Hi everyone,
I'm one of the developers of the game Crafting Kingdom.
We just released the game today and we would love to know what you think, especially in terms of the game's accessibility.
The game focuses a lot on crafting resources, producing goods and then selling them.
You start out small, chopping logs in your lumberyard. Eventually you will work your way up unlock new products, buy new buildings and production facilities which allow you to produce more valuable goods.
You can also build out your own estate, if you have the necessary construction materials.
The game is incremental, which means one of the gameplay mechanics is that you need to restart your progress every now and then to get ahead. You complete quests and earn bonuses like faster production and higher sale prices for your next restart.
The game is free. There are optional ads, but no in-app purchases. The ads are voluntary rewarded videos, which will give you a powerful boost for watching (for example double log production for 10 minutes).
You can find the game here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crafting-kingdom/id1190611967?ls=1&mt=8
We tried to make this game as accessible as possible, but know that there are probably plenty of things that could be better. We would really appreciate some feedback on what could be improved. Any feedback is welcome.
Please note: The game uses Unity and the Unity Accessibility Plugin (UAP), so not all VoiceOver gestures are supported.
Comments
Canceling Boosts
Hi everyone,
I think the idea of adding a simple button to cancel a boost again is a good idea.
In the earlier versions of the game that was impossible, because it would have allowed cheating. The Bag of Gold boost worked different back then, and gave you all the gold at once. But now it gives you gold over time, so by canceling it, you'd gain nothing.
Adding a cancelation button also would allow to restart a boost early - you'd just cancel it and select it again.
Lastly, it would make some boosts a lot more useful, such as the boosts that make selling and buying cheaper, which are only useful for a short period of time.
I can't think of anything negative about it, unless I'm mistaken. I'll keep this on the list for the next update.
Sorry I haven't added anyone new to the beta yet by the way. I'm currently on vacation and will be back in the office next week.
Have a great time, Michelle.
Enjoy your vacations. Have a great time.
Notifications
Hubert,
I like the idea of adding a notification if all automations in a location have run out. This would be a notification that would only trigger while you are actively inside the game. I've got a few of those on my list of ideas.
The local notifications that trigger while you are not in the game only trigger with a delay, that's correct. Or to be exact, there is a minimum wait time between leaving the game and the first notification popping up. I don't want the game to be annoying, so I set a minimum wait time of an hour. Even if your automations run out earlier.
canceling production of items
Hi michelle, that's really great you came on here even on your vacation, I must admit I hadn't thought of the possibility of canceling boosts also being useful for when reducing cost of stuff etc, that's a great point as particularly when production slots get expensive you can usually buy one or two then that's it till you raise enough money for more.
what do you think about the idea of canceling production of items? I have firmly moved into the camp of think this would be a good idea, as for example last night when I went to sleep I had about 2 hours to run on producing stuff to make food but I completed that quest and would have far rather shut that down in favor of the quarry.
I still think you could make the cancel boost button a quest maybe, and also the ability to shut down production areas.
I also sent you an email last week about rather serious issues on the iPhone x where navigation cues in ios don't work properly when leaving crafting kingdom and going back to the home screen, and also the app switcher not being able to be opened with a long swipe, hope you got that message.
Cancelling boosts
I would like to have the feature to canceling boosts in cas you do not maybe need it for a horter time. This would be awesome.
In app purchase?
Hi all, I've been playing this excellent game since the beginning, and I've gotten my friend into it as well. Problem is, one, he doesn't know how much the purchase price is to take away the video boost method, nor can he find where a button might be to upgrade to the full version so to speak.
I know its been quite a while since my wife and I upgraded so I surely can't remember how that worked out. lol Thanks for help with firstly the price of upgrade, and how to do it. :)
Removing the ads
Hi MikeFont,
removing the video ads from the game and get the boosts for free costs $4.99. This might be different outside of the US, because the AppStore takes care of currency conversions and local taxes etc.
To make the purchase, you go into the Castle, select one of the boost buttons and choose a boost. That will open a dialog offering you to watch a video ad in return for the boost. Further down inside that same dialog window is the option to buy the ad free version, just keep swiping.
You will need to have an internet connection when you make the purchase.
