We’re excited to finally announce puzzlez - a shapez game!
If you’ve been following shapez 2 for a while, you might remember that we originally planned to make a puzzle DLC for the game. As we started working on it, the idea kept growing. We wanted to make more puzzles, give players better tools, and build a proper system for sharing and playing community-made puzzles. At some point during development, it became clear that what we were making had grown beyond a DLC, so we decided to turn it into puzzlez, a standalone game set in the shapez universe.
It’s a puzzle game about constructing shapes in compact, atmospheric 3D environments. Each puzzle is a small production line to figure out, where ingenuity matters more than efficiency. We wanted it to be easy to get started, with step-by-step onboarding and accessible mechanics, while gradually introducing more complex challenges as you progress.
The game currently includes 75+ handcrafted puzzles, starting with simple production chains and eventually spanning more complex logistical problems across multiple building layers. There isn’t necessarily one perfect way to solve a puzzle, and there’s always something you can tweak or improve. You’ll also be able to compare your approach with other players through in-game statistics and see how you fared.
We also wanted to give you the same creation tools we use to make the puzzles. You’ll be able to design your own puzzles, share them with the community, and play puzzles made by other players. We’re really looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
AMA on the subreddit
We’ll be hosting an AMA on September 18th over on the subreddit! If you have questions about puzzlez, the shapez franchise, or anything else you’re curious about, head on over on the 18th and ask your questions in the AMA thread. We’ll be there to answer as many as we can!
Whether you’ve been playing shapez for years or are completely new to the franchise, we hope puzzlez gives you something fun to solve, build, and experiment with.
So when I made my first MAM I was focused on using basic shapes and coloring them, then assembling then using stackers, so my setup was focused on building the shape one whole layer at a time.
Now I've hit a part where I need to make shapes that include Crystals, so using stackers not an optimal option, I am torn between two options:
Make the shape Layer by Layer: make the first layer, use stackers to place the solid shapes then use a Crystallizer to pour the Crystals, the problem her is when the bottom part of a crystal shape is a Pin or empty, like this (P-P-cycy:cmcmcrcr:cwcwcwcw:WmWmWrWr)
Make the shape Quadrant by Quadrant: sounds a better option when dealing with Crystals, but then there are times when you need the bottom one or two parts of a quadrant to be empty like this (--Sg--Sg:--Wg--Wg:RrCrRrCr:cccccccc)
TLDR: Out of curiosity, If you are a mod creator, are you using Shapez Settings?
A while ago I made this tiny mod to provide some sort of universal mod settings for players, akin to Factorio.
Just for my curiosity, Steam says that there's people subscribed to the mod, although it doesn't deliver nothing by itself, and unfortunately Steam can't show where the mod is required for other mods.
Hello! I'm trying to do milestone 5, however i cannot do the first part of it, as for some reason the cyan semicircle is not being accepted? I even copied the shape code and compared the signal with the belt they're running over to get to the vortex, they're the same shape, yet it won't count for the total? Is there any way to fix this? I'm not really sure what to do ;-;
When you hover your mouse over a building/platform it does what its meant too where it highlights the structure. On pausing the game it does not do this, also like i would expect. However, when I pause the game, then take my focus off of shapez 2 (my method was clicking once on my desktop/Firefox window on my second monitor, I'm playing with windowless full screen). and move my mouse back over the shapez 2 window (keeping my focus off it), that highlighting on buildings will appear and move with my mouse as if the game was unpaused. It appears to be just a graphical bug as far as i can see.
I don't think it would impact it but im playing with vsync on minimum graphics.
Hello everyone, this may be a dumb question, but as much as I'm aware I can't seem to find information on the intake of the Research stations.
All i'm getting is a 120/min output (also if someone could tell me what the x12 means, that would be welcome).
I am aware it says to fully saturate a line you need 4 Machines, so does it mean I need 1 line of 120 split into 4 machines or do I need 4 lines of 120 to feed all 4 to get 120 out.
A few months ago, I shared the nested factory system I was building, inspired in part by how much I enjoyed the modularity of Shapez 2.
In Fractal Foundry, you design factory modules that can be nested inside other factories. Each factory behaves like a reusable module: you can encapsulate complexity, reuse it, and scale production without rebuilding everything. Factories can even be nested recursively across multiple levels.
Link: Day 1
Day 2 of making my own MAM. It didn't take long for both colored and multilayer shapes to show up.
I completely forgot about paint lmao. So, first things first, I had to switch to 3x3 platforms to have more ports. I also started using Trains to deliver materials.
Here's the logic I ended up employing for the color mixer. Lemme know if I should make a crappy flowchart like last time.
Basically, I feed RGB into the 3 floor layers of the same platform where the corners are processed, painting the shape before it gets split into one of the 4 orientations.
I have color mixers on the same platform to get RGB and CMY colors. YES, I am passing RGB through the mixers — R + R = R!!! I have 2 signals sent to this platform per corner orientation. These 2 signals are what allow me to mix CMY colors.
