Satisfactory is officially released, officially a scary wonderful time sink

Enlarge / Where are the gentle creatures and native plants you first saw when you landed? More importantly, could this conveyer belt run on a shorter path? (credit: Coffee Stain Studios)

The company that compels you to industrialize an untouched alien planet in Satisfactory, FICSIT, is similar to Portal‘s Aperture Science or Fallout‘s Vault-Tec. You are a disposable employee, fed misinformation and pushed to ignore awful or incongruous things, all for the greater good of science, profit, or an efficient mixture of the two.

And yet even FICSIT was a bit concerned about how deep into the 1.0 release of Satisfactory (Steam, Epic Games, on sale until 9/23) I had fallen. I got a warning that I had been playing for two hours straight. While FICSIT approved of hard work, it was important to have some work-life balance, it suggested.

Friends of mine had told me that they had to stop playing Factorio when it began to feel like an unpaid part-time job. Given a chance to check out Satisfactory, I presumed, like I always do, That Could Never Be Me. Folks, it was definitely me. I’m having a hard time writing this post, not because it’s hard to describe or recommend Satisfactory. I just stayed up very late “reviewing” it, woke up thinking about it, and am wondering whether enough friends would want to join me that I should set up a private server.