Let’s chat about a little game called Scrap Mechanic. And it’s prospects for playability in 2021. If you’re a car hobbyist you may very well enjoy this too, it’s basically like playing with model cars in a video game but you can drive them too. Some modders have gone to the trouble of adding actual production models into the game. Build from the chassis up. Like real adult life, build cars while trying to survive in an unfair world.
Still utterly confused about some aspects of this game, but that’s totally fine and it’s not due to being a bad game. Actually, quite the contrary, this is fantastically good! There’s just a ton for me to learn since I’ve spent so much time just enjoying the building, crafting and modification that is possible.
Released in early 2016 this title still looks to have potential left in it. Listed as “early access” there are sporadic updates but when those updates arrive often means significant enough additions to revisit your worlds to check those out. The most recent update seems small but it actually expanded on one of the modes in a massive way. I’ll explain that in a moment but let’s rewind to introduce more of the game for those who might be considering but haven’t yet hit the buy button just yet.
You can customize your menu screen, a rather clever addition here to show off a build. Grabbed a Pikachu from the steam workshop for a demonstration of how that works.
Character creation in this game is fairly slim, all the options pretty much interchange but it indicates that there can be some better clothing options where hopefully we acquire more than one shoe.
Challenge Mode:
Once past that menu screen is another menu screen, this one is a selection of the three different game modes. The first is challenge mode, a series of build puzzles for players to figure out in order to get from the starting point to the finish location. This mode does offer a challenge while also introducing the many concepts the game offers in builds to utilize the physics driving on the ground or in air. The mode in multiplayer can be quite entertaining trying to get all in the party into the finish zone. It’s one way to learn the basics of putting together vehicles and connecting the necessary functions to make them not only run, but drive in whatever direction you intended to with the controls.
Survival Mode:
(Getting Started)
If one prefers not to do this under a timer there are two other modes. Should you choose survival, there’s different situations like starving to death, thirst, fires, and robots while having to scavenge for the materials. This may be for those that like to do work under pressure! Having just apparently been hurled from the atmosphere players are immediately confronted by fire and must hobble along to collect any scattered debris worth saving while also finding a source of water to douse that fire.
There is a source just down an incline nearly directly straight out the exit of the burning shit, a pond with a tiny farm plot has blue buckets scattered around. Equipping one allows the player to collect water for different purposes, first putting out these fires, then watering some plants.
Crates contain food you’ll need to get by on a hunger bar that drains faster than a tank on a race car. May also have seeds, soil, gasoline or other consumables and component building parts. One more thing to keep an eye out for is the batteries which powers the ship back up. Crafting requires the CraftBot, installed into the wall of your starter ship and that requires the battery first. Once powered up the CraftBot contains the recipes for making your first vehicle, placing down a lift allows one to start putting assorted items together in order to construct something that moves using the connecting tool and whatever they can scavenge. The vehicle can help in traversing the sizable land to explore, but it’s still pretty pokey. This power up also gives you the log book with the ability to mark navigation for the crash site or mechanics shop. Beacons can be crafted to mark other points of interest you wish to be able to find again.
There isn’t a ton of storage in the starter area, only a couple spots inside the sleeper cabin and it’s easy to run out of bag space shortly after starting a collecting spree. Some items can be placed as decoration in addition to being used in farming or crafting. Seeds and bags of soil can be moved out of inventory and left in your base or placed around the existing inventory left over in the small garden by the crashed ship to lighten the bag load.
It’s ideal to keep the inventory light, in case you die, it would be more ideal to just not die but if you’re being adventurous, that can be a challenge. Robots will sneak up on you while you’re just minding your own business near or at your base. They’re also scattered about the landscape with the most concentrations being found around abandoned structures so far. This is probably far less of a challenge once players acquire a spud gun, but haven’t gotten that far into it yet. Starting out with the basic sledgehammer for combat and gathering.
Gathering Basics:
Per typical survival or life simulation game, find something and smash it. In this case you can start with trees which will then further require refining. Bots drop parts which can also be refined and there is oodles of different loot they spout when violently disassembled. There is beeswax out there and flowers that require the delicate approach of picking as opposed to smashing but the corn, hammer it. These cobs aren’t edible for you but if you can find some of the friendly Woc they’ll be glad to take the corn in exchange for milk. This is a great starter source for curing thirst and a bit of hunger. Woc serve as more than one resource, if you hammer one of them you get steak which can be used later on in a CookBot. Resources, including Wocs, seem to respawn after a few days aside from the crates immediately around the crash site. It would be unlikely to run out of things to gather. Especially if you’re playing solo.
Other random collectables are gasoline used in the crafting of explosives, as well as chemicals used for glow sticks and batteries. The pigment flowers can be made to paint for some customization on your creations. Circuit boards are used in just about every big crafting project which can be found in the big CraftBot station in the Mechanics shop.
