TheCraft
A downloadable game for Windows
THECRAFT - early version 0.02
You start with a small Starter ship, a home base and an empty belt of asteroids.
Plan what you want to build, fly out, mine the ore it needs, and bring it home -
your base refines it into ingots, assembles the parts, and you bolt them onto your ship.
Bigger ship, bigger drills, more ore. That's the craft.
WHAT YOU DO
- Fly a 6-degrees-of-freedom ship: thrust in every direction, turn with the mouse,
roll with Q / E. Every thruster on your ship actually pushes it - no thruster
pointing a way means no movement that way.
- Mine asteroids block by block. Ore hides inside stone as coloured veins that
light up as your drill cuts in. Iron, copper, nickel, silicon, titanium, crystal and ice.
- Use your ore radar to find what you need - it outlines the nearest block of ore
your plan still needs, and a pointer line shows where it is even when it's off screen.
- Build your ship part by part in the ship builder: thrusters, drills, gyroscopes,
cargo blocks, cockpit, lights, radars and scanners, all placed on the hull.
- Run your home base: refineries turn ore into ingots, assemblers turn ingots into
parts (MK1, MK2 and up), solar panels and hydrogen engines power it all.
- Plan first, build later: place the parts you want as blue ghosts, confirm the plan,
and your base gathers and assembles everything for it. The planner shows exactly
how much ore, how many ingots and which parts are still missing.
FEATURES
- Getting-started tips that walk you through your first plan, flight, mining trip and build
- Planner with progress bars for every ore, ingot and part
- Ship builder with undo / redo, mirror mode for symmetric ships, and a delete mode
that lets you mark parts before removing them
- Home base that keeps working while you're out flying
- All music and sound effects are made by code - no audio files
- Fully offline, no account needed
CONTROLS (flight)
W / S - forward / back A / D - left / right
Space / C - up / down Mouse - turn, Q / E - roll
1-9 - switch parts on / off (drill on 1, radar on 2)
R - what the radar looks for V - cockpit / chase camera
Tab - free the mouse Ctrl - ship menu
F - flight assist F2 - plan helper
H - dock / undock at your home base
F1 - show all controls F11 - fullscreen / window
M / N / L - music: mute / next / song list
EARLY VERSION
This is version 0.01 - an early build to try the core loop. Expect rough edges,
missing features and balance changes. Your feedback helps shape what comes next!
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
Comments
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bigger ship, bigger drills, more ore honestly sold me immediately, and thrusters only working if they actually point the right way is such a nice detail. quick one does the ore radar only track what your current plan needs, or can you also just use it to scout around? mining block by block with the veins lighting up sounds weirdly satisfying too!
With radar you can choose what you want to look for with R key or Ctrl key which opens Part Control. So you can definitely scout around looking for ore you need even without plan.
ohh that's really useful!! i like that u can scout for specific resources even when you're not following a build plan it makes exploration feel like its own part of the gameplay. did u come up with the radar system early in development, or was it something u added after testing how mining felt?
I added it later, slight guiding in games can feel very nice. Well realistically game is not even one week old and I added Radar on day three I think. I share progress on X too https://x.com/JackpotSeek Might need to do it on youtube also if this catches more traffic.
the game is less than a week old and u already added radar on day three? that's actually impressive haha btw, i've really enjoyed chatting with u about your games haha would u be comfy continuing our little game dev convo on another platform except X as i dont have it? no pressure at all if you'd rather stay here!
Thank you. I would rather keep convos here for now atleast. Maybe I should make group chat for discord in future, I will see.