Desynced
Developer Stage Games Inc.
Desynced is a sci-fi strategy game with fully customizable units and behaviors. Gather, build, research, and explore the unknown. Alone or with friends, unveil the mystery of an AI on the edge of self-awareness and uncover the hidden truth in this blend of strategy, automation, and exploration. From the Steam store page
250 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Lemmy, Mastodon) · newest Nov 5, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
132 positive · 78 negative
95% range 56–69%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 132 | 78 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 7 | 0 | 23 |
| Lemmy * | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Mastodon * | 1 | 0 | 3 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
What players are saying
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 205 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Mostly Positive (1,648 of 2,074 positive).
Players praise the unique blend of RTS and factory automation, calling it a refreshing twist. [1][2][3] Many find the steep learning curve and poor documentation frustrating, especially for the programming system. [4][5][6] Some reviewers note the game offers deep customization and creativity for those willing to experiment. [7][8][9]
- [5]
I wanted to like this game, but each of the core aspects of this game's systems fall significantly short of being fun to interact with. Like playing any automation or RTS game, you need to learn the nuances of the gameplay so that you can have a satisfying experience. You need to be able to take advantage of the tools you're given to overcome challenges. Those nuances need to be presented, or at least discoverable …
- [17]
This has to be the most tedious factory/logistics game I have ever seen. You don't build factories. You build buildings, then you build modules, then you transport the modules to the building, then you tell the module what it needs to do, then you tell a unit to bring resources to the building, then you tell a unit to take the resource from the building, then you tell the unit to move the reosurce to another …
- [1]
This is the best factory game ever! I’ve played Satisfactory, Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program, Microtopia, Foundry and more, and after 85 hours in Desynced I can confidently say that. Here’s why: - Variety. It has RTS elements. Only Factorio had something similar, but here it’s much better thought out. And if someone doesn’t like that aspect, they can simply turn on passive mode and enjoy pure factory building. …
- [4]
I gave the game a fair try, but the Behavior system feels very unique and hard to learn, especially with limited in-game explanations. The tutorial and wiki documentation weren’t enough for me, so getting things to work took a lot of trial and error. Behavior in particular is quite quirky, and the debugging tools feel limited. Even though I’m comfortable with simple programming in Python, this system felt …
- [11]
I really cannot recommend this game enough. It's quite a new and fun take on the factory builder, giving you what is usually end game ability to ignore belts and the circuitry of factory builders and get right into the systems management. It's like object orientated programming with factories. Okay, that's too nerdy, that probably turns you off of it. And it's not boring!!! It's cute little robots that do your …
Summarised from 34 of the 247 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 12, 2026. How summaries are made
Desynced sits at 63% positive across 210 opinionated reactions from 4 sources. Fresh or rotten — where do you land?
Reactions
60 of 250 · most liked firstI've never been so on-the-fence about anything in my life, the amount of times I've started writing a positive review and convinced myself it's bad while writing it is wild! This game is not... ... It's not a pure RTS ... It's not a pure manufactory game ... It's not coherent in the slightest ... It's not well documented or intuitive ... It's not supported very well either The most unique selling point of the game is the ability to script the AI of each individual unit. Out of the box you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is the best factory game ever! I’ve played Satisfactory, Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program, Microtopia, Foundry and more, and after 85 hours in Desynced I can confidently say that. Here’s why: - Variety. It has RTS elements. Only Factorio had something similar, but here it’s much better thought out. And if someone doesn’t like that aspect, they can simply turn on passive mode and enjoy pure factory building. Programing is a new dimension in the game. - Blueprints. In almost every game of this…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wanted to like this game, but each of the core aspects of this game's systems fall significantly short of being fun to interact with. Like playing any automation or RTS game, you need to learn the nuances of the gameplay so that you can have a satisfying experience. You need to be able to take advantage of the tools you're given to overcome challenges. Those nuances need to be presented, or at least discoverable by the players though. This game is a minefield of frustrations, and will…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →At it's core, this is an interesting concept of a game. I love automation games and this one has a lot of promise especially with all the programmable options for unit automation. The problem is the tutorial and documentation for all this is severely lacking. Nothing is really explained well and you are left trying to parse through a million programming options, turning to the internet, and just wasting a lot of time being frustrated because you don't even know if what you want to do is even…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted to love this game. I enjoy factory/automation games and purchased this game a long, long time ago. I was expecting 1.0 to drop a lot of changes especially in regards to programming behaviors. It didn't. Long story short, the game slows to a crawl once you hit the midgame and that's where I stopped. The beginning is fine, you expand, you find bugs, you lose some units, you build a gank squad, you kill bugs, you expand. You find the evil gas clouds and some viruses, you