CraftCraft: Fantasy Merchant Simulator

I wanted to like this game-- and to be fair, the character art is lovely, and the voice acting is wonderful. But the mechanics are absolutely awful. Things vanish (and reappear if you restart the game), holding onto items is difficult, and manipulating them is almost impossible. Unless you're the sort of person that loves the kind of puzzles where you rotate tons of tiny fragments to try and make a picture (while your cursor is glitching, the game is only partially responsive and you're not sure if you have it right because it will lock into the wrong place)... this probably isn't for you. But the reason I'm uninstalling is because I got to a point several hours in where I actually couldn't go any further. Apparently you have to save every piece of scrap you get, even though the desk is already a mess, the drawers only sometimes open when you want them to, and storage is very limited. And when I accidentally garbaged one of the tiny little fragments of the druids amulet? That's it. Time wasted. Even the best concept won't fix horrible controls and being locked out of completion.

This review is centered on the story mode. The game has a story mode which lasts for 11 in-game "days", in which you're assisting various inhabitants of the city of Windspell with their desired goods. The game is something of an amalgam. --There is a slight hidden object find element to the game, in that you're encouraged to scavenge components from various locations in the world to fuel your crafts. --Many of the crafts involve working a forge, building tools, weapons, and armor to the beat of a simple rhythm game. --Other crafts involve gluing together items you've scavenged to create non-forgeable products. --In all of these aspects, you must take note of your customers' requests; there are certain elements--ominousness, nature, elegance, cuteness, and minimalism, that you must keep in mind to meet expectations. It sounds like a lot, but most of the game is simply about following instructions. It's honestly very simple, and while it's easy to stress about some of the glue-crafts, the game is extremely flexible about what it allows for a good score. While all of this is going on, there is a political intrigue subplot going on in the background of the game, which you can personally play a part in from the comfort of your shop. All of these elements come together to make CraftCraft a pleasant little game that's enjoyable for a relaxed experience. I will say, however, that the experience is balanced in a very fragile way. No one element of the game is particularly strong; the enjoyment comes from the complete encompassing experience. If any one element of the game is not to your taste, you may simply not get much out of it. While the crafts are generally relaxing and enjoyable, they also mostly lack in depth; forging mechanics are very simple, as are the gluing mechanics. There also isn't a lot in the way of player agency in the Visual Novel style subplot; you can influence the story to a small extent, but generally it doesn't feel like you have much in the way of actual "choice" and your impact isn't particularly felt until the end, hinging on a handful of decisions. So, while the game overall is enjoyable, the main thing that makes it memorable is its characters. Especially, in particular, Saskia. Which brings me to the one thing that disappointed me about the game: It promises romance options, but I can quite confidently say that I do not appear to be the target audience of said options. I ran into relatively very few romanceable options, and of them, almost all of them were male, with one singular exception that is heavily implied to be a MtF transgender character. Said character also only appeared a single time late in the game, yet was romanceable, in contrast to Saskia, who is a consistent presence throughout the game and who, in pretty much any other VN-style game, would very obviously be a romanceable option. As far as romance goes, I'm only particularly interested in female romance options, so the nearly complete lack of them in this game was disappointing, especially when several very cute and appealing female characters exist in the game. That said, the romances themselves are also not especially full of depth; generally it's less of a "romance" and more of a "flirtation" that occurs once per applicable character. So I suppose even then, I'm not missing out very much. Maybe more options and more depth appear in the endless mode. I may give it a go at some point, but given my experience with the story mode, I'm not led to expect much aside from tighter restrictions and requests for the crafts theirselves. Play the demo and see if the gameplay is to your liking. I enjoyed it but I'm not certain if I'll revisit it.

Keep crashing after creating a character, can't actually play the game.

3/10 not my thing + voice acting + lots of things to choose from when designing your character. - gameplay is what kills this for me. they should make an option to skip all the crafting so you can just do story and choose what items and parts. + can disable two of the time waster minigames. - low res items that are blurry and you can see the pixels. lots of items that are small at one point and get bigger. feels like ms paint when you make an picture bigger level of pixilation - glue system is awful and doesnt always work - table management and limited space - my screwdriver vanished and you could still see the white dotted layout. took me clicking around the screen for 3 minutes to get it to come back. used it once and POOF its done again when i went to set it down enjoyed death and taxes far more!!! it did suffer from the same table space problem thought

I've put in about 6 hours in this game, and I think the mechanics are quite poor. I've been playing on Deck and PC, and I've just come to a specific day where I can't complete a task and move forward because I'm unable to use a resource (as in, the mechanic that's supposed to happen isn't happening). Also some game days, when you finish the day the workbench is cleared, other days all the mess is still there and the only way to clean is manually, item by item. Not very well thought out.

