Asobism’s tower defence/roguelite/factory sim title, ShapeHero Factory, releases on Switch 2 (and 1) today. Hooray!
For anyone unfamiliar, this one sees you create an army of robots from a bunch of magical shapes within a factory setting, making for a sweat-inducing puzzle of sorts as you work to get your automation processes up and running before battle.
The twist? You don’t actually get to control the robots you make in the ensuing fight here. Nope, it’s all about the factory, levelling up through artefacts and creating more and more powerful units to keep on, er, powering through.
Here’s some further — and much more official — details and screens:
Mass-Produce Heroes
Transport basic shapes from the scroll to assemble your heroes with different combinations. Circles with triangles will make soldiers, while circles and squares make sprites. Add squares to soldiers to give them shields. Perhaps you could create stronger heroes by combining soldiers together…Hold the Gates
The Great Calamity lies deep within the Book of Magic. To bar your heroes from invading, his forces will come to demolish your gates. Maintain the defense while you forge ever deeper into the book. The servants of The Great Calamity each has its own method of attack, so you must choose the right hero for the job.Factory-Building and Roguelite Elements Make For Endless Possibilities
Obtain rewards from a randomly generated list of options after winning battles.
Will you unlock new artifacts (facilities), or upgrade your existing ones?
As you continue making these tricky decisions, you will create a wholly unique factory!
The choices that each author (playable character) will face as well as the types of heroes that they can create are different, so you need to challenge a different “factory-building” each time you play.Use the Book of Arcane Knowledge to Grow Stronger
The enemies are powerful. With the experience points gained at the end of the game, players can use the Book of Arcane Knowledge to grow permanently stronger. This means that the more you play the game, the stronger you will become.
The game left Early Access and went live with version 1.0 just yesterday over on Steam, where it’s got 688 “Very Positive” reviews at the time of writing.
ShapeHero Factory is available from the Nintendo eShop for $23.99, or whatever that equates to where you are. It’s out on Switch 1, too, for the same price. According to Nintendo’s game page, there’s no specific upgrade pass for the Switch 1 version (and saves aren’t transferable between them). HOWEVER:
“After the release date, players who own the Nintendo Switch version of this title will be able to obtain the Nintendo Switch 2 version free of charge.”
Hard to argue with that! We’re having trouble finding specific details on what the Switch 2 version does above and beyond Switch 1 – better frame rate and resolution, you’d imagine, especially as the game page suggests a ~400MB file size increase on Switch 2. We’ll update you with any details we find out.
Are you partial to a factory sim? Will you be grabbing ShapeHero Factory?