CraftingBots:
Not all bots in the game are baddies. Some are helpful bots players make to craft items. The first is the CraftBot that holds the bulk of recipes for making useful items. The CookBot, at current state, only contains three recipes but a couple which utilize the Woc steaks as a more regular food source. Hoping we see more in the games future for variety and to use up excess crops. The RefineBot automates the refining process and if a storage container is connected will automatically deposit the finished product. The last is a DressBot that consumes cotton and garment boxes to unlock clothes. When you reach the mechanic station these helpful bot versions will be craftable from the DispenserBot located there.
Farming:
Farming is included in this survival mode for assistance with making food acquisition steady. It’s as self explanatory as the billboard in the small garden plot. Find some soil or throw down a bag of soil from your inventory. Plant. Water. Fertilize. And then wait. What’s slightly different here that I hadn’t seen in a game yet was picking the soil back up, turns back into a bag in your inventory for convenient relocation. Fertilizer is also optional, it only will speed up growth. Carrots, Tomatoes and beats you can eat, but not the potatoes. Those are used for ammunition once you’ve got your hands on a spud gun or by the CookBot in recipes. The fruits can only be found in crates or by growing them from seeds but restore more to the hunger bar. Planting more than 10 or 12 craps attracts attention from enemy bots so be prepared to defend the farm.
Progression:
Though I haven’t gotten far into survival mode just yet, I have read a little about the expansive zone which will eventually lead you to packing stations and the ability to make deals with a trader. Fruit and vegetable crates assembled at the packing stations can be traded for seeds, soil and fertilizer to grow your farm. Also in their selection is a saw and a drill, combined with other parts can be turned into more efficient farming equipment that can mow down trees or get scrap from rocks. You can also obtain spud guns and garment boxes from the trader.
Looking forward to better getting down survival mode, the first experimental tryouts were stumbling around without looking at any tips and found myself struggling to stay out of the hungry zone. Not doing too well against some of the bots, upon death players will have to run back to their bodies to retrieve whatever belongings were in their inventory at the time of death. Haven’t tried this yet, but threads on reddit responders say to have multiple bags with items still littered across the land with items that don’t despawn. Can even be used as markers if at least one item is left behind. It could be one strategic way to hold onto some items that aren’t regularly needed so long as one is good at remembering where they left things.
That’s one reason this game is delighting, the exploration aspect and navigation it requires in order to quickly find one’s way around in such a vast area. It’s particularly huge when you’re still on foot. While sometimes daunting, it builds skills in spatial memory and awareness that might get applied to things people do in daily life, including how well they can navigate themselves around in the real world. Different kinds of games can grow or shrink this ability along with a region of the brain called the hippocampus, depending on how games are utilized may be affecting people more than they realize. I reference that part of the brain often in videos but it’s because it’s a very key part of the brain.
The hippocampus helps humans process and retrieve two kinds of memory, declarative memories and spatial relationships. Declarative memories are those related to facts and events. Spatial relationship memories involve pathways or routes, like learning how to get somewhere without using GPS. It’s always where short term memories get transferred into long term ones. Despite what we hear about losing brain cells, this is one of the few parts of the brain that continues generating them all throughout adult life. Since learning has much to do with memory and how flexible memory is, this part of the brain has significance in how fast we can pick up new skills or change our minds when we’ve been wrong about our assumptions. In situations such as amnesia or Alzheimer’s this part of the brain has seen a reduction in matter or damage, showing through difficulties with use of memory. While some action games, such as first person shooters, show to reduce grey matter in this area of the brain when viewed on MRI other games have been shown to do the reverse. It’s difficult to lump all video games together when talking about their effects. Whether or not this is long term is yet to be known. It can’t exactly be said that playing first person shooters resulted in Alzhemiers. Sometimes it takes many links in correlation to determine a causation. But even for now, a shrunken brain isn’t in my best interest after already dealing with years of MRIs for a brain lesion in a region of the brain close to the limbic system where the hippocampus resides. Can’t sustain more brain damage than I already have so it’s not the bulk of the gaming I personally do.
But Scrap Mechanic offers the occasional opportunity to enjoy a replication of that gameplay through use of the spud guns. Undeniably it’s fun shooting down the robots from time to time in this first person perspective. Playing in third person doesn’t seem to cause quite the same effects as first person either in studies; oddly, the orientation of the camera may have much to do with how games restructure our brains. Scrap Mechanic also allows players to back out holding alt along with the scroll wheel to get into a third person mode. Both modes are helpful in the game at different times.
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6826942/)
(https://www.neuroscientificallychallenged.com/blog/2014/5/23/know-your-brain-hippocampus)
Creative Mode:
Moving on to creative mode. Generally already I spend tons of time in any game’s creative mode just making random stuff but Scrap Mechanic has some bonuses. Hadn’t opened the game in a few months but was treated to capsules which release both violent and non violent, organic and non organic beings into our creative mode. Having this option makes it possible to test defensive creations and fortresses to be used in survival. This latest update is among those referenced at the beginning that expand the game immensely.
