Chocolate Factory Reviews

rele god gam

TBH I totally forgot I had this game. I remember getting it because I liked Satisfactory, and this game looked similar. By similar I mean a craptacular version of it, and there still hasn't been any patches since June.

So I played the demo for hours to the point where i forgot i was playing a demo and decided to buy the game to support the developer. As a factorio and Shapez junkie, the 3d approach to factory building that Satisfactory took never appealed to me at all and i never bought it for that reason. However because I'm a huge Wonka fan I wanted to at least try this out. I think some of the reviews i've read are ridiculous, with some people claiming its a Satisfactory rip off while simultaneously complaining that its not enough like Satisfactory. All factory games borrow from eachother and every one of them owes their existence to Factorio. I personally love and respect the fact that this is a small, simple indie game and dont think the comparison is fair. I personally miss the earlier days of the gaming industry when games were smaller, more simple and cartoony and the bugs were an endearing feature that the playerbase knew and loved. This game checks all those boxes for me. It's more simple than any other factory game and could be a great introduction for people who are curious about the genre. I also dont understand the complaints about the combat, were you expecting a dark souls combat system in a factory game? Overall, I love the set and setting of the game and building chocolate factories and candy castles is wicked fun that i didnt know i needed. My only gripes are with the UI... it is not game breaking but the UI looks like its from a completely different game, also the tech tree is a bit confusing at first with not much of a tutorial to get you started. Personally i dont mind no tutorial as if youve played any other factory game it is pretty self explanatory, I just dont think it is great for people that are new and havent. Also it does make my computer work harder than expected but ive never had lag or stutters. I hope the dev adds a few finishing touches to the game but even if not this is a damn fun game as is imo

I think the negative reviews on this game are a little unfair, it's actually really fun, and IMHO pretty well done. Satisfactory is one of my all time favorite games and when I stumbled onto this it seemed like it was somehow just a reskinned version of that with a new theme. Heavily influence maybe, but definitely not just reskinned. The developer has put a lot of work into this game. Is it as good as Satisfactory? No, of course not. Is it as fun? Absolutely. The visuals are beautiful. In some ways I think it's actually improved on some of the mechanics of Satisfactory. But it also has a low budget/unfinished feel in some places too. For example, I really like the way they did the tech tree in this game (I can't really say more because spoilers), but the QOL of the tech tree is really lacking. It's a neat idea on the concept, with a terrible implementation. But I think one of the best benchmarks for a game like this (any game really) is how intuitive is it? Can you get in and start figuring it out pretty quick? Or do you have to look up a lot of things on the internet? While this isn't the EASIEST game I've ever played in that regard, it's pretty up there. I was in building things and re-engineering things for efficiency in minutes. One awkward thing about this game is the theme. It's hard to know if chocolate should be forged or assembled because well, it's chocolate. Forging metal ores into ingots makes sense in other games. Forging chocolate is a little more confusing. Not crazy difficult, just takes some time to figure out. Games like this are probably my favorite genre, so I've played just about all of them. If you like games like Satisfactory, Techtonica, Foundry, etc, I do think you'll feel at home in this game and it's worth a few bucks to scratch that itch in a new "universe". It may look cutesy on the surface but playing it it feels like any standard automation sim. You'll be tasked with finding enough resources, laying things out efficiently, etc. It doesn't feel cutesy when playing, it just feels normal, and I don't sit here musing on the fact that I'm sourcing chocolate or sugar. I just know I'm working on the next milestone/deliverable, no different than if it was iron or diamonds, etc. So it's a big thumbs up for me, I'm excited to get deeper into the tech tree!

A substantial shame of fun potential. Very demanding to run, although changing settings has a big visual effect the workload on the computer is still the same. I hoped for more optimisation since the demo but instead met lagging effects and unbalanced initial combat with no tutorial (you have to find controls within the settings tab if you want those, you will its not intuitive). This has potential and i'd love to see another developer or studio take it over if the original dev isn't invested anymore. overall disappointed in the lack of post demo development, the optimisation, the tutorial, the rapid drop off in visuals with setting changes while still demanding the same processing, the lack of controller support (it says playable on steam deck but its really not) and loading times.

Regretted purchase. Bought to support the Developer, but they pretty much, marketed, sold, then abandoned this game and did not even appear that they had any intentions to move forward. Just a quick buck that could have had some real potential.

