Craftomation 101: Programming & Craft
You land on a frozen planet in a tiny rocket with a robot inside. Harvest and combine materials to discover new ones. Use visual programming to make the robot do the tiresome work for you. Slowly build a gang of self-sustaining robot workers and watch them terraform the planet.
Craftomation 101: Programming & Craft is a education, automation and sandbox game
developed and published by Luden.io.
Released on February 19th 2024 is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux
in 32 languages: English, Russian, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, Korean, Polish, Portuguese - Portugal, Simplified Chinese, Spanish - Latin America, Traditional Chinese, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese - Brazil, Romanian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Hebrew and Malay.
It has received 480 reviews of which 412 were positive and 68 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.0 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 9.75€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Craftomation 101: Programming & Craft into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Craftomation 101: Programming & Craft through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows Vista / 7 / 8 / 10 / 11
- Processor: 1.2 GHz
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000, OpenGL 2.0+
- DirectX: Version 9.0
- Storage: 100 MB available space
MacOS
- OS: macOS 10.13+
- Processor: 1.2 GHz
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000, OpenGL 2.0+
- Storage: 100 MB available space
Linux
- OS: Ubuntu 16.04+, SteamOS
- Processor: 1.2 GHz
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000, OpenGL 2.0+
- Storage: 100 MB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This is a game of 2 halves. Firstly, there is a very attractive, amusing, entertaining new world to colonise with robots called Craftomates. Secondly, there is the "world" of programming; your Craftomates prepare the planet for colonisation. This involves the extracting resources and then combining them to make things like more bonfires, metal ingots, etc. and even more Craftomates. I came to this game as someone who is not used to programming other than a bit of VBA code a long time ago and coding in the game Autonauts. I found that it is possible to complete the objectives of the current game by having lots of Craftomates simply programmed. As might be expected' the game has goals (production of new items) and rewards (the release of new programming elements and new physical items). I think I only used about a 1 in 10 of the programming elements. Thus the goals/reward system didn't have a lot of purpose. I have yet to work out what the purpose of the game is. Either it is for experienced programmers who can utilise the many functions that are available (in elegant and sophisticated ways) and/or it is a tool to teach programming to newcomers. If the latter then there really does need to be some "class handouts" with examples what functions, variables, etc. are and how they should and could be used. Simple definitions do not suffice. This will not ruin the game for beginners but actually enhance the gaming experience. Yes, there is 3rd party material on YouTube, etc. kindly created by users but understandably these are generally out of date because of game updates. I think the developers are the ones who could create up-to-date and effective "class handouts". It would be most welcome and might encourage more people to buy the game. It is worth mentioning that some people "think visually" and thus a picture of some code is worth a 1,000 words! I think the game requires, in the short term, at least 1 or 2 new maps to increase the longevity of the game. I really like this game, I enjoy playing it, I thoroughly enjoyed the Xmas candy sticks and would welcome something similar each month, and the Craftomate World seems to work without glitches. I also like sitting back and just watching the Craftomates do their thing - it is very relaxing. Whilst I think the learning curve required for in-depth programming is far too steep for programming novices I am happy to play the game at more rudimentary level. I am glad the thorns have gone! I certainly would recommend the game 100% and is extremely good value for the price.