Wocs and Glowbs can grace your worlds for cute decoration. Robot capsules can be placed and later broken open on command virtually turning your creative mode into survival mode. Especially if you do the command to call them all to your location. Being a highly mod-able game means scripts can be added to make one’s creative into a survival mode with a lot more going on. There are quite literally thousands of steam workshop mods and creations one can download to add to their game.
ModKits contain additional pieces like cylinders, spheres, wedges, and curves that allow players to get much more elaborate with what can be built without everything being cube shaped like Lego. Not that cubes are a bad thing, but trying to make small furniture items gets bulky. Building a sleek exotic car is even more awkward, but with many many mods out there the automotive aftermarket selection is stellar. Almost more wheel choices that replicate real brands than some AAA racing releases. Springs, brakes and rotors, even a turbo. Some even have shaped fenders or hoods to really polish a project car. Much of what you’re seeing in this video is someone else’s creation downloaded from the workshop, left my messes on another server that aren’t as neat as these replications.
Tools:
In your inventory within creative mode, all the tools are here already to show. Your sledgehammer is considered a tool but the lift is the first and quite essential tool you can even use as a personal elevator when building or trying to reach high up honeycombs in survival mode.
The connecting tool is used to make things function by connecting together parts that can work together like engines and bearings to create moving wheels. When combined with a seat and controller is the recipe for a basic vehicle. There’s a handbook with some tips.
The welding tool fuses parts together with a few clicks.
The paint tool gives players a panel of selectable colors to swap out on the gun tank, then spray individual blocks or splatter entire portions of walls at once. Lots of items can be painted, even bots.
The last is the array of spud gun, fry shooting shotgun and spud Gatling.
Spent way too many hours building a house, construction in this game is brick by brick if you want it to be or use the “Q” key to adjust a drag range to build larger multiblock portions. Right click and drag to remove sections or individual bricks. Blocks of different materials help create different textured looks, many more can be added by mod as well as doors and windows that look more fitted than using just solid glass, such as in this project. Haven’t put them in just yet but attaching a switch will give you working actuated doors. Given that, not sure why I made stairs aside from being a force of habit. Could have just made an elevator and saved myself the trouble. Oh well, next build.
Furniture inside your home you can make by hand, in first person mode no less, with the materials in the inventory menu from the base game. Multiply that inventory by adding mod kits from the Steam Workshop. These mods can be pre made furniture assets that fit quite nicely into builds scale appropriate to the character. Many have interactive abilities to turn on and off or change the lighting. Couches, chairs and beds can be used for rest. Uploaders integrated plenty of interactive abilities into their creations from things as simple as this light up racing arcade game to light up tea cup carnival rides.
Oh yeah, totally. People have built it. And I couldn’t resist downloading it. Going to admit some creations lag my computer to being nearly unplayable but it’s still fun to goof around with and learn from others creations of how even the moving parts go together. The bumper car was too much for the current creative world, probably going to have to delete it and build one in hopes that one from scratch doesn’t cause as much lag. Definitely not that knowledgeable on game optimization. These do help illustrate the potential of what you can do with this though.
Thoughts:
The game is available on Steam for PC only but a 2018 Tweet developer Axolot mentioned:
“We will look in to consoles after survival is in the game.”
And while survival mode was out some time ago, a recent Q&A says it’s expected to be on console about the same time as the game leaves early access. If you’re hoping for lightning fast back to back updates, unfortunately that doesn’t happen but it’s long history of continued expansion is a good track record that it’s not entirely forgotten either. You can expect good things from it. Hints dropped in the Q&A include focus on more aquatic and air adventuring aside story development with questing. Boss sketches and screenshots from dungeon changes indicate endgame like content coming too.
In fairly recent development players can make their own world tiles to stitch together into bigger worlds. Can tell this would help immensely when trying to put together race tracks in a hurry. And one quick browse through the workshop for examples proves you can do some gravity defying with Hot Wheels like tracks. Good stuff! Track building is always a plus in every game where it’s possible. Plus the devs are intent on giving modders some love in the future by expanding on what can be added to the game. 5 years down the road this game still has tons of life left in it.
Love it! The sandbox is already entertaining at base, expandable with mods in ways that are expansive and thoughtful to integrate. If the game wasn’t what you wanted it to be, it’s quite tunable through items found on the Workshop. Car enthusiast’s virtual builder hangout. You can certainly build and decorate a very elaborate club garage, leave room for lots of vehicles. If you have the patience and dedication, it can be done in survival mode if one really wants to feel a sense of accomplishment or have a substantial base to protect their crops from invading robots. Truly a mechanic builder virtual paradise!
