Silky: Lots to do
Rough: Upgrading pathways

Dyson Sphere Program is an interesting take on the factory build genre where you're developing large scale power generation all the way to a Dyson Sphere... which is needed to continue to expand and so on. You start as a bot on a single planet knocking down a few trees & rocks and finish having warped to other stars, built one or more Dyson Spheres and built and built and built and built...

And it's here that I must point out what I consider this games biggest failing. Granted, it is unfinished and I haven't looked at the development map so this may change...

...BUT

Spam. That's all you end up doing. Once you have access to the 3 tiers of assemblers and 2 tiers of smelters, in order to go large scale production, it's a case of spamming the same build, that you've likely perfected, over and over and over. Sometimes on your 'starter' planet or even 50 light years away on some other planet orbiting some other star but build you will... repeatedly. Unlike Factorio (or even Satisfactory) there's no continuation of upgrade options. There's no reason to tear down to build more efficiently or any such motivation. Head to new planet and just keep spamming. Same build over and over and over.

Which made restarting to perfect the game start to become too tedious to bother. Yes, you have blueprints (which is not particularly well implemented) and developing blueprints to manage effective flow does add some fun but the blueprints ultimately end up just making the factory spam easier.

Any game where the finish starts to lack purpose and comes down purely to the quantities you can produce and not the efficiency of the operation needs a little bit of patience... or some time away AFK as your research ticks over.

Having said that, restarts are fun if you're the type always aiming for that 'perfect factory' or hoping to stamp out your sphere into the cosmos in record time. I just found it odd that in one such replay I made the Dyson Sphere much smaller than I could, purely to get it built without excessive tedium. That's usually not a good design point.

Nonetheless, at 400 hours at review time, it's obviously good enough to get some fun out of it making it good value for money.

8/10

Silky: Lots to do Rough: Upgrading pathways Dyson Sphere Program is an interesting take on the factory build genre where you're developing large scale power generation all the way to a Dyson Sphere... which is needed to continue to expand and so on. You start as a bot on a single planet knocking down a few trees & rocks and finish having warped to other stars, built one or more Dyson Spheres and built and built and built and built... And it's here that I must point out what I consider this games biggest failing. Granted, it is unfinished and I haven't looked at the development map so this may change... ...BUT Spam. That's all you end up doing. Once you have access to the 3 tiers of assemblers and 2 tiers of smelters, in order to go large scale production, it's a case of spamming the same build, that you've likely perfected, over and over and over. Sometimes on your 'starter' planet or even 50 light years away on some other planet orbiting some other star but build you will... repeatedly. Unlike Factorio (or even Satisfactory) there's no continuation of upgrade options. There's no reason to tear down to build more efficiently or any such motivation. Head to new planet and just keep spamming. Same build over and over and over. Which made restarting to perfect the game start to become too tedious to bother. Yes, you have blueprints (which is not particularly well implemented) and developing blueprints to manage effective flow does add some fun but the blueprints ultimately end up just making the factory spam easier. Any game where the finish starts to lack purpose and comes down purely to the quantities you can produce and not the efficiency of the operation needs a little bit of patience... or some time away AFK as your research ticks over. Having said that, restarts are fun if you're the type always aiming for that 'perfect factory' or hoping to stamp out your sphere into the cosmos in record time. I just found it odd that in one such replay I made the Dyson Sphere much smaller than I could, purely to get it built without excessive tedium. That's usually not a good design point. Nonetheless, at 400 hours at review time, it's obviously good enough to get some fun out of it making it good value for money. 8/10