Dyson Sphere Program is an early access game produced by Chinese Studio Youthcat Games. These factors didn’t really incite a lot of confidence in me whenever I was first looking at the game, but playing it now I can say that this game is absolutely insane.

For an early access game, there is such an immense amount of content here. The developers stated that one run-through would take anywhere from 50-100 hours and they were correct. There are so many items, buildings, and recipes to optimize and automate that I imagine that I’m going to be playing this game way past the estimated time frame.

The objective of the game is to build a dyson sphere, a hypothetical megastructure that completely encapsulates a star to harness all of the energy that it puts out. The game doesn’t treat this as some external event that you just start and have no control over, you are in direct control of this immense structure and every other planet in the game. The tech tree to reach this point is full of fun little features as well such as interstellar travel, an automatic logistics system, and speed and flight upgrades. But not every part of this game is perfect.

The three things that really bother me about this game are the reliance on clicking instead of hotkeys, the unpolished state of the assets, and the lack of a community wiki. Although the first two could be fixed by the developers, the last one is going to have to be made by the community. Seeing how this game is only a couple of days old at the time of writing, there’s a little while to go before that happens.

The reliance on clicking, however, is completely unnecessary. Although this game was made by a team on the opposite side of the world, I’d imagine that allowing players to choose what keys perform what commands is customary and that adding this to the game should have been one of the first steps taken. The unpolished state of the assets is also aggravating. From a distance, things in this game look amazing. But as soon as you get close, the amateur 3-D models and lack of animations is bothersome.

Despite the lack of polish, this game already has more content than Factorio in its most current release and I can’t wait to play more of it. Dyson Sphere Program is a very solid 9/10.