Hey everyone 👋
Thank you all for your kind messages and encouraging words after my last post — I truly appreciate your support!
Over the past few weeks, I took some time off to play games, spend time with family and friends, and focus on projects that brought me joy.
The break was refreshing and helped me recharge.
Thank you for your understanding and patience during that time ❤️
We’re diving into the beta test and pricing today — read on till the end, I’d love to hear your thoughts on pricing! 😄
Remaining Work
Now, I’m excited to return to Craftlings and complete what I started more than three years ago.
My goal is to finish and polish the game and bring it to you at the beginning of next year.
If everything goes as planned, I will announce the official release date in December!
Of course, there’s still work to be done before launch.
Here are the key areas I’m currently focusing on:
- New, professionally produced sound design
- Steam Achievements
- Steam Deck compatibility testing and fixes
- Balancing & bug fixing
- Quality of Life improvements
Closed Beta in December
The last two items will benefit a lot from community feedback.
That’s why I’m planning another round of closed beta testing for the full version of the game in the first half of December.
If you’d like to participate, please let me know in the comments — or, even better, join the Discord server and ping me there:
👉 Join the Discord
Let's fight the bugs together!
Sound Design
For the sound design, I’ve teamed up with a talented group of audio designers from Helsinki (Symbisonic) who fell in love with the project.
They’re currently crafting a completely new sound experience for the game, and I can already tell it’s going to sound amazing!
Achievements
As for the Steam Achievements, the concepts and artwork are already done — I just need to implement and test them.
Milan, the artist behind the achievement portraits, created a series of illustrations representing people who contributed to Craftlings’ development.
Each achievement will unlock one of these portraits when you complete specific challenges — things like building, expanding, surviving, fighting, or experimenting.
And yes, there’s even one of me!
You can unlock it by finding and opening barrels in the game (which probably explains why I’m wearing a barrel instead of pants in that one 😅).
Your Input: Game Pricing
There’s also a lot happening behind the scenes related to release logistics and marketing — and one area where I’d really value your opinion: pricing.
Based on your experience with the demo and what you’ve seen on the Steam page, what price would you expect for the full version of the game?
For context, the full game will include:
- 12 unique levels
- 25+ standard buildings and plenty of resources
- Many quest-specific buildings
- 3 distinct biomes
- 4 types of trainable warriors
- 3 unique bosses across all maps
- 25+ hours of gameplay
- 7 unique, global ranks for speed running
I’d love to hear your honest thoughts. Don’t worry — I’ll filter out the outliers 😉
With no publisher setting the price this time, I’d like to hear your opinions first before deciding on the final pricing.
Here’s a new screenshot from one of our recent beta testers to wrap things up:
That’s all for now, thanks for reading!
Ariano
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1771110/Craftlings