Satisfactory

I've adored what I've played of Satisfactory, but I've held off on delving too deeply into Coffee Stain's extraordinary automation extravaganza. See, I know that it's going to obliterate my social life for at least a month, because that's what factory sims do. Hence, it only seems fair that I bring my partner on that glorious adventure of social self-destruction. Yet our only other PC in the house is a Steam Deck, and up until now handheld Satisfactory has been a suboptimal experience due to its mouse-heavy control scheme.

As of Satisfactory's recent 1.1 update, however, this has now changed. The update adds an array of new features to the game's sprawling tangle of conveyor belts, including an overhauled photo mode and a buildable personnel elevator. But the most exciting addition for me is proper controller support, which also applies to Valve's handheld PC.

I took the update for a brief spin on my Steam Deck, and the difference is immediately apparent. Menus are now easily navigable with the analogue stick, no longer requiring you to faff around with the trackpad. Moreover, placing construction units like assemblers and drawing out conveyor belts seems far more intuitive than it was.

I should note that Satisfactory still doesn't feel like a game designed with Steam Deck in mind. Mainly, you still need to squint a bit to read the menu and HUD text, likely why Satisfactory isn't Deck verified yet. But "playable" is a much more accurate description now, and I can see myself having a good time building my dream industrial complex while slouched on my sofa or curled up in bed.

(Image credit: Coffee Stain)

This is far from the only change the update makes, though. As mentioned, Coffee Stain has wiped the lens of its photo mode, adding numerous extra filters, effects, poses and so forth, as well as a "dolly mode" that lets players create "small transitions and videos or anything your creativity allows" as Coffee Stain explains in a recent Steam post.

Elsewhere, debris from crash sites can be dismantled for extra resources, while trains now need a buffer placed at the end of the line to stop them from flying off the tracks. There's a litany of new features for resource transportation, such as "priority mergers" which let you prioritise which active inputs should feed out onto the belt first, as well as a throughput monitor that tracks the number of resources rolling along a belt per-minute. Oh, and pipelines now have specific "straight" and "curved" build modes, helping you organise your pipework.

Finally, there's that personnel elevator you can construct for speedy vertical transportation. This apparently enables players to create as many floor stops as they desire, customising the name of each floor as they go. I look forward to the community testing this to its limits, and attempting to build a personnel elevator to rival Satisfactory's space elevator.

Alongside these key additions, the update brings several visual updates, quality-of-life improvements, and bugfixes. "It’s no exaggeration to say this update includes more than a year's worth of work," Coffee Stain writes. Some of this work is in preparation for the game's console launch, which is due later this year. But you can enjoy the 1.1 update on PC (and Steam Deck) right now.

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