Craftopia is a jack of all trades; master of none. It boasts crafting, farming, dungeon-exploring, hunting, automation, monster taming, and all the things! It is everything all rolled into one!
But does it deliver?
So far, at the beginning of the game, still wearing my rose-coloured glasses -- yes, yes it does.
The character creator, the first thing I judge any new game by, is semi-decent.
You can choose to be an elf, human, or demon. There are many hairstyles and hair colours, and there are a few anime faces to place upon your person. It would be nice if 'eyebrow colour' was on the same page as hairstyle/colour though.
After a short cutscene where we destroy the world, we awaken on this small idyllic island.
After punching a few trees, I have enough material to make a workbench, and after punching a few rocks, I have enough material to make a pickaxe, axe, and wooden stick to attack my foes with!
It's pretty much like every other survival-craft when it comes to crafting.
Although one thing that's different compared to others -- I can make my own glider! Now I can fly around the island and see what's what.
While spiffy, I probably won't really use the glider unless we find some land somewhere that is significantly larger. I prefer to walk for the most part in these types of games, there are even some MMOs I prefer to walk in! The Elder Scrolls Online, for instance. Why mount up when I'm constantly going to dismount to gather crafting reagents?
Your inventory is pretty sizeable! There are separate areas in your inventory for consumables, gathering materials, building materials, and just general things like your weapons/tools/clothes.
Which is a good thing, because the couple of chests we've crafted so far can only hold 8 items. Very small. I'm assuming we can craft larger storage chests later... I sure hope so, at least.
Apparently either my partner or myself had an accident too, and just left it sitting on the beach. 👀 I'm pretty sure my person would've dug it under the sand, so I blame my partner.
Here is an image of my lady just staring at it in disgust.
After exploring the island, I discovered two fancy looking portal things, both of which were guarded by bears. After dispatching the bears, I raced into the first one without waiting for my partner. Not realising this thing was technically a dungeon.
This first "dungeon" wasn't quite what I expected! There was a lady in the front room and she had a red bar underneath her name, so I automatically assumed she was an enemy and started attacking her.
Woops.
Turned out she was just the lady who tells me what this place is and what to do.
So I go further in and find a line of hoverboards. Apparently I need to get to the end before the timer ran out, so I jumped onto one and zooooooomed through the twisted corridors until I reached the end. And made it with 43 seconds to spare, woo! Which was quite the feat considering that hoverboard was insane to control.
My rewards for completing the dungeon were a bunch of chests with various random things in them. And that's when I discovered this dungeon was now complete, it was not something we could repeat, and I did it without my partner. 😅 Woops. I promised I'd wait for him for the next dungeon.
While waiting, I made myself a fishing rod and headed for the water.
Fishing is very easy. You can only fish in the pools, not in open water. Just click to cast, then as soon as the line ducks under water click again! And the fish you've just caught will go flying through the air and you have to run over and collect it wherever it landed.
Physics are amusing in this game. 😅
Finally we went into the next dungeon. This one was more typical with plenty of enemies to attack and with a boss to fight at the end.
The boss was some giant robot construct with laser eyes. Hitting its body only dealt 1HP of damage, but hitting its head or a blue orb in its belly dealt a good 200HP of damage. It's good to know that creatures in this have weak points that you need to aim for and not just go ham.
And now, with the dungeon complete, we were able to summon some magic upon a transportation stone and go to the next area. After cooking up a feast.
I think my main criticisms with this game so far are just simple little nit-picky things.
For instance, sometimes you'll press '3' which has the pickaxe on it, but it won't actually equip, and you'll be trying to mine with your sword or something because your action to equip the pickaxe didn't work.
It's also hard to tell when things have finished being crafted or cooked. There is a ring around the item being worked on, and it's supposed to fill up yellow as progress is made... however, that yellow ring only shows up maybe a quarter of the time. So it'll still say 0/1 but it IS actually ready and you can just grab it.
I find that annoying.
And I think your character levels up far too quickly.
There is a sizeable skill tree to go through for various parts of the game -- surviving, combat, building, etc. And you can put multiple points into the one thing. But you seriously level up far too quickly. You get XP for building, gathering, attacking creatures, doing everything. As you complete minor objectives you also get rewarded skill points. We're on the second island and I'm up to my ears in skill points!! Slow it down a bit. 🤣
Another annoyance is that two people can't use the same workstation at one time. Ugh. I mean, I'll probably build my own house at some point too, but at the moment we're sharing. It's easier.
And also! It looks like you need to build a new base every time you go to the next area... so what's the point in building up a super amazing base if you're just going to move on? I guess that'll need to wait til we get to the last area?
Anyway, I'm enjoying it and will probably play it for a bit longer. I'm not so sure my partner will want to continue with it since survivalcraft isn't exactly his most favourite genre, so I'll need to start over again (he was hosting the world). But that's fine with me, since my first time playing is what I usually consider my trial run. 😅
We've only just reached the second area so we're still so very, very early on in the game and haven't experienced even half of what the game proclaims to offer. We still haven't created any farms, or thrown orbs at creatures to tame them and keep them as our own. There are so many vehicles to create too, like planes and motorbikes.
So much stuff!
It's, unfortunately, an early access title which I'm usually leery of, but hey, I haven't spent any money on it. Thanks, Gamepass.
You can find it on the Steam Store here!
Until next time! 💩
