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Dyson Sphere Program (Early Access)

[EA Review] DSP is a game about building, automating and managing a factory that spans multiple planets and solar systems, with the end goal of creating a Dyson Sphere to harvest a star's energy. It came out of nowhere into EA and it already feels like a finished game; there's only a couple of things in the tech tree as placeholders - everything else is on a feature roadmap. I can highly recommend picking this up already for fans of Factorio/Satisfactory. It's also really good value at only €15 considering games like this often provide dozens if not hundreds of hours of content.

Pros

  • It's really pretty
  • Super well optimised
  • Good background music
  • Tons of buildings, items and production chains
  • I really like that there are no enemies, although I gather this is on the roadmap
  • Because the planets are relatively small, the curvature of the surface actually affects the build grid, which makes really interesting planning challenges
  • It takes previous automation games to a new level by bringing interplanetary logistics and travel
  • You can delete items from the inventory
  • Multiple types of planets and stars
  • Creating buildings is quick and easy
  • Instead of 1-tile grabbers, the input and output for machines can reach 3 grid tiles, which allows for slightly more relaxed factory layouts
  • You can upgrade or delete entire conveyor belts at once
  • Space exploration. Takes a while to get there, but once you get Drive 4, you can warp speed to other planets, which have rare resources that can be directly smelted into higher end products. + Gas giants

Cons

  • The translation to English from Chinese is hilariously bad, but you get 'most' of the info you need. Hopefully they'll hire an actual English translator before full release
  • There is way too much clicking. Compared to Factorio, it takes at least twice as many mouse clicks to do anything
  • Can be a bit fiddly to work out how some things work (like the filter sorters) but once you've got it, it's pretty intuitive
  • Can't reverse the direction of conveyor belts
  • Can't move objects, have to delete and re-place
  • Liquids are handed as objects on conveyors. Would be nice if it had a pipe/fluid system like Satisfactory
  • 2 years after it's EA release and it's still not done
  • Still no actual resource models, just boxes with pictures of iron on them
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