BitCraft: Age of Automata Preview: A Social, Sandbox MMO With Some Big Ideas

ign.com:

BitCraft: Age of Automata’s announcement way back in 2021 caused quite the commotion in the IGN community, and I’m not going to lie: I was sceptical. Though this survival-crafting sandbox MMO looked absolutely beautiful, I wanted to see some evidence of how exactly players are supposed to craft this world together from the ground up.

I was excited to finally go hands-on; I played the beginning stages of BitCraft on PC, learning the basics of crafting and staking my claim in the world, before going on a fun little adventure across the sea.

I can say that BitCraft has come a long way since that initial announcement. What I played was memorable and – more importantly – fun. But it also has a long way to go. With the amount of ambition the developers are feeding into this game, it still remains to be seen whether BitCraft will fulfil its lofty vision.

I was guided by Tyler Cloutier, co-founder of studio Clockwork Labs, who bills BitCraft as the “first large-scale survival-crafting MMO.” Though currently, it feels less like a world in which you have to survive, and more of an opportunity to build a civilization from the ground up – with the help of thousands of other players.

As a PC gamer entering this world for the first time, I was immediately impressed by the graphics. The colours were gorgeous and stylised, like a levelled-up Tears of the Kingdom, and moving around felt fluid. I must admit initially confused by the movement controls, with the WASD keys controlling the camera rather than my character. Instead, the game uses a click-to-move system to facilitate crafting.

Upon waking up in the world with nary a hint of my automaton’s background, I quickly found myself perusing a Pokedex-like menu of crafting recipes to discover, find, and learn. It’s from here that you can select what to build, and start your construction site.

This is where the fun really begins: Scrappy, early-game structures can be built by just piling a bunch of sticks onto that construction site. But