Welcome back to the devlog! This week, we’re talking about how we’re working on making the game more friendly to newcomers. One of the key stumbling blocks for new players of Mechanic Miner has been how to connect the various parts of a machine together to make it work.
This is a theme we’ve been iterating on quite a lot behind the scenes: how to make the game more accessible without sacrificing too much freedom in how the players build their machines. Connecting parts needs to be immediately obvious, which it is not necessarily for new players in the current public build of the game.
With the change to connectors, each part will have a dedicated part for connectors that shows where the different types of connectors go on that particular part. This should, along with the new in-game guide (which we’ll tell you more about next week!), make building machines in Mechanic Miner a lot more friendly to new and existing players.
Returning players will recognize some aspects of using connectors in the video above. The cursor still turns blue when hovering over the correct placement for connectors, and the connecting points still show the green light when connected properly.
Additionally, when you hold a specific connector-part such as a cable (as seen in the video above), the corresponding connectors on other parts in your machine that can be connected by that specific part will light up, so you know immediately what can be hooked up with that part.
Ultimately, the change will bring a little less freedom for players in where to connect the various parts. However, we believe that the benefits of making connectors a little easier to understand are worth the trade-off in freedom of where to place connectors.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this sneak peek at the upcoming changes to how connectors work in Mechanic Miner! Join us next week, where we’ll show you more about the new in-game guide and UI changes to the game! As always, you can also find this post on our Steam Discussion page.