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This is another game which comes fairly "neutral" to me, so could be close to thumbs up or down. The devs also encourage feedback through their discord. Although unfortunately, it's exclusive to those who have verified their phone numbers, so some people might be left in the lurch. ======================= Overall, it looks like it's supposed to be an edu-tainment game. Though not entirely sure, as I feel you already need to know programming to actually access it. You get little robots to program, they automate tasks, game progresses. In theory. ======================= In practice, it hitches slightly too much for that to work exactly. Powering the robots is a finite resource. This makes it feel "bad" (anxiety-inducing) to actually use them, and instead you can do things 'manually'. Manually mass crafting fires. Manually powering them to 'explore' all tiles. Manually progressing the game. Meanwhile your robots are waving at you like "Hey! Look at me!" in a very annoying manner, even with the game paused. This is clearly not the intended design, so something's gone wrong along the line somewhere. The obvious "knee-jerk" reaction is to remove all manual commands, but this doesn't address the underlying problem. More on that later. There are also other gripes, but let's switch to the positives. ======================= - Make your little guys DO stuff. The game has a functioning set of commands. They make sense, and are small enough to define what you want to happen. But not too small, such that you're sat there 'programming' for hours before anything magical happens. This is quite a hard balance to strike, and I feel this game does it really well. Not only that, it's something that's quite rare, and I'm actively looking for more of. If nothing else, this means it can be used to teach programming in an engaging way. Even if the game doesn't manage to do it on its own yet. - Entertaining There are enough moving parts and challenges to keep me entertained at least for a little while. - Solid foundations When I was struggling to find the parts from which I wanted to make the next logic section, I found them in the upgrades tab. Meaning it's been thought about, and expanded on. - Growing You can also see that the game has evolved since earlier stages. Eg: There is a robot specifically made to carry part-filled storage boxes - since you CAN'T do those manually (idle "give me something to do" notwithstanding grumble grumble). ======================= What I would like to see: - Modding Because I could then mod out any minor gripes that I have. As well as letting others add more content (eg: Bob's mods for Factorio) - A way to stop you accidentally 'brick'ing your save. Maybe a "low power" mode where basic robots still work, but very slowly. Or infinite power resource near the start, but that extracts very slowly too. Heck, maybe even one at the edge of the map. So long as it doesn't run out. Maybe change the concept of "finite power bricks" in to "building power centers" where the robots can come charge up every so often. Maybe even a way to 'undo' upgrades. If it's a sandpit, you should be able to keep playing in it. If it's not, there should be a concrete end-goal where the player leaves the game satisfied after the mad dash. Currently, it feels like neither is the case. But such is the way of in-progress games I guess. - A better way of teaching. Currently, the tutorial steps you through how the game works. Which is effective enough** at teaching you things about the game. However, this misses the point of teaching programming as a concept. Eg: If you have 10 robots mining, all with the same 10 sets of basic instructions, I'd like the game to tell you about how to encapsulate that in a function. If you have them mining in different spots, maybe suggest to the player that there are 'location variables' that can be used, and modify the one you already have. This could also become equally too-hand-holdey, or distracting. So thinking about how to implement it to not be intrusive will take some time and effort (and maybe a few attempts). But well worth it. ======================= Final word: I feel like my rating has less to do with how "viable" the game is of its own accord, in its current state (I barely have any hours played in it), And more with the clash of me wanting the devs to read my feedback, and wanting the game to succeed If you're looking to play it yourself, it might be worth a shot, but equally might not. I'd advise trying the demo before buying. That way you avoid the hassle of refunding As for me, I'm gonna keep it, and try get some people hooked on programming. See how it goes. Hope you all have a good one!
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really good solid coding crafting game. lots of unique scenarios created by my terrible code and required alot of cool problem solving to work around. this game is everything i wanted and more. the code starts simple but gets more and more and more complex. this game is so much more than "scratch code minecraft" and gets genuenly difficult the further you get in. do not listen to the reviews just calling it scratch code minecraft. i dont know what they were expecting and i think they just dont like the concept of needing to code the sequence for automation or theyre just dumb lmfao
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Fantastic game if you enjoy programming, robots, and puzzles. What makes this game unique is how it incorporates writing your own functions. For instance, a function can be written to make a fire, then another function can be written to smith a steel ingot using (inheriting) the function to make fire. I look forward to the coming updates and would love to see a few more language elements added such as classes and networking as well as new crafting content and buildings to the world to interact with. As is, the game is well worth your time especially if you are learning how to program or are just a hobbyist that enjoys playing with little virtual robots.
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love the game. it almost feels a bit like Lego robotics and it's a great introduction to the concept of programming using a style that's very forgiving. i heard somewhere that they wanted feedback so i thought i might share some ideas. 1) user maps. although this would be a pretty big update, I would definitely be excited to check out what the community makes, and maybe even see a variety of competitions. 2) multiplayer. this game does a pretty good job not making you feel lonely playing by yourself on its own, but I also would very much enjoy playing this with friends with different strategies from mine. learning to work as a team would even be a challenge in itself as well. (if you do implement this though, i think the robots programming should be visible to teammates, but user functions should be hidden from them, that way the players can hide some strategies if they so choose)
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 22 January 2025 16:43 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 20 January 2025 19:08 |
| Steam price | 22 January 2025 20:50 |
| Steam reviews | 21 January 2025 08:08 |