Once you're ad-free, that dialog window will not come up again. Choosing a boost will just instantly activate it.
bad performance issues in crafting kingdom beta
Hi Michelle, just posting hear so that everyone can contribute to this topic if they want to. I sent you two messages about incredibly bad performance of VoiceOver in the quarry when I have loads of slots and they are running to produce stuff. I have now got 76 slots in my quarry and I have found that if I go into it with VoiceOver running the screen almost freezes up entirely if I go in without VoiceOver running then the game performs better though not totally as good when I had fewer slots. If my storage is full and I go into the quarry with VoiceOver on the game seems more responsive. But it seems crazy I am experiencing this level of performance considering the iPhone x's specs. I have also found frequently with VoiceOver on and th quarry having these performance issues that a single swipe can often jump me multiple items with one flick so taking me to the wrong part of the screen. also, buttons to automate new slots or go back out of the quarry frequently don't respond once the performance issues start. now that I have so many slots in the quarry the VoiceOver performance is bad all the time in the quarry with production running restarting the game doesn't help. also I have found that navigational cues to do with vibration don't work properly when swiping to go to the home screen they don't trigger till I touch the screen after going home.
as a side note it would be great if I could flick down to go to the bottom of the screen with two fingers as I tell you its not fun swiping through 76 production slots just to add another. I have saved my game data to the cloud for you to look at and will save again before I reset which I expect to be maybe today or tomorrow then I will leave my cloud save up there till you have told me you have looked at it before saving another game. I am also routinely finding that since the terrible performance started in the quarry that while my slots are all producing I am literally unable to select a product to produce even when I am using the system voice, double tapping almost always fails to tick the product I want to produce, and even if it does tick the product automating a newly added slot doesn't respond. I have to wait till my storage is full, then I can go into a newly added slot and automate it.
Me to
I am running the latest appstore version and when i have 50 or more slots in any buildings the buttons in that building don't respond and vo focus jumps all over the place. Turning vo off does not help. Still unresponsive buttons and jumping focus
Controlling production
Once you unlock each slot being able to make more then one of a product it would be nice if we could pick how many products were made in each slot. For example i have 4 cole production in 1 slot and cole is made faster then furness products so my storage gets full of cole rather then what i am trying to sell. So it would be nice to be able to tell the slot to make 0 1 2 3 or 4 cole. Same with logs when making tools.
controlling production
The way that I would control production is to decrease the number of slots that are producing those items that are more quickly produced. Example: Why have 20 slots producing logs when you only neer 4? The more slots that are producing an item, the more you will be overrun with them.
Still too much
When you have 1 slot making 4 logs every 1.5 seconds and tools take something like 30 seconds the number of blacksmith slots needed to use all the logs is crazy. Especially when you consider each slot gets more expensive and having a large number of slots makes the game have a temper tantrum.
Performance problems can limit production on iPhone 6
I can sympathise with the performance problems you have with 76 slots in the quarry on your iPhone X, Alex, as I also have performance problems with only 30 slots on my iPhone 6. I'm lucky that Crafting Kingdom doesn't freeze up on me, but quite often, when I go into any property where I have 30 slots, focus can dance madly round the slots so that it is hard for me to restart all automations or check how much automation time I have left. I don't dare give myself more than 30 slots in any property these days, given this situation. It's true that the iPhone 6 is slower on IOS 11 than newer models, so my problems are probably not surprising, but with plenty of restarts of the app, of VoiceOver, and sometimes of the phone itself, I can continue my production, even if it takes longer than it could have done, due to me having to limit the number of slots in any of my properties to 30 at the most.
glad to know I am not the
glad to know I am not the only one experiencing these issues, I think they have been around since the very early days of the game but I think they really need addressing as a matter of urgency given the increasing length of quests and automation times. the performance issues are crazy, I don't know how crafting kingdom works from a coding point of view, but essentially when you think about it all crafting kingdom is is a series of timers running for different lengths of time they really shouldn't be causing this level of performance issues, and I don't think the game is even that graphical is it? my production issues are made worse on the x by the fact that there is no home button so in order to go home I have to swipe on the screen the very thing that becomes unresponsive in the game in the first place, really not fun.
