The Last Craftsman

A comfy crafting game, with a lot of depth. Researching things is very satisfying. Also nice to see a lot of little details like the cute animals and vegetation swaying in the breeze. I have not finished it but I am enjoying it so far. There's so much that you can do each day.

The controls are a bit wonky (controller) but once you get past that, the gameplay loop is really fun!

I put 30 hours into this in Early Access, then begrudgingly put it down to wait for 1.0. At time of writing, I've sunk in another 85 and I'm pretty close to 100%. I don't usually review games, but I know the algorithm is rough on single devs who advertise their games on dead internet forums. Game's good. You're a Craftsman, a one-man-band whose Omnitool lets you harvest rocks, trees, plants, fish, and more. Every item has "tags" based on its properties - texture, color, material, temperature, and so on - which are used in crafting and machine processing. Cut down a tree to get Lumber and Leaves. Use the latter to make a Teddy Bear for someone who wants a Cute thing, or maybe a Toy. Feed the former into a Coke Furnace, then use the resulting Coke to make Black Wallpaper or a Gray Bed. You rank up as a Craftsman by fulfilling the townsfolk's Contracts: requests for a specific quantity of a given tag or a single item with sufficient points in a given tag. This gives you lots of options - if they want 40 Cute, you can give them 20 Bows that are 2 each, or make some Cute Dressers that give 8 each. The former uses Fluffy, the latter uses Wood. Maybe you just cut down a lot of trees, maybe you just grew a lot of Tricotton that's Fluffy and White. There's options. The fishing is good. "JRPG needs fishing" -Yoko Taro, 2017 It's Stardew, except the farming is "just" the easiest source of Grain, Vegetables, and Fruit to make Alcohol, Tofu, and Jam that you feed into an ancient machine to make punch cards. It's Terraria's progression ladder, but rather than combat you're building machines to process Mushrooms into Plastic to make Rubber Ducks. It's Slay the Spire, only the card-and-energy battler is a full minigame inside the main game. (It's a perfectly cromulent example of the genre.) It's Microsoft Excel... plus a robot with a cape. I'm checking so many boxes and all the numbers are trending upwards. Negatives: -Townsfolk dialogue is a pretty shallow pool. You'll catch repetitions early and often. -The UI's a bit clunky. There's no option to move items in quantities between "1" and "maximum", and by the end you're going to have three-digit stacks of things. -1.0 could have maybe used another month in the oven or another few beta testers. Nothing vital - you can beat the game and only a few items/achievements have issues - but a few missing/broken things that grate on me personally. Positives, beyond what I already implied: -Despite what I said about townsfolk dialogue, they've got distinct (if one-note) personalities and funny writing. The titular Last Craftsman, Gary, was a standout for me. Just a total jerk you want to dunk on at every opportunity. -Dopamine. Researching a new item with the exact tag combo you need, or finding a way to craft some new tag, feels fantastic. It's a treadmill, and by the end you really do feel like you've progressed in your ability to turn things into other things. The tag system is really good for that and I'm amazed I haven't seen anything like it before, because it feels fantastic despite not being THAT different from a standard game crafting system. -The dev's super responsive. I made a lot of posts on the forum with specific issues and look at that, they're all fixed or about to get fixed! What a coincidence. Seriously, game's good. I like to check boxes and progress through things and it does that. I regret neither the money I spent on it nor the time I put into it, and that's high praise coming from me.

Well, imagine Stardew Valley, but now imagine that the focus isn't around Farming, it is around Crafting, and now imagine that the combat in this game is a turn-based card battler set in in ancient High-tech Ruins. The entire game's story is heavily focused on the player being the new Craftsman sent by the Craftsmen's Guild to a distant declining town after the previous craftsman was filled with rage at the town and tried to destroy the town with a giant killer Robot. The player's progress is focused on solving the problems the town and townsfolk is having, both past and present, and dealing with the ancient High-tech ruins and rebuilding the town's declining and damaged infrastructure, while taking jobs from townsfolk to increase the player's craftsman rank. I find this game to be really enjoyable and fun, it is quite relaxing and not stressful, in spite of the combat and conflict. The townsfolk are friendly, the people always resolve differences in spite of conflict, there is noticable improvement and happiness as the player progresses. Not a Doom and Gloom game. It enjoy it.

This game is a cozy not just farming game. In fact, the farming is not as important as the building, as you build things all the time. The research system and the high tech tools with modifications you can equip (and you don't have to stand next to absolutely everything when you harvest) are a neat departure from similar games. Fun to play through.

Want to play another farm-fish-fight-craft game but tired of seeing the exact same mechanics over and over? This is the game to try. The tag system for crafting, researching, and fulfilling requests makes the standard gameplay loop a lot more flexible and fun. There is no repeated rebuilding of all your hand tools with increasingly unlikely metals. The deckbuilding game in the dungeon's good and definitely an improvement on the usual combat in this genre. And I actually like the fishing minigame. There are certainly places where the game could use some more polish, but it's a one-person project. I love that the dev has put so much work into parts of the game that are often totally ignored in games that have a ton of people working on them. The titles and descriptions for the different contracts are a good example. They're unnecessarily fun! The little jokes and references make me smile. (I'm also a big fan of having the neighbors tell you to go away once they're talked out rather than be weirdly silent. Just like real life!)

