Dawn of Crafting Review

Dawn of Crafting puts you in the shoes – or lack thereof – of a lost Homo Sapien. Your village has been destroyed and now you’ve got nowhere to go. Master Crafter Alf finds you wandering the primordial world and takes you in. With his master knowledge about building and crafting, the two of you set out to rebuild your village and ultimately advance humankind.

Dawn of Crafting is a peculiar game. If you’ve ever played one of those “isolated adventure games,” something like A Dark Room, you’ll recognize the premise of Dawn of Crafting. The game is also a self-proclaimed mash up of Minecraft and Cookie Clicker, and we have to say that’s a pretty apt description as well.

The game is presented in a giant grid, with four specialized slots at the top. The empty grid is your inventory, and before you know it it’s going to fill up with all sorts of crafting materials. The four special slots at the top is where the magic happens. Three slots are for item placement, while the fourth slot is reserved for a tool. Combining certain items in here will result in a crafted item.

A big part of the fun in Dawn of Crafting is discovering new recipes. Alf serves as the narrator and will give you tasks to lead you down the general progression path, but there’s nothing stopping you from experimenting yourself. Well, save for two exceptions. The first are skill points. As you craft from a specific group of items, say for example using an axe to cut logs, your skill in that type of item will increase, in this case woodworking. Each recipe requires a certain amount of skill before you can craft it properly.

Even then, there isn’t a guaranteed chance you’ll be able to make them item. The second thing is energy. You and your minion (essentially your material gatherer) both have energy gauges that deplete every time you attempt to craft something. You’ll need to feed yourself and your minion to replenish spent energy, and you’ll probably even spend energy doing so. For example, using a knife to cut a banana into smaller pieces restores more energy than if you had just eaten the banana raw.

So, as we mentioned, you can preview the chance of success before you commit to crafting. Succeed or fail, your stamina will be spent either way. Combining all of this leads into a very micromanagement-heavy experience. You’ll need to make sure to keep your food stocks high while making sure you have enough energy to grind out more skill points so you can craft the better items.

While it’s fun thinking up new strategies and trying to be as efficient as possible with your energy and items, sometimes the randomness of the crafting can get a little frustrating. More often than not upon unlocking a new crafting recipe, the default chance of success usually teeters somewhere around 50-60%. You’ll most likely fail, which results in useless goop. This isn’t too bad with basic recipes, but as you get into the advanced recipes which require items that require other items, you can see how this starts to become headache inducing.

Most of this would be solved with an expanded user interface, but Dawn of Crafting sticks to its grid inventory for most of the experience, making things a little tedious at points. There’s a little book you can refer to that stores all known and related recipes in it, and since there are a tons of recipes to discover, you’ll be opening this often.

Take the Primitive Container, for example. This is the first basic storage item you can craft, which allows one spot in your inventory grid to expand to four slots. To make this you’ll need Bark Strips… which must first be extracted from Inner Bark… which is carved using a Sharp Stone on a Split Tree Bark… which must be chopped using a Primitive Axe on a Small Trunk… which must be gathered by your minion while equipped with a Primitive Axe.

The recipe book tries to save you time by allowing you to simply tap on the recipes. The game will autofill the crafting slots with the right items provided you have them, but this still is bogged down by having to go through the book recipe by recipe. Progression-based crafting is always fun and interesting but the game could use a smoother way to make the advanced recipes.

Dawn of Crafting, despite having to dig through the recipe book to get what you want, is still a pretty fun experience. Later in the game you’ll be able to actually customize your village, which is pretty neat. The game offers optional in-app purchases but there aren’t any forced advertisements, and that’s always appreciated. There always lots of wonder and amazement to be found when you discover a new recipe!