Craftopia begins with the implosion of a planet. You are told that the planet is Earth, and that you are responsible for its destruction. (I’m not quite sure if that “you” means your character specifically or humanity in general — more on that later.) Thankfully, you have the chance to begin anew. You can start fresh on a new planet and create the world of your dreams.
The setting feels apt, because Craftopia is a world in its early stages. The game, which just entered Early Access on September 4th, clearly has a long road ahead. In fact, when you load up the game, you’re greeted with a long message about the development plan:
You’ll also find messages and apologies about missing content scattered throughout the game — in the settings, within the tips that appear on loading screens, even in the character creator. “Please be patient,” seems to be the general theme of Early Access. The developers, Pocket Pair, are clearly aware that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.
That’s not to say that the current version of Craftopia is lacking in content, or that the game’s incredible trailer is a complete bait-and-switch. The current version of the game may be lacking, but there’s still a huge, beautiful world to explore, dungeons to fight through, plants to farm, and weird cow assembly lines to build. I have yet to take it for a proper spin, but one of the very first items I was able to craft was the Breath of the Wild-esque glider featured in the trailer.
However, the game feels clunky and far from being finished, even for an Early Access game. The machine-translated text has resulted in some genuinely funny moments — at one point I had a quest to “Eat raw meat and learn what danger is” — but it can also make the game difficult to comprehend.
One tutorial told me that “When it collected from wood and stone, all right even long press.” The writing for the main scenario is significantly less garbled, but I really don’t know humans destroyed Earth through their own folly or if I’m playing as a world-ending terrorist that’s decided to retire.
Thankfully, Pocket Pair does seem dedicated to improving Craftopia. Since the game entered Early Access, there have already been multiple updates, and it looks like there are many more on the horizon. The devs also run an very active official Discord channel where players can ask questions, leave feedback, vote in polls, and get help when they need it.
I’m not sure how much time I’ll spend with Craftopia at this point in the game. So far, I’ve had fun running around and completing quests, but I can’t see myself sinking too much time until things are a little more polished. Still, if you don’t mind a game that’s extremely rough around the edges, the Early Access is worth a closer look.