Finished playing this cute game, and it deserves an honest review! For those who don't read long reviews, here is the short version: I highly recommend you play it. You can clearly see a lot of heart was put into this game by the devs. Let's start with the good: - Art Direction: The graphic design is captivating and unique. I absolutely love the art style; it's not too cluttered and isn't hard on the eyes. - Audio: The music is nice. It sits well in the background, and while it isn't groundbreaking, it is never distracting while crafting. - Gameplay Loop: The core gameplay loop is incredibly fun. It was a tiny bit confusing in certain parts (like using glue, tiaras, etc.), but it was hardly an obstacle that couldn't be managed by just using your brain. - Story & Lore: This is the strongest point of the game. The story is amazing. There is deep lore, and the universe devs created has history and politics—it could honestly be a book (the writers behind this game should consider writing one). At times the dialogue was a bit naive, but it offered a cute and overall enjoyable experience. Areas for improvement (not outright errors, but things that could be better): - Character Bloat: The game is very ambitious, and it fell into the usual trap of ambitious projects. By including too many characters, it meant most didn't get enough screen time. They show up, have a tale to tell, and are memorable, but at the same time, there is a noticeable lack of content for them. - Item Bloat: Similar to the character issue. There are so many assets to collect, but once you learn their tags, you realize it's just clutter used for the exact same purpose: crafting. - The "Glue" System: I get the concept, but at a certain point, I started gluing stuff onto other stuff just to be done with it. It didn't matter if I glued a seashell to the very tip of a sword blade; no one cared where I placed things. I literally had to make a ring with a giant wing on it—which looked ridiculous—just to meet quest requirements. That system could use some refinement rather than relying on a weird paste mechanic. - Diversity Integration: It feels as if the game tries a bit too hard to fit in various orientations and preferences. I'm not saying it's a bad thing; however, it feels a bit synthetic at times (like that perfect wood/stone amulet for the elf quest). It felt slightly overly educational, giving me lengthy explanations I didn't really inquire about. It felt as if the game was trying to teach me obvious things I already know regarding how some people feel and identify. - Animation: The characters could REALLY use Spine2D or some other skeletal puppetry. Saskia's tail is cute, but it would be amazing if it actually moved with some simple animation. It is definitely worth considering for a quality-of-art improvement, because the characters already have very strong lineart and even our player character has a rather t-pose most the time. And finally, the bad: - Inventory Management: The sorting system in the drawers is simply atrocious. It feels like I wasted a lot of game time just trying to sort through the mess in them. - Desk Clutter: Items on the desk continuously clutter the workspace, and some never vanish. I received a star map that never disappeared, some parchment with images, and chain links that also just stayed there. I had absolutely no idea if I was supposed to keep them or not, and it really cluttered my crafting table. - Save System: There is no way to overwrite an existing save game. No matter how hard I tried, it just created new saves with the exact same names. The save system truly requires a complete overhaul. - Audio Mixing: Some sound volumes require readjusting. Saskia speaks a bit too quietly at times, while other characters are jarringly loud. Final score? In the indie world, I give it solid 8/10 (same score I got from date with Saskia xD). It's a very good game, and it has potential to become MUCH more if it is grown and improved upon over time. Thank you for amazing gameplay, looking forward to return to it with future updates! Review updated on July 03, 2026

really cute little game with fun characters, pretty art, and a nice crafting system. despite the phrasing, Endless Mode is just "here's how to proceed now you've finished the tutorial." you still see the characters you've got to know through the course of the story, but their stories also continue!

I gave this a good, earnest try, but some of the blueprints in this are SO tedious. You'll get piles of pieces of scrap wood, for example, that you're then forced to try and rotate into shapes that barely fit what you've been given. Some of the pendants with the wire, too, have so many teeny tiny little pieces. I'm sure there's a cute story here, but this game was a miss for me. The controls are also quite clunky - good luck ever using your screwdriver correctly.

An absolutely delightful game, with a surprisingly thorough and deep crafting mechanic. It's also got some great representation in it, with disabled people seeking a prosthetic, transgendered characters needing armor that's makes them feel more like themselves, and even a very sweet quest involving a nonbinary druid that I won't spoil, but I found it very touching. Also, I'm normally not into things like this, but man that fox lady is hot.

Gay