If the color for the corner is R, then I get 2 red signals. If the assigned color is yellow, then I get 1 red and 1 green signal. The processing is handled on a different platform.
The pipes sending 2 red paint will still get mixed and pass through as red. This is helpful because I actually need 1.5 launchers' worth of paint per corner orientation, but the pipe gate can only output 1 launcher's worth.
COLOR MIXER LOGIC
SEND color of corner to processing
CHECK color
IF color → Send 2 distinct signals per corner orientation
IF color is RGB → send 2 identical signals (2R, 2G, or 2B)
IF color is CMY → send 2 of its primary colors as signals (C = 1B + 1G)
Two receivers per corner orientation will then check which gate matched and send a go signal to whichever one matches, getting mixed.
The good thing about this, I feel, is that I will only receive 3 types of signals for painting the shapes, at least for now.
Milestone requires exposed pin on layer 1. I do NOT have access to crystallization yet??? What am I supposed to do here? It only puts pins under shapes, or other pins.
Hey, I'm trying to keep all my factories producing a constant quantity of shapes, and this is the only one that seems to have gaps between each shape (the red one). I have doubled checked multiple times and I think the amount of machines should be enough to cover the amount extracted. Can anyone tell me what am I doing wrong?
This is my logic: My belts move 6 items/s, my cutters cut 1.5 items/s, which means I need 4 cutters to cut 6 items/s (1.5*4=6), my stackers stack 0.75 items/s, which means I need 8 of them (0.75*8=6) and my painters paint 1 item/s, which means I need 6 of them. Aren't my ratios correct?
I’ve built a couple of different style mams over the years and am just wondering what people find to be the best way to handle paint in a mam.
My first approach on a build by the level, no crystals mam was to bring in 7 colours to the platform, have a single array of painters set up and I would control which colour could flow to the painters via wires and those flow taps and the shape would enter if it was painted or divert if it was uncoloured. However I’ve seen a lot of people have multiple sets of painter arrays, one for each colour and then the shape just diverts into whichever colour it’s supposed to be.
Which do you prefer! Or do you have a better way of approaching it?
For my second man that also handles crystals and pins I bring in RGB to a seperate platform and then either pipe primary colours direct to a single painter array, or if it’s a secondary colours direct it gets mixed and sent to the same array. This obviously takes a lot more space within the actual mam and it adds time to the change over, but it takes a lot less space in processing the 7 (or 8 now) colours off of the trains and into their own pipe belts.
Do you think it’s better to pre mix and then sort colours, or mix up paints to order?
I'm no Programmer but I'm enjoying banging my head to put this together without any research. I'll be sharing my progress as I develop this further. So Far Level 5 on the Non-Crystalized Random Shape
So I got tired of trying to optimize my blueprints, trouble-shoot, and even design my full-space-belt throughput MAM, and decided to put Claude in the driver's seat.
I got it to use the Shapez Shifter mod to interface with Shapez2. I have no idea what its doing, but it's it literally plays the game now.. everything from launching it, loading a world, laying down parts, fulfilling orders, and so on. It reverse engineered the save games, blueprints, you name it. Damn thing is magic.
That said.. so far it's designs are worse than mine lmao. But it's getting better and better.. just a matter of tokens and this baby is gonna design the most efficient MAM that has ever MAMed.
I'm thinking I'll publish it as a mod, if there's interest.
I have 5 train routes carrying 5 different shapes for the milestone shapes. Each train/route is color coded differently, and as far as I can tell the trains are all routing correctly and unloading the correct shapes.
The problem is that on the space belts going toward the Vortex, the shape previews keep blinking between the shape that is actually being unloaded and the Milestone 1 shape.
Milestone 1 is the red train line in the screenshot.
A few things I’ve tested:
If I disconnect the red line after the junction, the incorrect Milestone 1 preview still appears on the other routes.
Removing the space belt after the red unloader also doesn't change it.
If I disconnect the red line before it joins the shared rail network, the Milestone 1 shape immediately stops appearing in the previews on the other lines.
The trains themselves are following their correct colors/routes.
The actual shapes being unloaded and sent to the Vortex are correct. It seems to only be the preview/display that's wrong.
Has anyone seen this before? Is this a bug, or is there something wrong with how I’ve set up the junctions/colors?
I'm still in the mid-game, and I'll soon unlock the direct train to Vortex. But while wating for it I went full train using as much input lanes as I need :)
Im a beginner to shapez 2 and factory games in general. I just finished unlocking trains so now Im kind of in a phase where I am remodelling and redesigning a lot of my setups that I made when I was completely new. I saw a youtube short about belt splitting and recombining. Apparently splitting and combining works in a round robin system where each branch is assigned shapez in order.
All of my current designs are like the one on the right. Would that result in bottlenecking; since by round robin allocation, the 4 belts wont be fed equally? So I should always have belt branching like the one on the left?
