Craft tycoon · out on RuStore

TechLab

A garage that grows into a plant. Recipes here are reasoned out, not guessed: if you know a brick is moulded before it is fired and tungsten isn't cast, you already know how to play.

Out on RuStore. Other stores to be announced

Everything up to electricity is free. After that one purchase, no subscriptions. Ads exist only in the free part, and only where you go looking for them.

3 projects before electricity in the free part

The Boss's garage: a brick kiln, a workbench with tools, shelves of jars, the roller door open to an evening street — The Boss went out for solder. The garage is yours now

WINT, the helper robot, waving — The Boss went out for solder. The garage is yours now

What sets the game apart

The recipe follows from common sense, the physics is real, and nobody tugs at your sleeve.

The mould decides

You dig some clay, fit the press with a brick mould and push. On the bench sits a green brick, and it will never become a vessel: the press sets the shape once. The kiln fires the green brick into a brick.

The same clay in a vessel mould becomes pottery; in an insulator mould, an insulator. One material, one machine, different things.

Clay

PressMouldUnfired

KilnFired

Brick mouldGreen brickBrick
Vessel mouldGreen vesselCeramic tableware
Insulator mouldGreen insulatorCeramic insulator

The press sets the shape: once pressed, a piece can't be reshaped

Physics gives no discounts

Sintered parts can't be reshaped. There's no aluminium without electrolysis: bauxite goes into an alkaline autoclave first, then the alumina into a molten bath. And a magnet dropped into a crucible stops being a magnet above the Curie point.

WINT will carry it gently to the Museum of Rejects and say something comforting. The trader buys slag, flash and swarf, the scrap from misses, for pennies.

Bauxite
Autoclavealkali under pressure
Alumina
Electrolyzerelectric current only
Aluminium

Neodymium magnet
Crucibleabove the Curie point
Demagnetised magnet
Museum of Rejects

Scrap from misses

Slag
Flash
Swarf

No alarm clock required

Automatons keep working while you're away and stop once they've hit their quota. The game never rushes you back: there are no timers driving you to return.

For TechLab this is a firm rule, and the tests hold it.

The Automation screen: the clay, sand, quartz and graphite collectors are working, the limestone collector has hit its quota of 10 and stopped — Automatons hit their quota and stop

The workshop stays the same - the automation grows

The recipe is the same everywhere. What changes is who runs it and what you run into. The next automation tier comes from a project you build.

Workshop
The garage machines are always there. New recipes can only be discovered by hand.
Who grants it
from the very start
I Robots
Collectors and robots at the garage machines, one job each. A robot only repeats what you have already discovered.
Bottleneck
Cycle time and power.
Who grants it
from the very start
II Shops
Shops take over the routine with steel, copper and rolled metal, and your hands stay free for trying. Big machines that do not fit on a bench - generators, crushers, car bodies - are here too: you build the prototype by hand, and a shop runs the series - one line from the finished thing down. Whatever it doesn't make itself it takes from the shelf: raw materials need a collector or a buyer.
Bottleneck
Space, tooling and collectors.
Who grants it
project «Shop floor»
III Plants
Everything that needs power: electrolysis, the arc furnace, sintering. A plant runs a product tree in full from raw materials, and a plant with a dispatcher makes the parts your goal is missing.
Bottleneck
Power in kilowatts and parts.
Who grants it
project «Factory» - waits for «Power plant», «Shop floor»

How it looks

Portrait, played one-handed. Every pop-up closes with one tap.

How to play the first hour of the game, frame by frame

1 / 8

The Boss went out for solder. The garage is yours now

A miss costs materials, not your patience

The Museum of Rejects: the magnet that changed its mind

WINT: a round brass head with a screw on top, lens eyes, rolling on one wheel

The helper robot the previous Boss left behind

WINT is built from rejects

Built from things that didn't work out, with more bolts than he really needs. His memory sits on a faulty chip, so he remembers recipes in bits and pieces.

He never jokes at your expense. At himself and at rejects - constantly, but fondly: he is one of them. He calls you by your rank - Master in the garage, Chief on the shop floor, Director at the plant - and speaks of the Boss warmly and mysteriously.

A reject! Your first reject! Don't toss it - museum shelf. Us defective ones stick together.
Ooh, a mistake! Excellent. The Boss said: those who make no rejects make nothing at all.