I had hopes this game would further update, however after roughly six months we have some confirmation on the developer side that no further work is planned (via Discord). While I've enjoyed my hundreds of hours and may revisit in time, I cannot in good conscience recommend this to a factory-lover. The Prologue/Demo, if available for download is very worth it, and anything under $5 might be as well for creative types. Note that machines and most foundations are restricted to the cardinal directions like in Planet Crafter, but not everything is. As a note, [b]this developer does have a certain reputation[/b] for a lack of either creativity or quality. Some of that is present here, and if I were to sum it up this game has a "Newgrounds Flash Game from 2000s in modern 3D" vibe. There have also been criticisms levied at this game for feeling Early Access, which I would ultimately choose to concur with. If I were to choose a single issue to mention, it's the popup warning that appears when power generators go offline. If a generator is flickering on and off, this can cause game lag, yet instead of a solution to the issue it was merely given a warning prompt. Acceptable in Early Access, but the game was fully released in a finished state with this. Chocolate Factory does have some great things going for it. The map and world is actually a very nice zen space, though not overly large. The non-straight belts are nice for wide and looping curves (as opposed to the straight straights of most factory games). The music I found zen. Having two different size of buildables (typical foundations and castle pieces) was unique and fun to experiment with. Vertical stacking of certain machines is enjoyable too. Through lack of other options, bounce pads became my go-to way to get around whereas I'd always ignored them in Satisfactory. They are quite fun, especially paired with the hanggliding. The invisible walls around the island don't go up forever, so you can build up to not only go over them but even stand atop them (good silly fun). However, there are a number of problems... interesting problems. [h1]The math doesn't math[/h1] I have a 16-generator power setup being supplied by a manifold design. However, ever so slightly more resources are consumed than produced, despite balanced math. Switching this to a load-balanced system would alleviate it, but after going through the engineering trouble to build the entire setup I was not keen on redoing it, instead babying the system. Simply put, if you take a factory game and remove logistics, you get an idle/clicker game. You remove the clicker/idle game component, and you're left with a basic spreadsheet. In Chocolate Factory, I felt I could never trust the underlying math to be quite correct by the end of it. Machine inputs and outputs can also artificially constrict especially fast outputs on a few machines still. (most were corrected, but I believe the condensers still suffer last I checked. To say nothing of anything that was overclocked.) [h1]Recipe complexity imbalances and oddities[/h1] Despite this being a game about chocolate factory, it felt like I needed more of another resource, Milk (which is belted, there are no pipes) in order to complete the full production chain. Of special note are the game's second fueled generator option, the cookie generator. [h2]T2 Generator Fuel [/h2][h3](Cookie Generators are a noob trap)[/h3] Of all fuel types (except possibly the last, but I can't even remember for sure), the cookie generator has the most complicated production chain of all, and is rather resource heavy. Cookie power is actually less resource efficient AND less power efficient than the first fuel generator. Feedback was something I saw frequently on this point, including myself, but was never addressed. I chose to skip it in favor of the next tier, which got me through most of the rest of the game. There are also wind turbines that allow for fuelless power, it should be noted. [h2]Alternate Recipe... Just the one...[/h2] I progressed most of the way through this game, and no alternate recipes ever made themselves known. I figured they were not included, but I was wrong. There is in fact, one single alternate recipe that automatically unlocks. I somehow find this more insulting than if there were zero, as it proves a point that more could have been added (and feedback and suggestions were both given once I was aware of it) but never fleshed out. It feels like deliberately missed potential. [h2]Factory Customization and Decor[/h2] You get one color swatch that customizes everything you've built. Most of it doesn't change, being limited to the traditional milk chocolate. Higher tier belts and certain machines have a 'dark chocolate' texture that replaces the standard brown 'milk chocolate' and that's pretty much it. There is no white chocolate, graham cracker walls or surfaces, or other confectionery themed texturing. I enjoyed working around it, but trying to differentiate different building areas took a degree of nuance using every tool I had. I enjoyed it, but even I felt the lack near the end of it. [h1]Machine Models are lacking in more ways than one[/h1] For the first half of this, the machines are animated in Chocolate factory, in any sense. [b]There is no visual indicator of machines being in operation[/b] or not. No smoke effects, no sparking generators, etc. The only noteworthy movement is from wind turbines and any items on belts (or eventual drone). No indicator light or lighting effect. At time of release, others compared them unfavorably to Satisfactory's delightfully animated machinery, and the developer found this comparison unfair due to a drastically different budget. Instead, I will compare the Chocolate Factory smelter to the Minecraft furnace from years and years back now. The Minecraft furnace still has more personality as a simple cube, since it changes texture when it is 'burning,' lights up the nearby area slightly, and has small smoke effects that puff out (presuming I remember right). This was when Mojang was still independent of Microsoft. Even a simple rotating wheel, pulsating vertical shaft or even a flywheel of some manner would not be too much animation, yet remain elusive. Given the other half of my issue with machines, I can't say I'm surprised though. Secondly, [b]the model reuse between machines[/b] took some of the fun away from my adventure through the tech developments. Generators are just engines that slightly alter in size and texturing as you go along, dampening any excitement there. Crafters start at two identical models being placed side by side, with the next version being three models side by side until culminating in six models side by side counting as a single machine. Putting three of the most basic Crafting machines side by side is visually identical to the final Crafting type machine, and not only did I find this unfulfilling to progress through but was ultimately a visual hindrance when building out larger fields of production since I could no longer tell what I was looking at. [h1]There is more I could say[/h1] There's smaller, lesser issues I suppose I could go after. Power poles are their own ball of weirdness that I eventually learned to build around. They automatically attached to machines, but do so based on a network system that centers on a power box. There is no limit to the number of machines a pole will connect to, which can be hilarious but can easily turn hideous. There is potential here that will likely never be tapped, because most factory-based games gradually build themselves up to become better over time (or it seems as such anyways) with community feedback. Weapon ammo could use some increases, but there's only two non-respawning bosses that even give that a point. Anyone making a Factory game should play Chocolate Factory, as it will help highlight issues to avoid and learn from, put bluntly. I enjoyed my time regardless.