Mass-Producing "People" in the ShapeHero Factory Demo and Surviving to the Final Boss

The game is structured around clearing stages, and each clear grants some kind of bonus. At the start of a run, you choose a research tree. This time, the streamer started by unlocking research related to ink and conveyors.

Each stage begins with a three-minute factory development phase. You make people from resources on the surface and send them to the battlefield through a portal. Once combat begins, the people you have sent fight automatically. The player can also help out by clicking, but the streamer says, "It's a hassle, so I'll hold off from now on," and from then on mostly just watches the battles.

Placing equipment costs mana, which also accumulates over time. Equipment can be moved after it is placed, but some equipment apparently does not refund its full cost when removed. For that reason, the streamer says it is wise to plan placements as far ahead as possible. On the other hand, planning too far ahead hurts early efficiency and makes it harder to adapt to random elements. The streamer calls this balance "where your skill really shows."

The layout the streamer chose feeds two types of resources in from the left, combines them in the middle, and sends the results to the battlefield on the right. First, they line up Canvases (production devices). Next, they extract resources and carry circle motifs and triangle motifs to the Canvases on conveyors. This starts the production of people, and carrying the finished people to the portal completes the first line.

With time left over, the streamer juggled conveyors, splitters, and mergers to get a second Canvas running as well, doubling output. The first battle ended in a clean wave clear, earning mana and experience before moving to a screen for choosing the next destination. Each destination offers a different type of bonus, and here the streamer obtained a new recipe.

The experience leveled up the player, and the streamer used the reward to increase motif output. They also gained a research point, which they used to unlock the large splitter. This device takes two inputs and distributes them across four outputs. Feeding in one line each of circles and triangles splits them neatly between two Canvases to produce people. After confirming that it worked, the streamer built a second identical setup.

According to the streamer, the large splitter cannot always be unlocked. It is just one of the research trees randomly offered at the start of a run, and if it doesn't appear, a different design is needed. The objects on the surface also change every time. As a result, each run demands a different approach, and the streamer feels the game has high replayability.

The streamer states outright that the design concept for this factory is "clarity." They believe games in this genre look complicated, and many players drop off because of the steep learning curve before they ever get to the fun. So they chose a layout that can be scaled by lining up identical setups. Since motifs can be extracted on up to three lines, they planned to start on a third setup after the next battle.

In the second battle, the production lines were stable as well, and the streamer won without intervening. In the following route selection, they received a recipe reward: a bonus that strengthens people's combat ability if 240 people are produced during the factory development phase. On leveling up, they unlocked an ability that lowers the placement cost of splitters. They had been stalled by a lack of mana for a while, so they judged that reducing mana consumption would expand what they could do.

The third setup could be built almost entirely by copying the existing facilities. While doing this, the streamer says they found themselves wanting a feature that places groups of equipment all at once, like the blueprints in Factorio. Convenience features like that could also be offered as mid-boss rewards, so in the streamer's view, factory games and roguelites seem to pair quite well.

In the third battle, the people, strengthened by the 240-unit production bonus, comfortably beat the small-fry enemies and defended the base without taking damage. The next route was a choice between a mid-boss and a small-fry battle. Since none of the mid-boss rewards were useful for this factory, the streamer chose the small-fry battle. Along the way, they obtained another recipe for strengthening people, this time triggering at 480 people produced.

At this point, the streamer plans to expand the production facilities to 1.5 times their current size. Since they had kept taking the resource output bonus every time they leveled up, they expected consumption would eventually fail to keep pace. They changed the layout so that each line, previously consumed by two Canvases, would be consumed by three.

However, no device exists that splits one line three ways. So they handled it with a mechanism that "sends items to the other side when one gets backed up." The change only required adding a large splitter in front and reconnecting the conveyors. The rebuild of all three setups was completed just in time. The streamer thinks that even if output increases further, they could branch things the same way to handle four devices per line.

Having that layout from the start would make things easier, but mana supply doesn't allow it. The game is built to demand constant incremental growth. The streamer calls this game design "quite clever."

The streamer survived the fourth wave as well and once again chose a small-fry battle at the route selection. A bonus along the way let them pick a research tree, so they unlocked motif conversion technology. Since this factory has a simple setup dedicated to people, they intend to use it to convert unused squares into circles or triangles.

Next, the streamer noticed a circle deposit near the upper right of the map and a triangle deposit near the lower right. Both are small. Connecting them to the existing equipment seemed convenient, but the distance made it a lot of work, and it seemed likely to get in the way of expanding the existing facilities. So they decided to keep it independent from the existing facilities and build a small people factory in the lower right by routing the circles there. Because they didn't have enough mana, completion was postponed until after the next battle.

Here, the streamer calculates their current production capacity. Since 790 people were produced during the three-minute preparation phase, that works out to a pace of about 4 people per second. The next strengthening threshold is 1,200 people produced, so they say they'd like 1.5 times their current production capacity. However, next up is this area's final boss battle. They chose a route that offers recipes and also tried rerolling, but didn't get a people recipe. The streamer gave up and switched to doing everything they could with what they had.

First, they finished the mini-factory that had been left incomplete due to the mana shortage. This brought the factory as a whole to a production capacity of 11 Canvases. The streamer breaks the options from here into two main directions. One is to make use of the squares and triangles that still have room for extraction, combined with the technology that converts squares into circles. The other is to use ink. This time, there is blue ink near the upper left of the surface, and they had also unlocked the ink research tree at the start. The streamer chose the latter because "ink seems more fun."

The ink plumbing works as follows. Place a dropper near the ink and transport the liquid through pipes. Like conveyors, pipes have underground variants, so any section with obstacles is routed underground. Finally, connect it to the Canvases using an ink engine. The streamer reveals that they had left room on the output side of the Canvases precisely so they could run this plumbing in the future.

Ink plumbing also costs quite a lot, so it can't be connected to every Canvas at once. Even so, setting up a situation where "I can do this as long as I have the mana" makes future planning easier. The streamer adds that it is also nice not having to worry about growth hitting a ceiling.

Blue ink has two effects. It increases the Canvases' production speed, and it grants additional experience on each production. More experience means more motif output, so in the end it also boosts future output. Ink appears to have a notion of quantity, with a fixed amount consumed per production. Canvases draw ink from the pipes only as much as they consume, so using it across many Canvases requires lots of droppers as well. Droppers apparently have a placement limit, so ink can't be distributed infinitely. The streamer placed as many as their current mana allowed and went into the boss fight.

This is the last battle within the scope of the demo. The boss approaches the base and launches explosive attacks. The streamer faced it while producing about 4 people per second, but their DPS fell short and the base was gradually worn down. The boss warps after taking a certain amount of damage, which the streamer interprets as something like a DPS-check mechanic. They couldn't finish off the boss within the time limit, but the damage was limited to a total of two explosions, and they survived to clear the stage.

The streamer says this is as far as the demo goes. They add that there are many other recipes besides the people they made this time, and that the game already seems polished enough to support a variety of builds. Saying they are also looking forward to building large-scale factories further in, they conclude that this is a game whose full release they can't wait for.