Ok... this is actually an incredible game that needs more promotion. IMO better than other more popular games in this genre (all of them) so I hope it gets promoted more and bought more so I can enjoy even more updates in the future.

This is a cute little game that I would still consider a work in progress. The village request system becomes very repetitive and tedious, I wish that aspect was more fun. I have 15 generators and a full production factory cranking out high-level resources but there is no other way to progress your rank as a master craftsman other than crafting a bow for your neighbor. overall 55/100

I haven't been hooked by a farm sim game like this since I bought Stardew Valley in 2019. And I have, like, 1,000 hours played in that game. I can see this game devouring my life, in the best way possible. The design is gorgeous. It's so cohesive and charming without being overly saccharine. [sorry but super cute lolita stuff isn't my style] The items are clever and funny. They are unique and varied enough that it doesn't feel like you've seen everything. Not just in the first 2 hours of playing, but in other similar farm sim games. The characters are also varied in skin tones which I can appreciate. It's not too, well, visually minimal in regards to character design, to be tactful. The map is large enough to feel like a real township, but small enough that it feels respectful of your time. You are [probably] an adult with a job, hobby, in school / training, or something else. You are not going to spend 1 hour out of 2 game play hours simply doing nothing but running around an overly large, mostly barren map. [Not to disrespect other games in this review, but I found Harvest Moon One World really annoying for this aspect] This Farm Map is large enough to accommodate crops, machines, animals, and orchard. Run out of basic materials like stone or wood? There are other, well stocked outer maps to harvest from. That's not to say that there's no resource management. There's a very good balance to this game where you never run out of things to do, but it's not brainlessly easy with no challenge. It's incredibly fun to explore and poke around at what works and what doesn't with the present materials. The fishing game: I hate fishing, 99% of the time. I don't have the patience for it, and most fishing games within games are kinda repetitive. Being on a default laptop keyboard and [not that great] touchpad, it's particularly difficult because most games assume you have a proper gaming mouse. This isn't like those other fishing games. It asks you to start the game instead of dumping you straight into GET FISH NOW minigame. I appreciate being able to set my own pace. It honestly takes the stress off. It's also a pleasant variation of... how would you describe it? The 'keep the cursor on the highlighted part to win' game. It involves your participation beyond that, which I think it pretty cool. Could this be called a shooting game? Albeit a very departed version of it. [side note: I appreciate the lack of guns in the game. As an American, I kinda don't like guns. But let's not get into that here.] Also you mostly maybe don't need to do fishing if you REALLY hate it. There are plenty of items in the game which will have the materials you need. But you are missing out on a) finishing the collection and b) some REALLY cool critters. Seriously, the pixel art is amazing. Crab is the best creatchure EVER :3 They get their own chest because I love them so much Also, speaking of pace, you can set your own in the game, which I also greatly appreciate. There's no countdown timer that demands you do X within 3 days* or you lose out on something. You can take your time to harvest materials, make friends, explore the world, before prompting the plot to continue. * ok excluding meeting someone at a train station, but there's no particular reprimand for that besides embarrassment on your part. Oh one other thing I like is the Notes tab in the UI. Oh my god I don't have to write things down in notepad dot exe and pause the game to reference that every time I want to do a quest. And it even tells me the items I need. I am figuratively smooching the dev on the forehead like I'm bugs bunny. Also a separate tab tells me what materials is in the Research Lab so I don't need to run back and forth between the Lab and my Chests on the Farm to retrieve materials to advance to the next level of Craftsman. Wow. I know this sounds silly, but devs that understand quality of life for video games is something to laud. There are no fan mods for this, as far as I know, but honestly that's fine. Not once have I thought to myself, 'damn, wish someone would add this to the game'. Because it's already there. The care and thought put into this game is amazing. The plot and mechanics are so well balanced. Do you find X annoying? Well don't worry, it's been accounted for and you haven't gotten to the right Craftsman level to unlock it. [Ok well I might want some fan mods. Such as different clothes since they are congruous to the design, but rather basic. But frankly that's a non issue, non urgent desire. It does not detract from the game at all.] My only complaint is this: Blue eyes? On a Black person? Well ok. I guess it's fantasy / scifi genre. There are stranger things in heaven and earth, or whatever that quote is. ANYWAYS. This is a game made by someone who clearly loves farming sims, and it shows. If you like Stardew Valley, try this game. It isn't a dupe, knock off, or anything like that. The Last Craftsman is very much its own game and I really hope it only gets more popular. It's a game that's well thought out, and has learned to improve from other excellent examples in this genre. And I think SDV players would enjoy this game. ps there's stairs in my house; I am protected. Pak chooie unf!

Очень понравилась игра и концепция. Играешь за местного человека_на_все_руки жители просят тебя чего-то сделать, но не заставляют. Чем больше делаешь для жителей тем выше твой рейтинг в гильдии. Чем выше рейтинг тем больше доступно всяких улучшений для мультитула. В игре любопытная схема с тегами, рецепты крафтинга требуют определенные теги в определенном кол-ве а не какие-то конкретные предметы. типа нужен тег "дерево" 20 штук для стола. А тэг дерево могут иметь совершенно разные предметы конечно-же всякие бревна, некоторая мебель, и даже есть "деревянная" рыба :) из недостатков пожалуй по сравнению с другими фермами немного не хватает информации базовой. Не указано сколько растут растения, какие растения дают много урожаев а какие только один. Не указано какие подарки понравились людям.