Combine And Conquer

It is a bit slower speed factory game, which is more likable to me imho
a more constant visuals are coming later I hope, some part looks different than the others
after a certain progress it became a bit laggy (around Research 3) but I'm in beta so some optimization will be done for sure

TL,DR: Factor Y is a "Factorio for the rest of us". It's a casual planet-spanning factory building game where you won't have to worry about the native life forms coming over the hills to destroy your stuff. Blueprints can be used to simplify production assembly lines but it does not translate well from paper to planet. It demands little on system specs, offers a sparse but adequate tech tree to work with, but has a few gaps in the game mechanics that force you to run Factor Y like an idle game. The UI is a little clunky to work with, and currently there is no way to move chests without losing what is contained inside them.
Conditionally recommend at regular price, and definitely recommend at the current 80% off deal that runs until January 17, 2025 (I got it for $3.89 Canadian)
DETAILED REVIEW FOLLOWS:
Factor Y is a factory building game that could be best described as a low-res clone of the wildly popular Factorio game. In this game, you create an automated factory with assembly lines and research facilities that harvest the resources of the starter planet you are on. Once your technology is sufficiently researched enough, you can travel to other planets within the solar system to colonize, mine and transport resources. On the starter planet, you are allocated a set number of structures (miners, conveyor belts, chests to store basic resources in, assemblers to cobble structures together, coal fire burners for power, smelters to make plates and bricks, and so on) to get you started. If you need more, you need to build them.
The game is not as graphically appealing as Factorio, replying on a more spartan layout. This could be a blessing if you have an older hardware system spec and cannot afford something that requires heavy graphics to handle. The graphics and the animation works just fine if you are not a style over substance in your gameplay. The game music is easy on the ears even after a few hours of repetitive playing.
A big plus with this game is it is very chill and relaxing in it's approach. While Factorio has the pesky insectlike swarm of aliens you have to deal with after you p?ss them off with the pollution your factory generates, there are none to worry about in Factor Y. You have the luxury of time to plan your building out without suddenly being stressed out by Zergling-like beasties kicking over anything. This makes Factor Y a "Factorio for the rest of us", for people who don't want to feel like they have a gun at their temple while building things. I know some players get off on that, but I don't. It's one of the things I disliked strongly about Factorio and why it is not a chill game at all like Factor Y.
Another plus is that Factor Y has a blueprint maker for simplifying production line design using a black box approach. I don't recall seeing that in the first Shapez game or Factorio so that's unique. While it works great on paper and allows you to rotate the production line before placement to make it fit on the surface of the planet, it falters once it kicks into operation. You can't see the internal workings of your assembly since it is, after all, a black box with visible input and output slots. Production lines created through this method run slower than actually placing each structure manually to form the same production line.
The research tree is a lot flatter in Factor Y than it is in Factorio, but still requires you to spend the time to get better technology that will eventually lead you to faster mining, logistics, manufacturing and ultimately a way to get to the other planets. There are some odd gaps in the research path though: for one thing there's no steam engine technology to generate power. Considering a good number of the planets have ice and water, a game mechanic could have been used to melt the ice or siphon the water for use in a steam engine. You'll go from coal generators to nuclear power in your research. That's a significant jump. The research points (called tokens) system is both good and bad. Good as in you can research any and all technology in the research tree with even the type I tokens but bad in that the low-end tokens require a STUPID amount to collect in order to research things. You could use multiple labs to get past that but you only get ONE lab to start off with, and building a second lab requires researching and then assembling a lot of the needed components to build a second and third lab. The amount of time required to do that is about the same as running the game like an idle game with just one lab. This differs from Factorio where Factorio will (at a slight speed penalty) sneakily construct basic components behind the scenes and then insert them into your manufacturing queue.
When compared to manufacturing speeds found in Shapez I and Factorio, Factor Y is a very slow and tedious grind. Yes, the mining, smelting, belt transport and other features can be improved through research but remember what I said before about the huge number of research token type I's and the single lab you start off with. That's a big cliff to climb before you finally get some traction. Again, be prepared to run this like an idle game.
The most glaring and shocking lack of functionality is the ability to move chests --- containers that hold your basic materials --- without losing the contents inside. Wow! This means if you have to move anything, you can but you lose whatever you mined previously and stored inside. Until the dev addresses this, do NOT move the chests for any reason. This also goes for any materials on the conveyor belts. If you attempt to move them, you will lose what your transporting on them.
The UI is very clunky and multi-step. You have to hit the escape key to stop placing multiple items on the planet surface, and then click on them to examine their attributes and what you set them to do. There's no toolbar to drag and drop specific structures you want to work with the most --- a common feature in sandboxesque style games like Logic World and Factory World. You instead work with a categorised menu tightly tucked at the lower right hand corner of the screen. Navigating between planetary placement, module design, game settings, production stats, and something called a "highlighter" (I have no idea what that's for) is crammed into a thin vertical bar at the top left corner of the screen. It's not the best approach for a UI to employ and I can see it frustrating enough people to stop playing it, perhaps even give it a bad review.
This is one of those games where I can't specifically say "Yes" or "No" to the Recommend Game choice. There are good things about this game but also a lot of not-so-good things that need fixing and improvements on. I would conditionally recommend it at it's regular price and definitely recommend it at the current (as of this writing on January 4th, 2025) discounted price of 80% until January 17th, 2025. If you miss it, just put it on your wishlist and monitor the dev log for any changes that address the points I've raised.
Speaking of raised points, I've compiled a list of suggestions for the dev to consider in future upgrades that address the issues mentioned in my review. It would be great to see other players add their suggestions as well. This is a great game but it stumbles in a few places.

Factor Y is unique because of its module system. As far as I've seen, no other factory game truly has these "black-box" simulations yet, and being able to nest them makes for tons of possibilities! I would recommend it based on that alone.
There are many rough edges still to be ironed out, which the dev is working on and still active, so if you're on the fence, I would give it a few updates to cook further.
The game is totally worth the price though, as its quite a small price tag!

i had difficulty getting game to start up but devloper helped me get it up and running seems. in terms of suppor 10 out of 10 i recommend. please keep in mind this is early access so people you need to adjust your prospective.

Most of my time with this game was offline, probably 5-6 hours. When you want to build conveyor spaghetti for a while it works well.

Simple in aesthetics but a full featured factory game with tech tree, large multi-planet map and some unique features such as nesting modules. There are definitely some QoL improvements needed in some places (modules in particular), but everything works and I've not seen any bugs. You need to build everything through automation (no man running about with own crafting like Factorio). It's difficult to put into words, but sometimes a simple presentation with well thought out mechanics makes a fun game where you focus on solving the problem, and at this price it's definitely worth it if you like the genre.