Craftlings

Craftlings caught my eye because it mashes up two classics I grew up with — the chaotic charm of Lemmings and the logistics of The Settlers. It’s part puzzle, part light city-builder and all about wrangling adorable, inefficient villagers into productive chaos.

You shepherd a cluster of Craftlings across bite-sized levels, assigning jobs like lumberjack, miner or warrior and switching roles on the fly. The core loop is deceptively simple: harvest resources, build specialized structures, optimise production chains and upgrade your Town Hall to unlock new options. Levels live in distinct biomes with their own resources and end-goals, so each map becomes a little puzzle in spatial planning and timing. There’s no constant random catastrophes — you choose when to explore or how aggressively to push past the settlement boundaries, which keeps the pace relaxed. The Craftlings themselves are gloriously clumsy and their ‘will of their own’ leads to funny hiccups and emergent solutions — sometimes you’ll laugh, sometimes you’ll rage-restart. Pixel art, a soothing soundtrack and cheeky SFX give it a nostalgic, cozy vibe. Replayability leans on optimisation: beat levels faster for better ranks and there’s a healthy drive to perfect your production chains. A couple of rough edges remain — the tutorial dumps a lot of info at once and controller support felt spotty at launch — but the developer is active and responsive, so fixes and QoL improvements feel likely.

Craftlings is a heartfelt, focused indie that nails cozy strategy and optimisation puzzles with a nostalgic spin. It’s not flawless, but its charm, clever level design and strong community make it well worth a play.