Omega Crafter Review (PC & MacOS)

It doesn’t take too long to find a good survival crafting game on whatever platform you prefer. So, Omega Crafter’s decision to add another survival crafting game to the list is a brave one. It’s an already established genre. So, I doubt they will be doing much differently. Yet, even in a sea of similar games, you still want to stand out from the crowd to attract a steady player base. 

In that sense, you could say that developer Preferred Networks succeeds. They introduce programming within a game, allowing you to automate tedious processes like gathering resources and crafting weapons. The way in which they implement this is pretty fun; it’s not mind-joggling at all, as you might imagine. 

But there are still a few rough edges left to smooth out. A few features still need polishing to put Omega Crafter on the pedestal it deserves. Some of these may be deal breakers for you, depending on your patience. In any case, you can’t deny the novelty that Preferred Networks attempts to bring to the survival crafting universe. 

To decide whether the game is right for you, we’ve compiled the experience you might expect in our Omega Crafter review below.

In a Nutshell

Omega Crafter’s story is pretty genius. You’re a game developer whose game has started behaving funny. You can’t really find a solution unless you, yourself, enter the game itself to try and fix the problem. And the way that you fix the problem varies. You can explore the vast, open world you’ve created, searching for the bugs trying to destroy your creations. The bugs vary from snakes to wolves to bears, all of which you must slay. But their strengths vary, forcing you to gather resources, craft weapons, and upgrade them first. This is where the “survival crafting” aspect of the game kicks in. 

You can explore a specific area of the game at a time, searching for trees to cut, stones to collect, valuable mineral ores to mine, and other rare items. Bring these resources to your camp, and you can begin building different crafting stations. Soon, you’ll begin crafting the weapons and gear you need. But since it takes multiple runs into the wild, you can build other useful structures and necessities like farming and cooking stations, too. 

Eventually, you have a sprawling camp turned city, where numerous resource-gathering, crafting, and building activities take place. And, well, that’s bound to get repetitive, which is where your bots come in. They’re called “Grammis,” and are essentially adorable little robots you can instruct to do all manner of tasks for you. 

You can automate their usefulness. So, automate their cutting down of trees, picking up of wood, selling or storing the wood, crafting of the wood into pickaxes, and so on. And your job is made easier. Simply head out into the wild to fight the bugs and gradually restore the normal functioning of your game’s code.

Style Up

Let’s then see how these individual gameplay elements perform, shall we? Your character is free to customize, albeit with generic and limited options. You can choose their genre, their hair type and color, and name. You can choose a Grammi companion, too, and name them. Then, proceed to name the world you’ll be exploring. 

Play God

For the story, there isn’t much to it. No cutscenes or dialogue develop the premise or the characters. However, I will say that the premise is pretty catchy. Entering the game you’ve been developing to manipulate the content directly sounds way too cool. And when the gameplay itself features writing lines of code, it essentially means you get to play God. 

Unfortunately, the programming aspect feels unfinished. It’s a cool premise without a solid follow-up. Fighting bugs to solve the problem your code has feels too predictable. And the bugs seem to appear at random throughout the world with no context. The coding part, on the other hand, has been restricted to automating resource gathering, crafting, and building processes. That’s handy when avoiding repetition for sure. But…

The code is pre-built for you. On the one hand, pre-built code and simply dragging and dropping the lines you need in an easy-to-understand UI take away the headache for gamers unfamiliar with programming. But I still expected some kind of challenge, some sort of puzzle to figure out. It seems too easy.

Also, if you play Omega Crafter and are hoping to use the coding interface to manipulate the world or Grammi, I’m afraid that’s not possible. All you can do is instruct the bots to do straightforward tasks like “Go cut down a tree” and “Pick up the wood.” You have to instruct the bot to pick up the wood after it cuts the tree. Otherwise, it’ll just stand by the fallen tree awaiting further instruction, which means after picking up the wood, you need to give it the next step. You can say that if the torch is turned on, the bot can store the wood. But if the storage is full, they can sell the wood. 

Bugs Within Bugs

You might have come to Omega Crafter as a “fixer,” but the coding system you’re subjected to can be a stumbling block to succeeding in your mission. When bots are automated to do a certain task, for instance, like pick up wood from a chest and take it to a crafting table to make planks, if wood runs out, they will continue to make the trip even if they aren’t carrying anything until you give them a new instruction or fill up the chest with more wood. 

But that’s solvable in the coding system, where you have to ensure that your program makes sense and can continue running without your help. If you send a bot to pick up an item from a chest to take to a crafting table, though, issues can come up. The bot will pick up any item in the chest, even if it’s not the type you need. Perhaps it’s my impatience. Perhaps the program is broken. Either way, aspects of the programming can become frustrating.

Brick by Brick

The building system can be frustrating as well. It has certain restrictions that don’t make sense. The grid system doesn’t automatically flatten uneven ground, for instance. So, most times, you have to dismantle and rework places that are uneven. The options for the walls and roofs are limited. 

Oh, and you have to build houses step by step: put up a wall, put up a roof, etc. And the measuring, oh, the measuring. Walls have to align perfectly, and maybe I’m just not much of a builder. But I’d argue the building system itself doesn’t entice me to want to experiment and get better.

Out in the Wild

Exploration is great, especially with the different biomes you explore. The biomes are procedurally generated. So, every run feels fresh and engaging. They have different colored grass, too, to indicate the presence of a different breed of enemies and items to collect. 

Before stepping into a new biome, you want to have leveled up your character’s health, stamina, and damage, so they can take on the stronger enemies you’ll face. Leveling up is pretty straightforward, gathering skill points through exploration to feed into your upgrades. 

Combat is straightforward. A simple swing, block, and dodge roll does the trick. Admittedly, it can grow on you after a few enemy encounters. I don’t know. Combat just isn’t quite there yet; packing a punch, jumpstarting your heart. Some bosses, meanwhile, can feel overpowered. Despite how many times you hit their weak points, they just don’t go down until you backtrack and level up again. 

You have one companion, Grammi, who helps gather resources and craft them. They can help in fights as well and level up. But they remain close to you at all times, meaning you cannot send them out into faraway places to gather resources and craft. Oh, and they bring the resources to you to carry, beating yet another purpose of a helping hand. 

Verdict

In summary, Preferred Networks has experimented on a clever idea and, for the most part, succeeded. However, a few items still need more time to bake in the oven. The character, Grammi, and world customization options are far limited to create anything that stands out. 

Meanwhile, the programming bit that automates mundane processes feels a little too straightforward. While easy to understand, it seldom challenges you to, for instance, come up with ways to manipulate the bots or the environment. All you can do is automate repetitive tasks. That’s it. Parts of the coding system can be frustrating, too, when your bots don’t do what you want them to do. 

Further, the building system is limited and lackluster. It doesn’t encourage building for hours with its restrictions, and honestly, nudges you into exploration. Here’s where Omega Crafter can be fun. Its vast world feels calming, akin to Pokémon. Even the enemies fit into the relaxing nature of the game. But combat grows on you, feeling repetitive and bland. 

It’s all up to you to determine whether the positive aspects of Omega Crafter are enough. And possibly tag a friend along for the ride to slot in some additional conversation and banter.