I don’t know when it happened, but crafting games have become one of the most popular genres. Palworld broke concurrent Steam player records with a peak of 2,101,876 players, beating out Counter-Strike 2 and Lost Ark. And Palworld isn’t even finished – it’s an early access title.
While I never really had an initial interest, I am not immune to hype. My love of Pokémon had me hop on the Palworld train, from which I sunk a couple dozen hours building a little base and capturing Cattivas and Mossandas before dropping it. Last week, I jumped into Nightingale as well, but after a handful of hours spent exploring the Fae wilds, I don’t understand how people can sink hundreds – if not thousands – of hours into crafting games.
I get the initial appeal: an expansive world to explore, rugged odds as you collect wood and stone to build your first little shack, mysterious unknown dangers, and eventually mastery over all these things. Even better, doing all this with a friend or three.
The feeling of progression is second to none in crafting games, yet that progression is earned through sheer tedium backed up by incredibly thin or non-existent narratives. I don’t know how many simple workbenches I’ve collected a bunch of wood and stones in order to build, but I do know I never want to do it again. Palworld was worse for this, with building just about anything taking too much time until I enslaved a little army of adorable critters to do it for me. Mentally, I compared such activities to the long loading screens of previous generations that we all collectively lamented – is holding down a button while your little avatar assembles a workbench for 30 seconds any different than the slow elevators in the Mass Effect series?
Related: How to Get the Herbarium Realm Card in Nightingale
Nightingale streamlined the process a bit with instant builds and plentiful resources just plopped on the ground for me to nab, but then I began to get lost in the myriad structures required to build key items in the game: saw tables and motors and smelters and enchanter’s focuses and what have you. This was all after a requirement to craft several pieces of clothing, sending me scurrying about the map and spamming the F key to collect every plant I could find while keeping an eye out for wolves to shoot for leather. Soon, my inventory was overloaded with nondescript icons. None of this process was enjoyable, and the early access game completely lost me when I eventually did warp to another realm, only to have to start all over again in a bit more dire circumstances.
I’m sure if I pushed through to when I could craft guns and battle dangerous beasts – in either game – I would’ve begun to understand the appeal more, but as the genre stands, it feels like excessive, monotonous padding rather than engaging gameplay. Never mind the server issues I experienced in both titles, to the point where Nightingale routinely kicked me. Those could be forgiven as early access quirks; however, they did little to change my mind on the genre.
To put things in a more optimistic spin, I’ve come away from my first real foray into crafting games (no, the masterclass of Stardew Valley doesn’t count) bewildered as to why they’re so popular, yet also certain they’re ripe for innovation. There will come a game that makes these building mechanics, especially in the early game, much more enticing and manageable. That said, I’m no game designer but a critic with his own tastes, preferences, and a platform to complain on. Quite obviously, most avid gamers love the genre, and while I may not, I sincerely hope I one day understand why.
Palworld Early Access is available now, while Nightingale is available on PC.
