Inspired in part by Aphyr’s essay/review/commentary on Satisfactory, and inspired in part by many a conversation I have had over on the official subreddit and Discord, this “guide” is very much an attempt to help others grok my overall frame of the game and what may be in store for them. There are consistent themes that seem to sprout up in people’s experience of the game, which mirror many of my own experiences playing it. In my professional life, I’m a high school teacher, and I’ve always been interested in cognition; teaching has honed my appreciation for systems that help foster learning, with a strong bias towards open-ended ones that have no set outcome. Little surprise that Satisfactory absolutely grabbed me when I started playing (in April 2021). As of the initial drafting of this guide, I have clocked in approximately 600 hours in the game, playing on the same save I started out on.
Satisfactory is a marvel of game design, in my mind. The way that it tutorializes complex tasks, and chunks each task into a manageable and meaningful goal, is a master class in game design. The fact that the core gameplay loop of the game stays interesting and thought-provoking for hundreds of hours testifies to an entirely different level of sophistication in design and mechanics. As such, many readers might be well-advised to avoid reading the entirety of the guide from the start—in a game without much of a plot, the “aha!” moments are the real gems of the gameplay experience, and it’s unclear to me how reading a guide like this might affect your initial playthrough. Nevertheless, there’s a perceptible for demand for something like this, judging from the subreddit, although I have no idea whether the framing I offer here is worthwhile for others.
Appreciate you reading, in any case. Feedback is always welcome. (@schwebacchus on Reddit)
Contents
If you’ve read this far, it’s very likely that you have tried and liked Satisfactory, or perhaps have heard someone speak about the game who has enjoyed it. In any event, this game manages to scratch a number of itches for people, it seems. As a moderately “engaged” gamer who has been following the industry for the better part of two decades, I think Satisfactory is doing a few things that are quite novel in the game space, and I think understanding those design loops will also help you figure out how to get the most of your playthrough of it.
The game is abundantly complex, and has a range of puzzle elements: from the number-crunching to grasp for perfect efficiency to the spatial reasoning game that larger factories require, Satisfactory is maybe best understood as a puzzle game in a somewhat unconventional sense. Each of its puzzle elements opens up new ways of engaging with the long-standing systems the game has given you, and puts them in wildly different contexts that makes them feel challenging again.
Only Minecraft (and probably Animal Crossing) seems to have as active and involved a community dedicated to aesthetics as Satisfactory. There are a number of talented creators who make amazing structures in this game, but there are also a range of options that allow amateurs the ability to spice up the most basic build. Much of my first 100 hours was oriented in the “puzzle game” component discussed above, but I took a break a few months ago and game back committed to “aesthetic” builds. It has slowed my progress a great deal, but being in the world you’ve handcrafted is deeply gratifying. At its very best, Satisfactory can feel like a huge pile of a really varied collection of LEGO—full of creative potential, and easily manipulated to make it match your vision.
From a gameplay perspective, Satisfactory has you playing around three quite different (and each rather complex) tasks. You are, of course, (1) arranging machines around a space, probably conforming to a pattern language that makes sense to your brain, (2) making choices about how and when to manufacture power for your upcoming production needs, and (3) managing logistics between these factories, and attempting to keep some semblance of order and aesthetics about you (avoiding “spaghetti,” as they say). In this way, you’re frequently making choices about what comes next, knowing that you don’t want to near completion of a project only to find that you don’t have anywhere near the power you need to turn it on. There’s an element of project management here, a meta-layer that you can bring to your game–entirely optional, it has a degree of potential complexity that can really make the puzzles before you feel satisfying to creatively solve, building ever-more-complex lines of production.
The complexity of aforementioned plate-spinning is offset by the ability to, at most any time in the game after reaching coal power, sit back and just watch the entire complex process unfold before you. Late game, you’ll have trains and trucks and drones, systems overlapping over systems, managing throughput, getting items where they need to be…and it begins to resemble a game like Mousetrap, where an elaborate Rube Goldberg contraption has been set up, and you get to sit back and watch the great machine, like, hum. The only thing I can liken this feeling to is the sense of accomplishment I felt when I finished my first functioning “mob farm” in Minecraft, but Satisfactory strikes this chord so much better. Late game, complex builds—or even some of the earlier builds in the right hands—can feel downright elegant in their complexity.
It’s clear if you spend any time on any Satisfactory community online that people have wildly different ways of approaching this game. Flat plains of foundations in the sky. Ninety-degree belts only. Snapped to world grid. Situated in environment. Clearcutting the surrounding environment. One final elevator tier part per minute. Twenty final elevator tier parts per minute…