Satisfactory review

I'm knee deep in a swamp doing math for aluminum production: three miners pulling ore means I'll need six pumps for water, so that I'm pushing out about 420 cubic meters of alumina solution per minute, and I figure a holding tank here as a buffer would be good, so I slap one down and climb up on top of it. That takes me above the treeline, and suddenly I realize the sheer scale of what I've organized and built in the last 50-some hours. 

What is it? A factory building survival-craft adventure
Expect to pay $40
Developer Coffee Stain Studios
Publisher Coffee Stain Publishing
Reviewed on
Steam Deck: Playable
Multiplayer? 4-player co-op (or more, on dedicated severs)
Link: Official site

I can see the towering field of nuclear reactor cooling towers about two kilometers off pumping up gentle white clouds. Past that there's the much smaller cliffside facility, tiny at this distance, that I set up 20 hours ago as my first aluminum plant. And above it all I can see the top of my main factory complex, peeking over a jungle-covered ridge some four or five kilometers away. Barely visible, but I know it's sitting in the middle of a field that takes several minutes to cross on foot. At the center of it all I see the massive space elevator, its cable visible from every corner of the map stretching upward to the megaproject in the heavens.

It's an exhilarating feeling knowing you planned, built, and executed all of that construction. True to its name, this is a factory-building game that's simply satisfying.

Dumped onto an unexplored alien world, your job as a pioneer for FICSIT, Inc is to use advanced technology to build up an industrial base capable of sending various parts skyward to complete the mysterious Project Assembly. Your work is all overseen by detached artificial intelligence ADA—who says it's for the survival of the human race, but seems more interested in mysterious alien artifacts than saving lives.

Satisfactory takes the basic trappings and open world setting of