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#Techtonica

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Allie

April 7, 2024 - Day 463 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 491

Game: Techtonica

Platform: XBox Game Pass UItimate
Released: Aug 16, 2023
Installed: Apr 7, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 11h6m

Techtonica is not in the Humble Bundle. If it was, I'd be torn between yelling "BUY IT IMMEDIATELY", and "RUN AWAY, SAVE YOURSELF!"

It's a first person factory automation adventure game set on an alien planet. It's not Factorio, because it's first-person, and it's got an actual narrative built into the game, instead of tacked on as an afterthought.

You're a "breaker", who's been woken up from artificial hibernation, because something has gone in this mission to colonise an alien planet.

The design and lighting and music are all utterly gorgeous, and I wish I'd never met it.

GG.deals had a link to Pacific Drive on special (that I can't afford), and when I clicked through to look at the pricing, I saw Techtonica in a bundle with Pacific Drive (that I also couldn't afford), and I went back to GG.deals, to discover it's included in XBGU (oh no).

I lovehate factory automation games. I own several of them, and I shouldn't play them.

My theory is that they scratch that DEEP itch for systemisation that my autistic brain loves so much. I have lost entire days of my life in this kind of game.

What Techtonica does, however, is that it ties the narrative progression to the in-game tech-tree progression, and producing enough widgets to open the next level of the tech tree and find out more of the story.

I barely moved all day. I barely ate. I managed to drink a little bit of water here and there, but I was fundamentally staring at the screen for 11 hours straight.

They built a damn Skinner box that was specifically tuned for my brain, and I locked *myself* inside.

This game is a dopamine-hit nightmare, and I love it, but I'm not sure if it's healthy for me to keep playing it, because it verges on "addictive" territory for me.

I hate to say it, but I must; escape while you still can, don't do what I did, because Techtonica is:

5: Excellent

#Techtonica#FirstPerson#FactoryAutomation
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Hirvox

Mining with the black hole tool is mostly limited by time spent, so a build-anything megafactory is relatively labor-intensive. So you’re tempted to create discrete mini-factories instead. But you run out of space fairly quickly, and the cables and monorails to connect those mini-factories are unlocked in the tech tree much, much later. #techtonica

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Hirvox

It’s also easier to go up than down. The black hole mining tool won’t mine downwards, so you can’t use it to bypass all scenery. And anything important is immune to it anyway. There’s several places where you have to find a route down and then be able to mine your way back up. There’s also hidden crates in solid rock, but I don’t know whether it’s intentional or leftovers from a previous iteration of the map. #techtonica

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Hirvox

Many of #techtonica’s game mechanics are present in other games, but one new facet is how it uses space and elevation.

The setting has caverns both cramped and spacious, and the latter are obviously easier to build in. But there’s a choice to be made. The research items have to be placed into the world for them to have any effect, and they’re fairly bulky. Fortunately there is a platform that will automatically form a tree out of them. So those spacious caverns could be used for those.

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Hirvox

#Techtonica could be described as a hybrid between #Factorio and #Subnautica.

You build a factory using various machines, conveyor belts and robotic grabber arms. While there are some wrecked machines that you can scan scattered around the cavern, the important ones are behind locked doors in complexes that you can't dig into. And you open those locked doors by crafting a specified set of items. Despite what the NPC says, you can take your time. There's no enemies and ore veins don't deplete.

A view of a factory built into a cavern. On the foreground are several conveyor belts snaking around and over grow beds. Alien flora have been planted into the beds, illuminated by ultraviolet lights. In the background, there are more machines, a pillar built of purple spheres and gray building. At the bottom of the screen, there is a chat bubble. Someone called Sparks says: "Your factory isn't going to sprout legs and run off, and anything else you're exploring will be right where you left it. So answer that distress call!" Spark's avatar icon is an abstract yellow square. A red transmission icon is superimposed on the factory, suggesting that the signal's source is somewhere behind the factory.
A view from a metallic catwalk, looking down to a habitat complex built into a large cavern. The complex is vaguely ring-shaped and built on top of an underground lake. A river is flowing into the lake, and there is a whirlpool in the middle of the lake. The catwalk is connected to the complex with a lift, although the lift cage has been lowered below the complex and into the center of the whirlpool.
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Hirvox

I finished my first session of #techtonica. A few gotchas for Satisfactory / Dyson Sphere Program veterans: Splitters/mergers are created automatically with conveyor belts. They can’t be right next to each other, though. If you don’t want to merge, built past the intersecting belt and the game will automatically slope up and down. Grabbers need a flat conveyor at their level. So when you’re weaving belts for a manifold, leave some space. Slow grabbers do limit the throughput due to fuel, though.

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teamtuck

Final thought on #techtonica: I think I’m going to wait until this game gets more mature. I spent a lot of time building a main bus, only to find out I can’t upgrade belts in place; I would have to rip and replace it all. This game should have been put on hold for a little longer until basic stuff like that are ready to use day one IMO. Great game, atmosphere, story and sounds, but extremely rough in 0.1 stage. Looking forward to the future of this game!

#pcgaming#gaming
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teamtuck

#techtonica came out today and it’s pretty good so far. Sure, there are some rough edges for a first release and I have some thoughts, but it’s worth playing now if you are a fan of factory/automation games. The soundtrack is really good, narration is fantastic, and I’m interested to see how the story turns out. The next release will be some QoL fixes, which will definitely be welcomed. I just hope that there will be more options in the future for things like infinite resources.

#gaming
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