement - I liked the art and all the tiny details on the cars and the buildings are wonderful - Interesting and fun the first playthrough Cons - Bugs. So many for its price. - I want more shortcust - A bit shallow, will not play it a second time to try something else Verdinct: Buy it only if you have played factorio and want more belts