Modulus Review: The Ultimate Relaxing Factory Game

The world is lovely, peaceful and chill, but it could really use some robots to help keep it that way. The plateaus high above the cities are empty aside from grass, trees and a few basic delivery depots, which makes them the perfect place to start manufacturing the needed bots. There's no hurry, though, with the goal not coming with a timer or any other pressure beyond puzzling out the best systems to deliver however much product the system is comfortable manufacturing. It's almost like the system knows the internal voice pointing out an inefficiency in a self-designed system is a far more effective nag than anything it could apply.

Building a Factory At the Top Of the World

Modulus is a relaxing overhead-view automation game about figuring things out at your own pace, constructing modules to create buildings that manufacture the components needed to level up for access to do it even bigger and better. There's a bit of plot hiding in the background to do with creating giant monuments, but it doesn't poke its head in often and leaves you in peace to get on with expanding the factory at your own speed. Whether that be setting up a new production line or realizing an old one is far too inefficient to leave in its current state is up to you, but it's surprisingly easy to look back at an older system and wonder how on Earth it was ever supposed to work.

Like most automation games, the heart of Modulus is linking up machines, called operators, with conveyor belts to build the requested product, figuring out the best way not only to get the output where it needs to go but do so at a volume that keeps everything running at top speed. Unlike most automation games, though, Modulus has you design its components from voxel cubes, cutting, merging and stamping them in whatever way seems to work best. The most common element, polyrock, can be found all over the map, always in the nice, even numbers needed to feed the furnaces, turning the ore into white 4x4x4 64-voxel cubes.

Operators are meant to supply buildings with a set of requested shapes, with the first and most basic building wanting two items, one 2x2x8 and the other 2x4x8. Conveniently enough, it wants twice as many of the smaller one, and a little light math shows that both are easily divisible by the sixty four voxels found in the basic cube. There are any number of ways to turn the cubes into these shapes, from cutting them in half and sticking them together to stacking two cubes and cutting them into shape. The tutorial walks you through the basic setup of the first shapes, but once you've wandered up the tech tree a bit, it's obvious there are much simpler and more compact ways to build everything.

Each operator does exactly what you tell it to do in a hands-on way, rather than working off predefined recipes. An assembler, for example, has two inputs and a single output, and once you've got the pieces flowing into it by way of conveyor belts, you'll need to open up the assembler and tell it exactly how those shapes fit together. With just two pieces to configure, it's not overly tricky, and they don't need to be touching or restricted by gravity if you want to get fancy.

Cutters are a bit more basic, capable of slicing a shape into pieces ranging from one to four voxels thick, while stampers let you shove a user-defined square or rectangular shape out from whatever you send into it. No voxels disappear, with the cutter sending everything out the front while the stamper has two exits for both the main shape and the bit that was stamped out, and once you learn to read the requested shapes, it becomes clear they're all designed to make logical use of each operator's output.

Once a shape is assembled it needs to be delivered to a building, which starts as a single-story base and uses the shapes to build upwards. A building needs at least one extra story beyond its base to start producing, but it's best to upgrade it to its maximum height as quickly as possible for the production bonuses they give. Buildings are tricky with the output, with it being defined by the number of inputs it receives and speed of module delivery, but the math makes sense with a bit of experience. The first building, for example, wants twice as many of the larger module as it does the smaller one, and the intake is defined by the cranes attached to its side. Each crane takes in fifteen items per minute, and the operators tend to run in multiples of thirty-per-minute, so it's easy to figure out the numbers.

While the first building is basic white, it doesn't take long for color to show up and cause all sorts of complexity. The shader operator is easy enough, capable of turning whatever piece is sent its way to either white or black depending on how you set it, but blue and yellow pieces require paint. Blue paint is introduced relatively early while yellow is for the back half of the game, and between the two they provide a surprisingly robust upgrade path.

In addition to producing cores in the first building and using them to manufacture basic white robots in the second, a third type of building manufactures dye for use in paint manufacture, and of course all three buildings require different shapes to be delivered at a steady pace. Blue paint enables fancier shapes that can be made up of white, black and blue voxels, while the introduction of yellow later on adds a new layer of complexity as the number of operators needed to make a module just keeps growing.

Like most automation games, the heart of Modulus is linking up machines, called operators, with conveyor belts to build the requested product, figuring out the best way not only to get the output where it needs to go but do so at a volume that keeps everything running at top speed.

Things rarely get too overly complicated, though, thanks to a tech tree that offers any number of ways to speed up production. Data shards that are the tech-tree currency are created using yet another type of building, and while the white ones are easy enough to manufacture the requirements double with blue rank and again for yellow.

This is where the blueprinting system comes in, because while it's fun to realize a series of upgrades have enabled what had been a massive sprawl to shrink down into a compact, efficient design, there's no point in manually reconstructing the layout every single time it's needed. Keep the datashard production running and the upgrades come at a good pace, especially if you get distracted by building a new module or planning the next major manufacturing hub.

Closing Comments:

Modulus is one of the most relaxing factory games available, with chill vibes and no pressure, and the manufacturing element is more like 3D puzzle construction than anything else. Constructing a module isn't just about linking buildings but seeing the shapes used in its design and understanding how the available tools can divide a cube up into its components and reassemble them, all with a touch of math to make sure that the output speed meets your goal. There are even bonus shapes to deliver, with the rewards being cosmetic items to give your factory a touch of style, not to mention bonus experience to help with ranking up and acquiring new sky-plateaus to expand operations onto.

There's a deeply satisfying flow to Modulus, whether it be solving the layout of a new shape or debugging the system for an older one that isn't delivering like it should, and the game pleasantly eats time with a series of stress-free challenges that you've always got the tools to solve. It's a peaceful world on the plateaus jutting into the sky, even when covered by an ever-more-tangled factory that only its creator can see the logic and beauty in.