Reasons to Love: Satisfactory

When seeking out what to write about this time, I thought about how I procrastinated on doing this entry. It's a game. Specifically, a factory game where you go to a distant alien world to extract every possible resource out of it. All while fighting off the shy and retiring wildlife and attempting to not fall off the edge of the world.

It, and another factory game called Factorio, are my go-to chill-out games. They're very similar games, but they have different quirks. But they have the same play cycle.

Gather, make, build, and solve a puzzle. Only to encounter the next puzzle to solve. Which involves more gathering, making, and building. There will be conveyor belt spaghetti.

And both of them have wildlife that hates your guts. Factorio has "biters" that periodically attack your base, and Satisfactory has various hostile critters posted up near resources you need. And yes, before you ask, I do end up dying a lot. Thank you.

I play it to relax.

So how is it relaxing?

Well... It's a first-person build-a-lot. Which means that you, the player, can roam around the scenery, enjoy the sights, murder the wildlife, and watch the world go by as you ride the conveyor belts you spread every-dang-where.

Make no mistake, this game is beautiful. The landscapes, the flora and even the homicidal fauna. I can, have, and will spend absolute hours getting lost in the landscape and then cussing when a dragon inevitably kills me.

They spit fire at you. Of course I call them dragons.

There's wildlife that actually likes you. One. Wildlife. The iconic lizard-doggo. With the right kind of jiggery-pokery, one can lead them to an enclosure where they're nice and safe, and you can see what they've "fetched" once every while. Or at least that was a workable mechanic a few updates ago.

And because it's a builder, it is possible to put anything you like anywhere you like in between fooling about all over the landscape.

There's no time limit, no boundaries beyond the world edge, and no true limits to what you can do. And even if you fall off the edge of the world, it is possible to recover anything you were holding when you went.

It's the ultimate game to just chill out and feel more or less accomplished by having something to show for it. I never speedrun games. I like to enjoy the experience.

I love the rhythm of the factory machines, unriddling the logistics of the factory, and the chill background music as I sit and chill, watching alien worlds go by. Zen and the art of conveyor spaghetti.