Planet-smelting sim Satisfactory is now satisfactory enough to leave early access

1.0 version launches with new story stuff and alien technology

Image credit: Coffee Stain

Grand duchess of first-person factory sims Satisfactory has finally hit 1.0 on PC after five years in early access, introducing a “full narrative overhaul” together with some new alien technology which you can witness and boggle at via the 1.0 launch trailer, below. They’ve also announced a console version, but we don’t care for such things. The only Satisfactory console I care about is the one that lets you deactivate the fog so you can obtain an unmurky view of your glittering conveyor belt empire.

Satisfactory 1.0 Launch Trailer

Watch on YouTube
If you’re new to Satisfactory, it’s about turning a perfectly blameless alien planet into a gleaming and grinding network of production lines. You’re a “Pioneer” working on behalf of the illustrious FICSIT Inc, who need you to extract and process any resources worth noting and send it up the Space Elevator for the purposes of the Save The Day program. It’s possible that FICSIT Inc aren’t quite what they’re cracked up to be, but hush now – you’re here to ensure a steady flow of matter into the refinery, not think about “worrying undertones”. Or even “worrying overtones” – Satisfactory’s satire of space capitalism isn’t exactly subtle.

‌Back in 2020, Rock Paper Shotgun’s own far-future Dickensian habitat despoiler Brendan Caldwell deemed Satisfactory a ruddy good time. And also, a relatively laidback one given a sufficient quantity of spare leisure hours. “Everything can be twiddled and tweaked to make an assembly line run with utmost efficiency, or even slowed down to half speed, to make output steadier and avoid clogged conveyor belts,” he wrote in our Satisfactory early access review. “But the opposite is also true. You can, like me, play the whole thing by ear. Make a shitty factory. It’s fine. You’re the only human on the planet, no one is going to fire you.” It’s just as well, Brendy, because that “needless, kilometre-long pipeline” sounds like it might have earned you a few weeks’ suspension without pay.

Satisfactory has come a ways since Brendy stunk up the early access build with his excess plumbing. The 1.0 version adds various technologies, including endgame Portals “for near-instantaneous transportation across the vast alien lands”, though this requires “huge power capacity” and access to Singularity Cells. Dimensional Depots, meanwhile, “offer an efficient option for inventory management” powered by Strange Alien Matter. I am guessing they let you store things in alternate dimensions. You also have more power to customise your uniform, with a range of colours, helmets, tool trinkets and skins. Nothing like a powerdrill pendant to keep your mind on the job and not on why you’re reducing an Edenic paradise to a maze of smokestacks.

We have written many a thing about Satisfactory over the years – here’s Alex Wiltshire (RPS in Minecraft) recounting how developers Coffee Stain lied about pipes, and here’s Brendy again praising the golfcart. Personally, I’ve only ever sunk a piffling 10 hours into the early access build. I engineered some kind of logjam involving smelters and couldn’t be arsed to fix it. This is my cue to start afresh.