Performance with many slots
Hi everybody,
we did a performance update with one of the last patches that we thought would have solved the sluggishness when there are so many slots. The problems most likely stem from the user interface trying to render that many entries.
It seems that at least in combination with VoiceOver this problem still persists, and I will take another look.
Big thank you to Alex Wallis, for pointing me to his cloud save. I downloaded it for testing, so you can update it now. Thank you for waiting!
My first feedback as a beta tester.
Hi Michelle,
The focus is very much improved on this beta.
When the number is announced that tells how much metal is left, voiceover says 1.003. I believe it means that I had 1003 metal left. But I don’t know what number represents or what character represents the point. Thank you so much for a great game. Sorry for the errors in this comment but it’s a bad day for posting comments for me :-)
God bless,
Wren Langley
PS I really love this game and I’m grateful to be able to be a beta tester.
I have let michelle know
I have let michelle know about this issue, as well as the fact that when I return to crafting kingdom from another app often the total amount of products I have can take a long time to update from the amount I had when I was last in crafting kingdom. I have also let her know that quite often I am bounced from the world map screen back to the main menu when reopening crafting kingdom even if I leave it on the world map screen.
I really hope that multi tasking gesture support can be sorted out soon as it seriously isn't fun switching apps with the iPhone x, really don't think apples decision to get rid of the home button is a good one.
wren for your information I believe that a decimal point is represented by the period as americans call it or full stop as we say in the UK.
Number formatting
Hi Wren,
thanks for the report. The number formatting slipped through the cracks. That was a actually fix to make the numbers read correctly with VoiceOver for Europe. The USA is one of the few countries that use a comma to separate thousands, and use a point to separate decimals. I have to manually switch depending on the language, and that's when the mistake happened. The current beta accidentally runs with the European number formatting even for English.
I already uploaded a fix, but it will take a little while for Apple to approve the new beta.
In regards to the multi tasking gesture - I was able to switch apps using a four finger swipe even in the current version of Crafting Kingdom. It seems to me that these gestures are iOS native and not overridden by Unity. It's also not a VoiceOver gesture - this works even when VoiceOver is off. It's probably meant for sighted and blind users alike.
However, the detection seems a little flaky. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't. The only gesture that works reliably is the swipe up to the top of the screen to bring up the app switcher.
Hi Michelle, that's really
Hi Michelle, that's really weird, for me the 4 finger swipe gesture doesn't work at all in crafting kingdom but it works fine in any other app, so I don't get what is going on there. Is there anything I can do to help track down why this might not be working?
Help with, and help cloud save works please and thank you
I have the beta installed on both my iPad and iPhone. I played the game on both and then save both games to the cloud from their devices. Then I played the game on my phone later on. I saved to the cloud, and when I loaded it to the iPad I got the iPad game can someone please tell me how I can get the same game on both devices with the same progress. On the phone game I have gold ore and leather strips both producing. On the iPad game I only had leather strips producing. If you need a better explanation please let me know and I will do my best
Build Removed
Hi Jennie,
I removed that build from Testflight, because it was faulty. Testflight should let you update to the latest build though.
Observations concerning latest update
Since I have set my iPhone 6 to update apps automatically, I was pleasantly surprised, after battling with a jamming app this morning, to find later that Crafting Kingdom had updated on my iPhone. The first thing I noticed was that the blacksmith and mine had been swapped round on the world map, which seems logical, as the mine is more expensive to buy than the blacksmith anyway. It's also good to hear VoiceOver read numbers correctly in the quest list, such as 5000000 instead of five zero zero zero zero zero zero. Just after I'd discovered that the game had updated, I restarted automations in all the properties I need to make 5000000 metal parts, the current quest I'm working on, and the performance seemed to have definitely improved at that point. However, when i tried to restart automations later, the whole app jammed up when I went into the quarry, which currently has more production slots in it than the furnace and the blacksmith, while those two could be navigated normally. It wasn't until I restarted my iPhone that I could navigate the quarry and restart all automations there again: I hope that I won't have to restart the phone every time I want to restart automations to continue my quests, especially as I need the quarry for all my remaining quests in my current play-through. I don't know whether these continuing performance issues in Crafting Kingdom are quirks of my three-year-old iPhone 6, so it'll be interesting to see if anyone else still has performance problems with the new version of Crafting Kingdom, regardless of which iPhone they are playing it on.
mine and blacksmith
another thing I’ve noticed about these two properties is that when both of them are purchased they swap places again. Just to let people know.