begin…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There are little things and big things that keep me from liking this game. Overall it feels like the idea came first and then they decided to bolt a game onto it without a good understanding of what makes a game feel good. The quality of life features that one would expect are just not there, and greatly hamper the experience. I love the idea of combining combat and RTS elements with an automation game, but for one, the bot controls are just not great. The move command is right click, but the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →In very early access the programming seemed to be easier and make sense but as the game got closer to release and in the current state I can't even get a simple program to locate nearby resources due to how every aspect of their programming logic being ambiguous, unintuitive, and having so many nitpicky details you have no access to blocking the ability for any simple logic. This seems very much in part to bad translations for the logic descriptions from some other language to English. I am…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really want to like this game, the concept is all there to make a great game. The implementation however leaves a lot to be desired, the documentation is FAR too sparse for the complexity of the scripting. Even as a professional automation engineer I find this a headache to get into and overly complicated for what they are trying to do. Some things are just very counter-intuitive without proper documentation or tutorial. After 1.0 I came back to give it a good shot after making a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I JUST REALIZED I'VE HAD A DELAY ON MY STREAM AUDIO FROM THE LAST SETUP WHERE MY MIC WAS DESYNCED ITS BEEN MONTHS OF SUBTLY OFF SYNC AUDIO ON EVERY GAME I'VE PLAYED WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME THIS WTF
neutral · AI labelView post →If the code were text-based, I would love it. I have a problem with block coding. I know what I want to do, but I can’t find the code because the method names are too bad. There are a lot of block codes mixed together, and it’s unnecessary and difficult to find the code.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This has to be the most tedious factory/logistics game I have ever seen. You don't build factories. You build buildings, then you build modules, then you transport the modules to the building, then you tell the module what it needs to do, then you tell a unit to bring resources to the building, then you tell a unit to take the resource from the building, then you tell the unit to move the reosurce to another building...... Oh, did I tell you how units work? You don't build units. You build a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So far I'm gonna give this game some time. I mean I tried for like almost 5 hours to play it , but for the life of me its just anoying having to program stuff for the logistic if you wanna be optimal. I know java , sql and python, but I don't find fun or interesting having to program in a videogame. Coming from Factorio and Dyson sphere,where the logistic can be complex, but simple as well and you have the option to make it as complex as you want. Its super easy to set up. But in Desynced,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Out of any factory game I’ve played, this game has both the lowest complexity floor and the highest complexity ceiling. If you just want a quick comparison, think factorio but you have logistic networks at the start and each machine automatically makes logistic requests for items it needs on its own without having to use any logistic chests. The complexity floor is low because the game essentially solves almost all the logistics problems for you. There is very little consideration that has…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game idea is great, it starts off pretty good, however once a few hours into the game and the base grows, that's where the inefficiencies start to show. you can only get so far into the game without adding logic coding to your bots before everything starts to slowly exponentially decay in progress. If you already know plenty of node based visual scripting to begin with. then yeah go for it, great game. if you had to google what node based visual scripting is. stayyyy awayyy from the game,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Really cool little game but... WHY are you doing anything?! Each of the tech trees are... neat, I guess? But imagine an RTS with no real enemy, and no indication of what path you should take. Do you need ALL of the tech trees? Are you supposed to choose one, like Starcraft? Is there an advantage to either? WHO KNOWS! ♥♥♥♥ YOU! That's the end state, which is a real shame, because the dev has been CONSTANTLY and consistently updating for YEARS. There's no standards, or real goals, or…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what this game is trying to be, and my conclusion is that it's several "rule-of-cool" ideas in a trench coat. The experience that I had playing it was a let-down. There's so much potential for good gameplay, but a lack of cohesion leaves me always wanting. Most of this comes from the way that the behavior system is integrated with the main gameplay. The main faction you can play, the robots, all come with integrated behavior controllers. This…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is a solid "pretty good" logistics game. It's not Factorio. It's not Microtopia, but it's more like Microtopia than Factorio, despite the high-tech look. You don't set up multimodal transport systems where distributed extraction and preprocessing centers ship big loads on specialized transports. You build dozens, eventually hundreds, of individual bots, each doing a simple job. I'll go over the cons first, because they're substantial. But if they don't immediately deter you, I urge…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I gave the game a fair try, but the Behavior system feels very unique and hard to learn, especially with limited in-game explanations. The tutorial and wiki documentation weren’t enough for me, so getting things to work took a lot of trial and error. Behavior in particular is quite quirky, and the debugging tools feel limited. Even though I’m comfortable with simple programming in Python, this system felt significantly harder and less intuitive. That said, if you strongly enjoy fully…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I know the reviews on this game aren't great, but I'm not sure what they are missing. I love playing this game. You don't need conveyers, and you don't need a million bots to move things around. You have internal transport attachments that can move things around without you any oversight. This game is tons of fun to figure out how to play it, and you can customize it to your hearts content. You just have to take a second to learn how the game works.