Well, well, well. Looks like I’ve finally found a chink in the armor of Craftopia. And it’s the portion of the game that arguably this whole column was built around: player creativity.
Now it’s entirely possible that I’m overlooking a few important elements here, and there is always that little asterisk of the game being in early access, but it does have to be said: Craftopia is by and large missing a lot of what makes player-built housing interesting.
I’ve written before that making a house in this game is a pain in the ass to begin with, and I absolutely still hold that opinion, but that was when I was simply trying to establish a home base and make it something other than the usual survivalbox Cube of Bare Amenities; arguably I made a Pair of Rectangles of Bare Amenities. With a cannon aimed at the nearest tower to fire me at the location. Putting that together to my liking wasn’t quite as nice as I had hoped, however, especially given that a lot of what I’d consider to be basic housing pieces are missing.
For example, many of the roof pieces that I wanted wouldn’t have been available to me had I not decided to start house building in the Age that I did. And even despite that, there are a lot of missing roof and wall shapes that close things up cleanly, like triangular shapes. For the longest time, I just let some of those giant triangular holes in the wall and busied myself with simply progressing the character, but now that I’ve gotten as far as I can go, it was time to start filling in the house.
Or trying to.
Once again I was running into the same building frustrations in terms of plugging those holes, as I was forced to use a wall building piece that not only didn’t really fit the rest of the aesthetic but also rammed long beams of wood into the roof. This made the whole house look clapped together, without any sense of function for the beams in question. Because it was clapped together, frankly. But I had no other options in terms of getting a triangle closed up. But whatever, so long as I don’t look up at the ceiling, it doesn’t really matter.
Once I had gotten past the annoyance of the limited wall pieces and arranged the few rooms I cared to with some wall placement, the next problem I had to tackle was lighting. For whatever reason, this game has no ceiling lights, and the few wall lights that are on hand have the luminosity of a cloud of fireflies. I didn’t think the rooms in my house were that large, but in order to have any lighting worth a damn, I needed at least four to six lights on the wall. And I ran out of iron to make the lights I wanted to about halfway through.
And don’t even get me started on actually placing these lights. See, there’s no float or fly option, so all of the wall fixture placement has to be with the character’s feet stuck to the ground. Additionally, since I built my house on a hill, that meant the floor was kind of elevated, so when I angled my viewpoint to look at the wall and bring a light up to the height I wanted to, the floor would get in the way, blur, and become semi-transparent, giving me a vague and muddy outline of what I was doing instead of any sort of clarity. I am now the proud owner of several wall lights that do not line up well whatsoever as a result. People who like symmetry would fall over in anaphylactic shock upon entering my house. I hate it.
Perhaps there would be some solace to be found in interior decorating, I thought. Perhaps where wall pieces and lighting failed, actual decor would make this right. After all, since my character is incapable of placing things without being planted to the earth, looking down would be nicer anyway. Maybe the furnishings are good.
No, friends, no they were not. Or rather, the ones that were good were fine, but those options are pretty limited. Once again I remind you that I’ve gotten as far as I can get right now in terms of age progression, meaning that what’s here is what I’m stuck with. And what’s here are just a bunch of goofball items and some generally useless furnishings that mostly don’t stick together.
I kind of dressed up my kitchen area, with the thought being that maybe I could have some counters to sit flush with the filet machine I have, but that didn’t work. I have a hearth item that I could put down, but it can’t be sat on top of the campfire to make it look like it’s being cooked. I arranged a nice little sitting area but stopped caring once I realized there were no cute rugs to put down. And when I put down the shogi board, it ended up being hilariously tiny in comparison to the couch and chairs I’d placed earlier.
The decor choices continued to get really poor as I kept building and trying things out. There’s some water purification shrine that I have never seen before, there’s a cherry blossom bonsai tree that’s far too tiny and can’t be placed on tables for some reason, and I have a small chest that’s mostly for decoration’s sake instead of utility that still looks ugly. About the only thing that sort of works is the little bathroom nook that I put together. It has a toilet that I can use to gather feces, which are needed to make a gunpowder component. Seriously.
After a little while I just stopped caring, primarily because it felt like Craftopia stopped caring, too. The game’s progression and materials and… well, crafting are fine and enjoyable enough, but the end goal of making some really nice place to be when I’m not running around hunting monsters and mats really falls miserably short of expectations.
But then, perhaps I am doing something wrong. Perhaps other players have done better. I won’t be able to personally visit others – the multiplayer in this game isn’t really well put together, and I don’t have friend codes – but I’m going to see if maybe I can’t find what others have done and get inspired. Or I’ll confirm my disappointment.
MMO designers construct thrilling worlds, but MMO players also build some amazing content within them! Some Assembly Required highlights player-generated content, from events to housing to quest-creation systems. There’s creativity galore out there, and we travel the MMOverse to find and share it.
