‘Omega Crafter’ Has Automation, Crafting, and a Programmable Buddy To Help You Kick Some Goblin Butt (Review)

It’s hard to make a game that stands out in a crowded genre. With titles like RuneScape: Dragonwilds, Enshrouded, and even Palworld breaking records at any given point in time, it has to be incredibly daunting to try and stand up to these titans of the field. Omega Crafter, by design, borrows a few fundamental ideas from these genre giants, all while introducing some unique features that kept me interested and invested as Katie and I played together and tried to survive in this world. Our adorable robot pals, programmable through basic coding measures, were the standout addition to this crafting adventure.

After Being Dropped Onto a Brand New Planet, It Was up to Us To Survive in ‘Omega Crafter’

I would classify Omega Crafter as a Survival/Crafting-lite type of game. There’s no hunger and thirst bar, so the trip into this strange new world is at least slightly more manageable. It’s absolutely on the easier side of the Crafting scene, which some players may appreciate. My wife did, that’s for sure. She’s the type to run off into the distance, looking for the shiniest objects while I’m back at base, crafting new items.

Omega Crafter is also a bit of a slow burn. It takes a while to really start cooking, so be patient with the game. The initial area that you get dropped into, the Meadow of New Beginnings, is a lot of the same old, same old. Find towers, fight a few mobs, and grab an item. As you begin to explore outside of this initial biome, however, that’s when things start to get much more interesting. New enemy types await you just beyond the veil, and they’re not messing around in the slightest. I learned, rather quickly, that I needed to be cautious when exploring. Enemies do not have levels that appear over their heads, so if something looks big? It’s likely going to be dangerous.

The Robot Buddies of ‘Omega Crafter’ Are The Stars of the Show

The true stars of Omega Crafter, however, are the little robot buddies we make along the way. Known in the game as Grammi, these adorable little robots are ready to serve however they can. At the start of your adventure, you have one particular Grammi you can design that follows you around wherever you go. They’ll help collect wood, stones, fight monsters, and everything in between. But back at the base camp, you can summon more Grammi to help keep things rolling. All you need to do is a little bit of coding.

With just a few clicks and some dragging, I could automate the Grammi in my town to create arrows, make food, and keep my inventory as stocked as possible. Some bugs may need to be ironed out when it comes to how they act, such as Grammi getting stuck when trying to use a dual-type chest, but for the most part? They were an incredibly helpful crew of strange little dudes. Plus, I could customize them to my heart’s content, and I was more than happy about that fact.

Automate the More Mundane Parts of a Crafting Game With Basic Coding Skills

Look, we all know that cutting down an endless supply of trees, only to have to then make them into other objects, is the most boring part of a survival/crafting experience. That’s what makes the Grammi so useful in Omega Crafter. I could give each of the individual Grammi that I summoned into my town with Bug Fragments a specific job. They would focus solely on that particular job until I finally told them to stop, and it made the more mundane aspects of this experience far more enjoyable.

It gave Katie and me more time to explore the world. A genuinely massive world, I should also say. Omega Crafter has plenty of areas to explore, deep cave systems to spelunk, and it’s rife for a multiplayer session with your best friends. But if you can’t wrangle together a crew, your Grammi pals have you covered. Just tell them what you need them to do, and they’ll be more than happy to fill in for an unavailable peer.

Ironically Enough, Crafting Things on Your Own Is One of the Low Points of ‘Omega Crafter’

Omega Crafter is a lovely little game, which makes its flaws all the more apparent and easy to spot. Sure, combat may be shallow, but it’s still fun. Learning how to code for automation, minus the actual act of typing things out, is quite ingenious in itself. But the actual act of crafting items for yourself feels a bit more cumbersome than it should. Even after multiple hours of playing, my wife kept finding herself confused about how to craft, with far too many button presses needed to make even the most basic of items.

I would tend to agree. After approaching a crafting bench, I could select an item I wanted to make. This is par for the course in any survival/crafting game. But when I approached the bench, it always appeared like I didn’t have enough items in my inventory. It just feels fairly clumsy and cumbersome, but I got used to it after a while. It does feel like it could be streamlined to be more user-friendly, especially for those who may not play these types of games regularly.

‘Omega Crafter’, with its Satisfying Gameplay Loop, Has ‘Cult Hit’ Written All Over It

After burning the midnight oil and getting out of that first area, Omega Crafter opened up tremendously. What I thought may have just been yet another crafting/survival game suddenly turned into something much larger and better than I anticipated. The gorgeous presentation, the fun boss fights, and the satisfaction of watching my Grammi buddies keep production running at maximum capacity made Omega Crafter a hit in this household.

While I do hope that the team at Preferred Networks makes the onboarding process a bit easier to understand for newer players, the general gameplay loop and rewarding exploration more than make up for it. Just be prepared to learn as you play. You’ll find that Omega Crafter is much more than meets the eye.

Verdict: Highly Recommended

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Omega Crafter is available now on Steam. A code was provided by the publisher for the sake of review. Reviewed on PC.