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really enjoyed playing through Desynced, and after seeing a number of negative reviews, I wanted to provide more information for those who want to understand what this game is all about. Yes, this is a game about automation and production chains. You can complete the game without using the visual script editor, but some parts will be exhausting. Therefore, I recommend the game to those who are at least slightly familiar with programming at a basic level; the game won't turn into a job,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I've played just under a hundred hours of this game, about 1/3 of which has fallen just before and after the 1.0 release. (Meaning, I just started a brand new play-through to see all the newest changes.) I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys factory games. However, some people will enjoy it more than others. If you enjoy the ability to heavily automate things with complex behaviors, you will likely really enjoy this. However, if you are looking for a simple, "straight-forward" factory…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →ui is horrific and non-intuitive whatsoever entire base system for that game makes almost no sense for a "new" player tutorial also forces you to open the guide, in which you cannot pass the part where it wants you to C -> V to paste
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really cannot recommend this game enough. It's quite a new and fun take on the factory builder, giving you what is usually end game ability to ignore belts and the circuitry of factory builders and get right into the systems management. It's like object orientated programming with factories. Okay, that's too nerdy, that probably turns you off of it. And it's not boring!!! It's cute little robots that do your things for you, and you can set them up to do all kinds of neat things and behaviors…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has a lot to love and a lot to hate. Here is a breakdown: Lovable: - The game engine is solid. After 40 hours, I've hit no bugs nor crashes. - It is a different twist on factory games and will force you to think differently. This is frustrating at first when you expect conveyor belts and maybe inserters, but becomes a positive as you learn to think differently. - The ability to script bots is cool, but you are probably making a mistake if you find yourself doing much. That's about…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →In short: It's a crap game. The game takes everything you take for granted in other games, like "peon moves from gold mine to HQ", and makes you manually configure the behaviour of every single unit. It starts off simple, but the complexity increases, no tutorial is given, and overall it just feels like you're being punished for playing this game instead of anything else. In any other game, you want to make circuit boards? Its smelter -> make plates -> make circuits (+ a chest for crystals).…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Stopped playing because the automation felt really tedious and I couldn't be bothered to go into the programming, because everything else already seemed so unfun. There is a great concept here, but the first time player experience isn't great.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There's some interesting elements, like the extent to which you can customize units and buildings. But my overall impression--having purchased the whole game--is that it feels more like an early demo. Boring map. Barely tacked-on story. Clunky controls--especially for automation--made worse by less-than-stellar tutorials/documentation. I could put in the effort to progress further, but I have zero motivation to do so. While I'm sure some people like the game, I do not. I regret wasting…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →In general a very addictive game once you have overcome the cumbersome start. To Beginners: DONT Build storage space until you have the Shared Storage Component, just build 1:1 productions. I would recommend this to anyone, that already liked Factorio or Satisfactory and doesnt give up just because its a little bit complicated and unintuitive. It is still fun to play even though I expect much more QOL changes in the future. For a 1.0 Release I think this is mostly fine and does what was…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted to enjoy this game, but my experience was overwhelmingly frustrating. I couldn't even make it past the tutorial. The tutorial instructions are poorly written and use terminology as if the player already understands the game's mechanics, making it incredibly difficult for new players to learn. I spent nearly two hours trying to get through the tutorial before finally giving up. It's possible I encountered a bug, but regardless of the cause, the experience was so frustrating that…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is probably the most tedious game I have ever played... The in-game pointers are totally useless and annoyingly vague, you will need to rely on google/AI searches to figure out how to complete most objectives... (probably why the achievement rate is like <2% for everything across the entire community). I've completed the whole game and got every achievement with limited (non-infinite) resource nodes, but after doing that, god it really wasn't worth it... If a video-game could be a middle…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So ive been playing Desynced this week. I already got 30 hours heh. Its a mix of RTS and factory game. Its actually a lot like Warzone 2100 mixed with Factorio, and then its even more complicated. The modular buildings and units so much fun to design. You can program in logic for everything to.
