Main Assembly is great, it is a vehicle maker physics challenge game with co-op… but if you stifle a yawn and think “I have trailmakers/other equivalent and meh do I need another?” the answer is yes, you definitely do!
Main Assembly is fundametally different, what makes it stand out from the pack is that you can easily mold 3d surfaces so the game ends up playing more like a powerful intuitive 3d modelling program than yet another iteration on a vehicle lego-style block building sandbox game.
Surfaces of wings are physically modeled in their contribution to lift, they arent just cosmetic, and it is this kind of thing that makes Main Assembly simultaneously a sophisticated simulation and and immediately tactile and intuitive experience.
Controls are superb on the deck, I recommend using fmCUK’s “Usable V0.2” as a basis for a control scheme, most everything felt surprisingly intuitive given how generalist and powerful the tools are in Main Assembly.
Seriously good game, take advantage of the fact that it flew under the radar, pick it up for cheap, heck buy a copy for a friend so you have someone to play with!
My takeaway here is that I need to play Trailmakers if I haven’t already.
Trailmakers is definitely very solid too, the building philosophies between the games are quite different but they are both great games.
I think it is a testament to trailmakers that it doesn’t feel hamfisted in comparison to main assembly, rather it feels like an intentionally limited construction set carefully tuned to environmental challenges in order to make tweaking fun, feel approachable and give permission to make subpar monstrosities and just wing it, tweaking as you go.
It fits the theme of trailmakers better than I realized at first. You crash land on a planet while crewing a dime-a-dozen corporate freighter. The technology you have access to from the wreckage is extraordinarily powerful but functions in very rigid systemized ways partially to allow crafting a wide variety of interoperable and compatible components but also partially because a soulless space megacorp made them lol. That being said, it feels like a fun freeing limitation in a way that emulates the play of legos well.