Accessibility mode refuses to turn on
I started playing this game again a few days ago after a few updates had been released, and unfortunately the gesture to change accessibility mode doesn’t seem to work at all on my iPhone 6s. I also saw in an earlier comment that accessibility mode should turn on by default if VOiceOVer is detected and running, but this doesn’t seem to happen either, so I’m kind of stuck on how to get accessibility mode enabled again.
Any help would be appreciated.
Edit: Seems like reinstalling the app fixed it so that VoiceOver was detected upon launch, although gesture to enable and disable accessibility mode still doesn’t work, unfortunately.
I am afraid you will require cited assistance to turn it back on
To turn accessibility mode on or off you’re supposed to triple tap with three fingers but, unfortunately, it does not work. I mentioned that sometime ago but my message got lost. I was not able to turn accessibility mode back on without sighted assistance.
Crafting Kingdom is Broken
I was already having problems with the game malfunctioning n the quary when trying to move between slots. It will jump all over the place making it impossible to operate, just by opening up the quary. But now, since yesterday’s update, it is no longer working at all. And I just spent over a billion coins adding slots. Please help!
I have tried restarting, disabling then reenabling accessibility mode. Nothing works.
To the last 2 posts
I can confirm the shortcut for turning on/off the accessibility mode doesn't seem to work on both an iPhone 7 and iPad pro. I even tried turning off Voiceover and going to the options menu, but still no luck there.
As for the focus being beyond buggy: I've been having strange issues on only one device for the past few days which has in fact caused me to lose some of the "gift favor", and I'm now down to 88 percent even though I've been vsiiting that section every day. it simply wouldn't give me a chance to "open gift". With the latest update, the feature to load and save games from iCloud has been introduced to the masses. I'd suggest saving first, uninstalling the game from your device, and reloading it all from the store. The cloud options can be found in the game options menu just before tapping the play button.
accessibility gesture
if accessibility is working all you people should just leave it alone and not try toggling it on and off if its picked up in the first place. if not turn VoiceOver off then try the gesture remember a lot of VoiceOver gestures don't work in the game. for example the 4 finger swipe gesture for moving apps doesn't work at all for me but does work for michelle which I would very much like to see fixed.
Then what is the purpose of testing, Wallis?
It is true that I did it only because I wanted to test the gesture. But as for other people, who knows what happened and they had to do it. May I remind you that back when numbers were not being read properly many of us used to turn voiceover off in order to use accessibility mode?
Navigation problems getting worse here
Since yesterday, my ability to navigate in Crafting kingdom has definitely deteriorated. There are only two things which I have consistently been able to do, namely get the gift from the princess and go into the castle to do the usual things there, such as starting boosts, checking how much time I have left in those boosts, and looking at how my quests are progressing. Once in a while I have been able to restart automations, but the app has now started jamming in every property I enter except when visiting the princess and the castle: I even couldn't close the help screen in the city after accidentally opening it because focus jumps around when I'm selling. Reinstalling the app is very tempting right now, especially as in the newest version we can save a game and reload it after a reinstall, but, after reports that the accessibility gesture doesn't work now, I may run the risk of not being able to play after the reinstall. I can't guess why Crafting Kingdom is now jamming like this, but it makes the game impossible to play unless I'm very lucky and get the chance to navigate normally round different properties every so often.
At: Page
I honestly don’t think that you would have that problem with accessibility mode. In my case, I just wanted to try the gesture and disabled the mode intentionally but, to my surprise, it did not work. However, I just asked my girlfriend to help me enabling the accessibility mode and I had no problem after that. I admit that I haven’t tried it again because, after my last experience, I have decided not to do it until Michelle tells us that accessibility mode can be enabled or disabled safely. Take care and God bless. Happy holidays in advance.
I just sent the following to
I just sent the following to michelle, thought I would post hear as well in case people want to comment.