positive · AI labelView post →Saddens me to say this but this is a "No". I bought this game in early access, it was clunky and clumsy and clearly in need of polish but it showed promise so I didn't refund it. Now it's 1.0, release, and it's still clunky and clumsy and in need of polish.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is not for me and that's okay, it's an interesting concept and while the gameplay feels unique in terms of management and strategy games and while the presence of this game looks great the overall gameplay feels like a choir and feels like I need a degree to understand what the game wants me to do or how to handle each tasks within the game. While there is a game tutorial it's very baseless and feels very confusing at least for me, it felt like I could not understand what it was…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Desynced hit 1.0 and sometimes a chill automation diorama with RTS mixed it is my kind of cozy game.
positive · AI labelView post →This game allows for a lot of creativity and customization: how you want to build your base, what components to slot into your units and structures, supply chains, and even custom scripts. For example, I always find myself going for a purely mobile playstyle -- I try to build as few structures as possible (even none at all). And its doable.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not at GDC but hoping I can get back to game dev this year. Psychically gorgeous composer for Highway Blossoms & Desynced. I specialize in *music for games that rocks players’ worlds *creating new IP for games and writing wildly imaginative stories (I can’t code thoooo) X #WhatAGameDevLooksLike
neutral · AI labelView post →I really wanted to like this. But playing without the "programming" is fiddly and progress is super slow. And the "programming" is so poorly explained and frustrating that I just want to scream at the screen. I started typing a long explanation with examples but I just can't. I'm done. (For the record, I have been programming as a hobby for 3 decades or so, so I thought I would be able to handle this without much issue. And maybe I could, if I gave it enough time and patience, but I would…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game feels like a very promising early access game. There's interesting core mechanics that can lead to fun gameplay, but it's also clear that large parts of the game were not thought out. It's common for the description of items to not match what they do. It's common for the documentation of things to be nonexistent (even online), leaving you to have to try fiddling with it in various situations to try and figure out what it's supposed to do. It's common for game design choices to not…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game won't appeal to everyone because there's a pretty steep learning curve, but it's a really unique and refreshing synergy between RTS and automation that has incredible depth if you're willing to dip into behavior programming even a little.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The behavior system is not explained very well. It is not intuitive at all. The basic gameplay without it is okay, but i was interested in trying my own automation. There is barely any explanation or examples of how some of the functions work. The UI takes a lot of getting used to with their "register" system. If i ignore the poor documentation and implementation of the behavior system, the core gameplay isn't that great in the hours i played. If you think you can overcome the wall of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Really tried to like it. Like really tried. But it has an unnecessary complex logistics system. Each setup requires 5-6 clicks where it gets boring. Setting up basics should not be this cumbersom. And music is repetative and after a while gets on the nerves. Would not recommend.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →GeForce NOW Thursday August 3rd. Members can look forward to the 10 new games joining this week: - F1 Manager 2023 (New release on Steam, July 31) - Bloons TD 6 (Free on Epic Games Store, Aug. 3) - Bloons TD Battles 2 (Steam) - Brick Rigs (Steam) - Demonologist (Steam) - Empires of the Undergrowth (Steam) - Stardeus (Steam) - The Talos Principle (Steam) - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (Steam) - Yet Another Zombie Survivors (Steam) And here’s what the rest of August looks…
neutral · AI labelView post →DESYNCED: Early Access Date Announcement Trailer.
