Production Line conveyor belts into early access

The upcoming tycoonist car factory game Production Line [official site] has been travelling along the development assembly line since its announcement in September last year, getting bits and pieces welded on by creator Positech. Now it's ready for the next phase. The giant machine-like claws of Steam early access are waiting to tear it asunder and put it back together again from May 18. “This also signifies that I think the game is ‘good enough’ at its current state to be considered an Early Access title,” says developer Cliffski, who in this metaphor is, like, a foreman with a high-vis jacket or something. Here's a wee trailer.

“Efficiency is everything!” That's exactly what Graham makes us shout three times in unison every morning at our desks. You’ll be tooling cars together in the best-but-also-cheapest-but-also-fastest way that you possibly can. It’s all about micromanagement, twiddling with the supply chain, the factory layout, and so on. As such, it's aimed at the tinkering tycooners that enjoy other management sims like Big Pharma (another Positech-published game).

It has already been playable to an alpha crowd for some time, we should note, so this is more of a formal launch into Steam’s wider pool of potential players, which Cliffski admits will bring both benefits and drawbacks.

“Releasing to EA will no doubt swallow up a lot of time dealing with new tech support questions and how to play questions etc,” he says, “which may slow the pace of new features and bug fixes slightly, but hopefully not too badly.”

That doesn't sound very efficient, Cliff! EFFICIENCY IS EVERYTHING.