With certain video games, you hear about a “gameplay loop,” as in the repeated “loop” you do while playing certain titles because it seems like it’s “all you do.” If you make the right kind of loop, you get praised; if you make the wrong kind, you get criticized. In recent times, many have critiqued games that have required “too much crafting,” and for fair reasons. So, the team at Teamcraft Studios and Mystic Forge decided to skip the middleman and make an Action RPG focused primarily on crafting called Teamcrafter. To show it’s different than what you’re expecting, they dropped a demo on Steam for you to check out, and there’s additional info below:

“In Teamcrafter, players aren’t the heroes rushing into battle. They’re the Craftist. The person responsible for making sure those heroes survive.

Explore beautiful pixel art biomes, gather resources and craft weapons, armour and equipment for a party of Adventurers.
Experiment with gear, talents and passive effects to create powerful builds, then send your Adventurers into automated turn-based battles to discover whether all that theorycrafting actually worked.

Rather than treating crafting as a secondary system supporting combat, Teamcrafter puts it and build experimentation at the
center of the experience.”

And as you’ll see in the key features section below, this team really does know what they’re doing, as they made a variation of this kind of game in a massively successful MMO:

Craft the Victory: Gather resources, craft equipment and prepare the Adventurers who will fight on your behalf.

Buildcrafting at the Center: Experiment with 150+ pieces of gear, 40+ talents and 50 passive items to discover powerful combinations.

Put Your Builds to the Test: Watch your Adventurers battle automatically, learn what worked and return to the workbench with a better plan.

Cozy Meets Complexity: Peacefully explore and gather across beautiful biomes before diving into deep crafting and optimisation.

Built by Crafters: From the team behind FFXIV Teamcraft and its community of millions of passionate crafters.

If you’re curious about the crafting journey ahead, play the demo and then wishlist the title!