Omega Crafter Indie Video Game Preview

One of my favorite video game genres these days are automation games. There is something satisfying about creating a well run machine taking raw materials and turning them into more useful materials. I was intrigued when I first saw Omega Crafter. It looked like a cool blend of automation with open world exploration mechanics. Omega Crafter has just entered early access and while not perfect, it has a good foundation and shows a lot of potential.

In Omega Crafter you play as a programmer working on a game that is close to completion. Your game is currently being attacked by a rogue program. In order to diagnose the problem, you have to enter the game world. You need to find and fix the issues so the game can make its release date.

Omega Crafter feels like a combination of a number of different genres.

The mechanic that intrigued me the most was the resource gathering and automation. The world is filled with various resources. You can gather these resources and refine them into materials that you can use to improve your equipment. Cut down trees to gather wood, mine rocks for stone, etc. While you can do all of this by yourself, that is quite time consuming. This is where the Grammi come into the picture.

You have one Grammi that follows you around the world. You will place the rest inside the cities you build. Each Grammi can be programmed in order to complete tasks for you. For example you can create a program for a Grammi to cut down a tree, collect the wood, and then plant another tree. You can also use Grammi to craft items creating a sort of supply chain.

The programming aspect of the game is quite straightforward. The game uses a drag and drop system. There are a number of pre-built programs that you can use, or you can create your own. Choose the various programming blocks that you want to use and drag them into the Grammi’s program. These blocks include basic tasks and programming processes such as loops, if statements, and so on. The game makes the programming side simple. You don’t have to type anything. If you need to reference a building, resource, or area; you just select it from a menu or click on its location on a map.

This was the aspect of Omega Crafter that I was the most intrigued by. I genuinely enjoy automation games. At this point the game is not as complex as others in the genre. I think it has a very strong foundation in place though. I think the best way to describe it would be to say that it is accessible. This is not meant to be taken as a criticism. The game gives you quite a few options for programming the Grammi.

I have some programming experience and have played quite a few games in this genre. While it took a little time to get used to the game’s mechanics, I got the hang of it pretty quickly. The drag and drop mechanics work seamlessly and allow you to quickly create a program without having to take a lot of time or know much about programming in general. Having some familiar with programming will help, but even beginners should be able to jump into the game really quickly. If you don’t know exactly what to do you can even use one of the templates which basically let you do any normal task with your Grammi. If you want to fine tune the program though or start from scratch to make it more efficient, you can do that as well.

Some people may wish this aspect was a little more in-depth, but I think it works well for what the game is trying to do. The game is not meant to be a pure automation game. Therefore it doesn’t get too bogged down in forcing you to create the most optimized programs. If you want to optimize, you can. If you don’t care about maximizing everything though, you can just set it up quickly and then move onto your next task. I think this is a good foundation for those who are looking for a light to moderate automation mechanic.

For a game that just entered early access, I think this element of the game is already quite strong. Before the final release I mostly just want to see more added to it. The core mechanics already work quite well. I just want there to be more resources and buildings that you can use to produce materials. At this stage you eventually reach a point where you are generating a lot of resources and materials and you have nothing to do with them. You can still make your cities look better and improve the cosmetics, but that is about it. Eventually I got to the point where I didn’t really have much to do on the automation side. I just collected the materials and went back to exploring. I hope more materials and production buildings are created to make the automation side of the game last longer.

Other than automation Omega Crafter’s other big element is an exploration/open world mechanic. The world map seems to be randomly generated so each world is different. The worlds consist of a few different biomes which contain different resources that you can bring back to your base. Some of these you can start automating once you get enough of them. While exploring you will gather resources that you can’t automate and find various treasure chests and other points of interest scattered around the world. You will occasionally spot little monuments left by the developers of the game. At this point they only contain small messages, but I wonder if these will be used in the future as a way to tell the overarching story of the game.

Like with all exploration mechanics, there is combat as well. You will encounter quite a few different creatures with different attack patterns. Right now you can either attack melee with a sword/spear, or you can use a ranged bow and arrow. The bow and arrow requires you to craft the arrows that you end up using. The combat in the game is pretty straightforward. You have an attack button, dodge and block buttons. Your character has a stamina meter which is used whenever you attack, dodge, or dash. When you run out of stamina, you need to wait for it to recharge before you take one of the corresponding actions.

At this point I would say the combat is solid. It is a more simplistic than a game that is mostly focused on combat, but it works fairly well. At this point the combat boils down to figuring out the enemies attacks. If you are attacking with a melee weapon, you need to trigger the attack and then dodge away before its attack hits you. You can then attack a few times before the enemy is ready to attack again. If you are using a ranged weapon you can keep shooting arrows as long as you stay away from the enemies and occasionally dodge their attacks.

I hope the combat gets a little more complex by the final version of the game. I thought it was in a pretty good state at this point though. The controls are responsive and I really didn’t encounter any issues. I will say that I preferred using a controller for combat rather than a keyboard and mouse though. The keyboard controls work fine. When I was in combat I generally preferred to switch to a controller because it was easier for me to dodge enemy attacks. This could also be that I generally play these type of games with a controller rather than a keyboard and mouse.

Most of the combat in the game comes from the various creatures you find in the open world as you are exploring. There are areas of the map where creatures congregate though. These areas usually have treasure chests to loot and other harder to find resources. The game also has dungeons which you will encounter after you make some progress and explore further away from your starting location. At this point the dungeons are pretty simplistic as they are just a number of corridors with some enemies to defeat. Finally there are some bosses scattered around the world. You will collect artifacts as you explore. You can use these at shrines in order to summon a boss. These boss fights are mostly the same as a normal enemy except that they have considerably more health.

As for the game’s visuals and overall world, I think there is a lot to like about Omega Crafter. I was actually kind of surprised by how large the world already is. There are some areas that are a little bare as you will have to travel some distance before you hit a point of interest. There is a lot to explore for a game that just entered early access though. The variety of enemies is pretty good. I liked the visual style of the game as well as the design of the Grammi and the various creatures. There aren’t a lot of player customization options at this time. I am guessing that will come as the game is developed further. The game runs smoothly and looks nice.

Omega Crafter is expected to stay in early access for at least a year at this point. For a game that likely has at least a year of development left, I think the game is already in a pretty good place. The game is already quite fun to play and there is a lot to do already. You will eventually reach a point where there isn’t much to do outside of just creating a bunch of resources for no real reason. You should get quite a bit of time out of the game before you hit that point though. The combat could be tweaked a little bit to add a little more complexity, but it is pretty fun and works well.

My recommendation for Omega Crafter is actually pretty straightforward. If you don’t really care for automation/exploration games or don’t find the premise to be all that interesting, the game may not be for you. If Omega Crafter’s premise intrigues you and you are willing to wait as the game gets updates, I think you will enjoy it and should seriously consider picking it up.