neutral · AI labelView post →Not without flaws, but a very solid and fun strategy-factory game that went off the beaten path. Pros: - Non linear progression, Very Well done. - Nice scenario, multiple scenario tracks are running in parallel instead of railroading player. - Very good 'behaviour' programming, yet you can play entirely without it. - Nice varierty of modules, resources, units - Pleasant environment and good atmosphere - Exploration Cons: - Modularity feels less modular than advertised. Feels like it wasn't…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Desycned is a fun and interesting game with a lot of content and engineering challenges. My main complaint is that sometimes things feel underly documented and the wiki is out of date and unhelpful. That being said there is something compelling about the game I keep coming back for, despite fustration. I think the game would be pretty tedious if you are not interested in using behaviors.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Factorio and Autonauts in one, except worse than either one. Game started decent but quickly became a horrendous grind... somewhere halfway into the alien tree the entire game just turned into resource finder 101. My swarms of miners were mining out resource patches in literal minutes and the entire game was spent just searching for new patches to feed them. Doesn't help that the enemies are sufficiently hard that you can't automate clearing them or the losses would be too punitive to even…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is a scam. It is, at best, in a tech demo state. The game is empty and pointless; it tries to hide its emptiness with time gates: 2000s "research" only to unlock the next 3000s "research." Components produce for 60 real-time seconds, and you need them in the hundreds. You get the vibe. There are no threats or challenges. You just mine resources on a primitive, randomized map to spend them on "research." I thought it was some integrated tutorial. Maybe, after some research, bugs…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There's a lot of interesting concepts that this factory game is trying out, especially with drones and how thoroughly you can control your factory. The problem is that it's just dull. It's a whole lot of "hurry up and wait" and unlike in Factorio, there's not really anything else you can focus on while you're waiting. And even while you are waiting for stuff to happen, some event may come along which will slow down your progress even further. Unfortunately I can't see any cure for this…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm a big fan of factory games and I cannot recommend this. The core production mechanics are really boring. It's a painfully slow game. The interface and game lack a lot of polish. For your money there are much better games out there in this genre.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really really like the idea of this game with programming of bots but the game really just needs QOL features redone. Still glad I bought it as I got over ten hours of entertainment and I am hoping that more games like this get released. I just don't feel that it quite got there.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The idea of modular buildings and units was promising, but everything in this game is so poorly explained and janky. I like puzzles, I'm a programmer by trade, but the descriptions in the game are just so lackluster. I don't mind debugging why the robots misbehave, but there are no tools to debug with. I didn't even get to exploring the programming aspect (which they say is optional), but I can't imagine it's any better.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I've put a lot of time into Desynced. I've enjoyed it, in some aspects. If all you're looking for is a factory builder that you can sink hours to, this is not a terrible game for that. However, I would also recommend you look to other entries in the genre, as there is little to recommend Desynced over its competitors, and plenty of rough edges that mar the experience. The good: 1. RTS-style Factory builder. Control a swarm of units even from the start. The game can be played start to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Excellent complex factory game. I see a lot of negative reviews that are simply "skill issue". The game tries to be completable without programming, but it will be very tedious if you don't use its MAIN MECHANIC. Also, you need to experiment A LOT, as the game lacks much documentation, but I think it is part of the fun having to try what works. Despite having a lot of content (>50 hours), there is plenty of room for improvement; the alien and human "new game +" should add something more. The…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Let me first mention that I don't think its a bad game. In fact, its have very nice things in this game. I think what its all boil down to is pure high dissapointment, I think this game could have been more. I bought and played the EA when its came out in 2023 and I had a lot of fun. There was a lot of things not 'completed' , but I did what I could then and had a blast. Now the game 'pop' in 1.0 and I was excited to go back to it, started a new game, still lots of fun ! until you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted to like this game but this way they did the automation is so bad that the Youtuber community that makes tutorials for games like these has nothing for this game except 2 year old outdated vague nonsense where you can tell even THEY don't understand how it works...as it stands this game needs some serious tutorials because I don't wanna spend my life or time developing the "skill" to translate your UI into something legible...also using up a "utility" slot that could be a laser…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Sure it doesn't make any sense if you try to fit it into a model of every other game out there, its not a factory game, its not an rts, not in the classic sense. I think that's what makes this game so unique. I love the fact that I can build what is essentially a mobile factory to pump out vehicles for any purpose I want, building more units to fight a sustained battle, replenish, or just explore. The possibilities of configurations of your units, buildings and everything else in between, is…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very fun, I generally have no idea what I'm doing but I'm having a blast doing it! Important note: The game is not confusing I am just a buffoon
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The tutorial is awful. All you need to do to make a tutorial is limit what people can do so they only have the buttons you want to teach them and add more buttons as you introduce each feature. DO NOT PUT PAGES OF TEXT and a bunch of confusing robots on the screen and expect people to figure out what is being explained.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Even with the 1.0 release the seed gen for the initial conditions are sketchy at best. I've just run 10 new starts with different seeds and was no crystal within any sort of reasonable distance. Having to keep rerolling every time hoping for basic starting conditions seems like a poor requirement for a game that has been in EA for 2+ years and just released.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is amazing. The learning curve is steep but the game allows you to do most functions in a very simple way. Lots of people claiming it is too complicated are probably trying to learn all the features from the offset. Start simple and use the more advanced functions like programming once you become more familiar and want to use fine control. The game allows so much micromanagement but doesn't force it upon you I haven't tried multiplayer or pvp yet but I can see so much potential for really…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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