Hey everyone!
We just shared our latest trailer, showing the heart of your base: the crafting and shop system that takes place on Odin Shell.
In case you missed it:
⚙️Hands-On Crafting
What’s unique about the crafting in Cloudheim is that there are no menus! All the loot you’ve collected while out on your adventures is stored in a magical chest. From there, you interact directly with stations: toss ores into the forge, drop meat on the grill, or line your shelves with finished goods to sell. All of this happens in-world.
Loot is shared party-wide, and this applies to anything you craft as well. Newly forged weapons are unlocked for everyone, so no need to worry about fighting over that rare dagger or crafting it three times over. As you discover more items, you’ll get stronger, learn new skills, and improve your combat capabilities — just in time for your next expedition!
🧺Your Shop in the Skies
Crafting isn’t just for equipment: you’re also running a store and meeting the needs of visitors from distant lands. Customers will come and go with various requests, and fulfilling them earns you more gold and reputation.
Expand out your base with new areas such as the garden, which can grow herbs, and then use those plants in the alchemy nook to craft potions to sell. Or maybe build out the kitchen, cooking up tasty dishes like tomato soup and grilled skewers to serve to your hungry patrons.
Keep your store well-stocked and word will spread. Soon enough, you’ll have a bustling little corner of the sky to call your own.
🪩Q&A Time!
For this Q&A, here are the folks whose work helped shape this portion of the game:
It’s interesting that this game has a shopkeeping component. Was this always the vision?
David: We always knew we wanted to make a game that had both combat and shopkeeping, but it wasn’t clear how much of a mix it would be.
Kim: As a design goal, we wanted to focus on content that was fun to play with a group of friends. As we continued developing the game, the shopkeeping aspect evolved to complement and enable more fun combat.
How does the crafting portion of the game fit with the action and exploration side?
Kim: Exploring and defeating enemies is the “gathering” phase of the game, while crafting is the “production” side that allows for personal and team-wide improvements, both materially in the items you can equip, but also passively via stat increases from certain upgrades and expansions. So, crafting improves your future expeditions by making you more efficient at defeating enemies and faster at exploring.
Crafting also supports player agency in our game. As you craft and unlock more gear, you can choose to bring exactly what you want into battle and explore different playstyles and loadouts. You can also choose to be an efficient shopkeeper with a system in place, oooor you can just throw things on shelves and call it a day!
How do you approach designing a crafting system with no menus?
Kim: It can be a challenge for sure! As designers, we’re constantly thinking about things like, “Does this match with what players expect with the systems of this world?”, “Are the crafting stations intuitive enough to use without too much instruction?”, and “Are players able to get what they need in a balanced way?”
David: Sometimes you’ll come up with something that seems fun on paper, but ends up being more of a chore when implemented.
Kim: When done successfully, it’s great to see players enjoy something when “It Just Works(™).” No need to look up a guide or wiki. The way our crafting works matches our combat — both are very hands-on and keep you involved with the game world.
How do these features add to the cooperative feel of the game?
David: So, we didn’t intentionally go about making a no-menu crafting system. It came out of trying to figure out a way to allow friends to craft together. Menus tend to conflict with that.
Kim: There’s an old story called “Stone Soup” where everyone is throwing together ingredients. Our crafting system is like that, where a group of people can work together to make cool stuff. With multiple crafters, you can coordinate who takes on what, and make lots of different items as a result.
Also, your store isn’t the only thing on Odin Shell. I encourage exploring every nook and cranny in our game! As a designer, I love being able to hide little treasures, puzzles, and other activities throughout the map. I want to give players the ability to play together and have fun in interesting ways.
Whether you're out adventuring or crafting back at your base, Cloudheim is what you make of it, especially together with friends!
📢A Quick PSA
It’s not too late to sign up for our Closed Beta Playtests! The first wave of invites will be going out SOON™…
🗺️Up Next: Islands & Dungeons
With our next blog, we'll be covering the vast biomes and maps that you can explore in Cloudheim. From frosty castles to sandswept tombs, we can't wait to show more of this world.
See you then!