Hi Michelle,
unfortunately I have to report performance issues in the latest crafting kingdom beta, they have only just started but look like the same kind of issues as before that I had in the quarry.
This time the issues are in the workshop, I just added my 62nd slot to the workshop, and suddenly VoiceOver started getting slightly sluggish but the workshop was still navigable, however I then went to the slot I had just added, and opened the area to decide what to produce.
I checked belts, then selected to automate, again performance was sluggish and not great but usable.
However once I pressed on automate it took a few taps before the slot automated, and once it did I was unable to tap the back button to get back to the main workshop area, it literally wouldn't respond.
So then I had to terminate crafting kingdom from the app switcher and reopen it, when I did that I went back to the workshop and I found that my newly added slot had lost what I set it to produce the slot was still automated but I had to go back into the production area and select belts again.
I then found that once I did that and tried to go back my focus started jumping around to areas like the sale price or list of produceable items.
Now when I go into the workshop VoiceOver still feels sluggish, and I have found that sometimes when I go into it focus places me on one of the slots rather than where I should be in the window, and when I am flicking down through the production slots sometimes I jump around.
I know the issue is probably to do with rendering things on screen, one thought that occurs to me, is why don't you do away with the produce buttons for all slots? and just make it so that tapping on a slot is enough to start its production, then beside it you could have the select production button as you do now, so that would mean less clutter on screen as well as you would just have the slot then for each one a select production button.
I do also have a small bug I need to let you know about relating to boosts, this is that if you are in the city and have the salesman boosts activated if they run out while you are in the city speech feedback still indicates that things are being sold for the boosted prices although the actual amount things are sold for is correct and back to the non boosted level.
there is also an issue with the lumber yard in that you can see the boost for sharpened ax all the time even when you don't own the lumber yard, I think I reported this to you already.
I have saved my game data to cloud for you to look at, again I will keep saving this game till I am ready to reset but then won't save a fresh game till after you have grabbed my data.
hope you find this useful,
Alex.
well now I just went to add
well now I just went to add my 71st slot to the workshop and the sluggishness is as bad now as it was in the last beta, the game is so bad that I am lucky if I can scroll to the 71st slot, if I get there I go into select production then focus jumps everywhere and no matter how hard I try I can't tap the automation button focus keeps jumping to the automation cost.
I have saved this game to cloud, but doubtless I will have to wait for automation to run out before I can automate that slot. the latest game is on the cloud for you to grab michelle where this just started happening.
Interestingly I tried going into the workshop without VoiceOver and scrolling works better, still a little sluggish though but better, and I was able to finally automate that slot, it still doesn't feel as snappy as when say I have 20 or 30 slots.
Major Sluggishness
I am so glad I found this forum. I thought I was crazy when I woke up this morning and my game is basically frozen. All I can do is get boosts going and then go to the city to try to sell and or update storage. I also am interested in being a beta tester.
[email protected]
Visuals are crazy
I don't have a *lot* of vision, I'm a voiceover user, but the visual portion of this latest update is a little rough.
When I use either the built-in speech or VO with direct touch, the screen looks like it jumps around a lot. Maybe it's a background image thing? The icons seem to be in the right place, but the background sometimes only shows on the right half of the screen, or it has slid down about a sixth of the screen, or slid up, and sometimes they move around as I scroll through the icons. It gives me a little bit of a headache, to be honest.
Report on beta and some quest and automation questions
Voiceover was stuttering a lot on the cell all tab and was not focusing well. When I opened the beta again today it seems to be OK. On the automations in the lumberyard when I first start they are very expensive. May I please have some suggestions on how to make gold so that I can add the slots? Thank you on the quest does the quest that say to sell 1 million or 2 million of something followers from one game to another?
Thank you for a great game I am so enjoying this game and thank you for letting me be a beta tester.
button suggestions
could a button be added so that we could quickly flick from the beginning to the end of our slots? Put it work like the castle and a state buttons were when we flick those we are taking quickly to the location? Please and thank you.
well a two finger flick up is
well a two finger flick up is enough to take us to the back button so I would say a two finger flick down should jump us to the end of slots or other areas, remember though that its a small team possibly a one man band behind this game so everything can't be done at once, and I would say sorting out stability with large numbers of slots is far more important than other features at the moment.
