Stackers Puts Crafting On The Map, Not In A Menu
The pitch answers a design question about why crafting lives in menus by moving the act of combining materials onto the map itself, which makes recipe discovery the game's content rather than a lookup.
Reporting from 1 source: Denfaminicogamer.
Indie developer Maxbong is building Stackers, a single-player crafting simulation for PC via Steam and STOVE, scheduled for 2027. Materials such as wood and stone are stacked directly on the map to produce items and facilities, with recipes found by trial and error. The tile-based world spans nine biomes, expands through tile scrolls, and is randomly generated, with a boss gating each new area.
Recipes are not handed to the player. Combining five pieces of wood produces a workbench, and stacked stones produce a furnace, with the results depending on how the materials are arranged. Footage shown so far includes stone, wood and something like metal ingots combined into a light source. The map is built from tile-shaped land, starting as a small plot with limited resources. Tile scrolls found during play widen that plot, and a larger plot can turn up valuable resources or portals that pour out enemies. Bosses rule each of the nine biomes, and defeating one unlocks the next.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.
Sources
- Denfaminicogamer 木や石を「積み上げてクラフト」するゲーム『Stackers』が面白そう。レシピは“すべて手探り”で見つけ出す