Hey mates! We won't waste too much time on introductions this time, as the elephant in the room needs to be addressed to: Craftomation 101 is coming to Early Access on Steam on February 19, 2024! Save the date! Tell a friend! Plan a vacation, maybe? And by all means, check out our brand-new trailer: [previewyoutube=NQv6b22HTeE;full][/previewyoutube]

Things to do before the Early Access

Play the demo, to help you spend time weating! And if you like the game, please consider adding Craftomation 101 to your wishlist. It shows Steam that the game is interesting to potential players, making the game visible to more gamers out there. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1724140/Craftomation_101/ It will come in handy for you too, as you'll get notified once the game is out and whenever there's a discount on it. Bottom line: adding Craftomation 101 to your wishlist is an anonymous, one-click way to encourage us to continue our work. Everyone's a winner!

Demo vs. Early Access: the nitty-gritty stuff

All this time, we were doing our best to keep the demo in line with our in-house version. We updated the graphics and added all the UI/UX improvements that we made throughout the past year - and the two years through our development journey:

We were telling you about all the new things in the main version - we did that so much, that we almost forgot what we started with back in January '23, when the demo was out! But here's the time to review all those awesome things we can't wait for you to play with:

• Bigger map to explore & the final goal: wake up the mighty Dormant Volcano
• New Commands for Craftomates: counters, tending to organics, and more
• More types of organics and more ways to interact with it: like brewing Speedy Ale, and even Wakey Ale in an automated (craftomated?) Brewery
• Cargomate: the best kind of Craftomates for delivering bulks of items to distant parts of the map

All in all, the game now has 10+ hours of content, as opposed to 1-2 hours in the demo! Of course, we don't plan to stop there. That's Luden.io's development style: we release games to Early Access with about 30% of our ideas there, then listen to what our players have to say and continue developing based on that feedback. A couple of days back, we got a comment on a Reddit post:
The honest answer would be: we don't have anything like that on our minds, but we don't know how things will turn up, once the players get to it! It's the magic of video games: there's no way to succeed if your players do not enjoy our work! So please, share your impressions with us: write a comment, or come straight to our Discord server! And we'll get back to the usual stuff: telling you what we've been up to in the past month and a half! Oh, but wait! Not that we have kill, maim, destroy part in the game, but we did allow Craftomates to pick up each other and more: [previewyoutube=EZhNy8-k6Rc;full][/previewyoutube]

What's new?

Since you'll get to see all that stuff in less than a month, we'll try and keep things short this time. First, remember that Gearbox feature, that allows you to balance the speed and energy consumption for your Craftomates? Here it is now, looking sharper than ever: We have also added a grid to the programming editor, for your convenience! As seen in Unreal Engine (kind of). Snapping commands to the grid is something we're still experimenting with at the moment. We're not sure that they're a keeper yet - how do you like them, by the way? [previewyoutube=JyR5jb_TpWY;full][/previewyoutube] While we were testing the game, some major QoL issues were detected and fixed. For example, reaching the Sulfur source also grants a shortcut to your main base. Previously you had to melt it out yourself, risking that the sole path between the two parts of your base will freeze while you're not looking. Not anymore:
Some other small yet important changes were made around the Sulfur source and the new content that comes with it, but we wouldn't bore you with tedious details, not in this edition of our diaries! Just remember that Craftomation 101 is going through some very profound testing & polishing at the moment. Oh, and as part of it, we also have cloud saves in the game now, yay! They're coming to the demo soon, too.

What's Next?

Lots of bug fixing, some post-release feature planning, and a handful of beautiful things for you! At this moment, we're working on redesigning the progress tree:
We're also working on adding more matching colors to the palette of Cratomates looks:
That big meta interface for Craftomates management is one of the things that didn't make it to our Early Access list of features, but we'll see how things turn out once the game is released: maybe existing ways of distinguishing Craftomates will be enough. If not, we'll get back to that issue in one of the following updates. The big day is coming! See you in February, mates!