I am still mystified how the developers of the game make any money after we pay for the one off purchase to remove ads.
two finger flick down doesn’t work
hi all,
Just to let you know I am never in any rush when I submit any suggestions. They are only suggestions, and I’m grateful for whatever we get whenever we get it. I tried the two finger down flick but it doesn’t work. Everyone have a happy and merry Christmas and a happy new year. God bless
tutorial works fine
I tested the tutorial for you and it works fine.
no two finger flick down isn
no two finger flick down isn't a currently implemented gesture, it is my suggestion for quickly moving to the bottom of slots, as two finger flick up goes to the top so it seems to me that a good gesture for going to the bottom would be two finger flick down.
Getting to the bottom
Rest your finger just above where the home button is, and the game rapidly scrolls to the bottom. It works all throughout, as far as I know.
Crafting Kingdom Problems
I am very advanced in the game, all estate requirements are met, and I have the castle. I love the game and enjoy playing. Game gets stuck in different areas like farm, quarry and so on. It bounces around, won't let me flick around or tap on any choice to do anything. It freezes everything because I can't start any automations or anything.
Please help. Is there anything that can be done?? I am running the most recent IOS on an IPhone 6.
Am I the only one having problems?
Very frustrated!!
thanks for the tip taylor
thanks for the tip taylor about resting your finger on the screen to scroll rapidly to the bottom, it worked great for me on the iPhone x I just tried it in the mine. Interestingly it doesn't work in the main game window where all the buildings are shown, and you have to focus on the first slot in an area before it works, but once you do it works great. I would still like to see a dedicated two finger swipe down gesture added to go directly to the end of slots, as hunting for this little area on the screen can be a bit hit and miss, plus I do have to navigate to the first slot before I can hold on it. still its a nice work around to know about. I wonder if this control or whatever it is could be given a VoiceOver label to make finding it easier.
Focus problems
hi Michelle,
I just saved my game that I have been playing on my iPad to the cloud. There are lots of focus problems with it. It doesn’t work well in the booth, or even in other areas of the game. The focus just seems to jump around. I have to repeatedly try and get the cursor where I would like it.
Thank you for a great game though. I still love it.
God bless,
Wren Langley PS the game works a little better on my phone, and on the phone and the iPad I am running the latest version of iOS. I have an iPad first generation pro and in iPhone 8 Plus.
Focus issues
Hi, I have been playing this game since April! I am playing three different games on three different devices! I have upgraded the newest version of this game on two of my devices. I am playing the game on the 7+ and a 6S! The focus issues are just as bad on both of them when I go into a to produce product. At first I thought it was only the businesses that I have that for example logs producing four at a time without boosting them and metal on my other phone producing 4 at a time without boosting them! But it seems to be getting worse! I know that this is been addressed already but I wanted to reiterate that this is happening to me as well! I am not going to upgrade This game on my other device! I hope this issue is fixed rather quickly but I know how it takes time with Apple! I also would like to be a beta tester as well if someone can get a hold of me. Thank you and this is an awesome game!
I am going to try this game again
I am going to try this game again and see how my phone does I have an iPhone 7 running ios 11.2.1 I would be glad to grab testflight and beta test let me know and I will put my email address here.
Performance Issues
Hi everyone,
I'm reading all the reports here and in the emails about the app being unresponsive. It is very clear that the latest update introduced some kind of bug that produces a performance issue inside the locations.
I wanted to write a quick update to let everyone know that I'm aware of the issue. I'm really sorry this happened, and I have been unable to find the cause so far.
And I'll try push out another update as soon as possible - which will contain nothing else but a fix for the responsiveness. I know how annoying this is, and if I put nothing else in the update, I should be able to push it out faster.
Are the issues only happening when VoiceOver is on, or does it not make a difference whether it's the system voice or VoiceOver?
Both voices
It happens with vo and the system voice.
City is fine fore me its in the buildings where i have problems
City is fine fore me its in the buildings where i have problems When i have a bunch of slots. iPhone6 iOs10.2