Looking Good, Mates! - Craftomation 101 Dev Diaries, February 2025

Hey, mates!

Today, we'd like to talk about New Year's resolutions. We know it's almost the end of February, but time flies! Besides, we actually made our resolutions back in December. At that time, Ivan the programmer was coming up with a big plan of features and tweaks we'd like to introduce to Craftomation 101 before the v1.0 release.

We already mentioned certain ideas from this master plan in our previous piece but we have developed these ideas since, and had them entered in a document - that's how serious we are! Here, we've even made a (quite literally) shiny new art for the Steam page:

Here's the old one, so you can compare them and see that we mean business:

Below, you will find some highlights from our list of next features. Some of them are definitely making their way to the game. Others still need to be tested to make sure they're fun. But we're equally excited to try out all of them, and we hope you'll have a fun ride along with us!

Some things that (most likely) will appear in Craftomation 101 before v1.0

• There are plans to replace the Sulfur source with an entity codenamed Research Center. Details will follow. Some day
• More programming tools, definitely: conditional searching, debugging, advanced interaction between CraftoMates, global Variables, and much more
• The Brewery will become mobile and more compact
• Brewable items will become applicable to heating elements, organics, and maybe some other stuff on the map
• Unique heating elements in each climate zone
• New Storage mechanics: limited Storage capacity, an ability to rename Storage units and empty them quickly. We don't yet know if it will be fun to play; we'll discuss it with you when it's there!
• Dynamite and the ability to throw items
• Fishing (because it makes everything better)
• Flying CraftoMate (AirMate? FlyingMate? The name is TBD, send your ideas to our Discord server!)

We're also experimenting with new animations, details of which we're not yet ready to share… however, we can show some WiP stuff instead:

But you know how New Year's resolutions are: sometimes they don't get done. That said, this list is not a commitment, just an array of features from our to-do plan. It will be fun to check on this list again in a year or so and see how things will have turned out!

What is definitely happening - is the new look for the UI. Finally, we have moved on from making our own efforts and called an actual UI/UX designers, so now they're making this:

New Dev in Town

Please welcome Andrei, our newest mate on the team, helping us push Craftomation 101 beyond the current boundaries! Here's his short bio:

Name: Andrei Fenderov
Occupation: programming, prototyping
Works on: experimenting with web platforms and potential next games concepts
Favorite games: disco elysium, outer wilds, minecraft, cyberpunk, the talos principle
Favorite IDE: coding directly in Defold, because it's easier to switch between working with in-game objects and writing the code. Outside of work, it's VSCode
What makes a good game: Who knows! I like it when the game allows you to feel as part of a fantasy world, no matter the way - be it the means of gameplay or the good connection between the art and the sound, or the fascinating story
Other interests: painting, crafting silly presents, cooking, hanging out with cool people!

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The year is young, and we have lots of things we'd like to improve in Craftomation 101. Thanks for being with us, and please: don't hesitate to share your thoughts about the game, the Universe, and everything.

Until we meet again!