Scrap Mechanic

Players begin at the site of a crashed spaceship, with very few items. They must search for supplies and food in order to survive. The spaceship has a basic crafting station called a "Mini Craftbot" with limited functionality, primarily focused on allowing players to build a basic vehicle to begin exploring the world.

The "Mechanic Station", is the location where the various crafting stations can be made. This includes: the "Craftbot"; the "Dressbot", for making clothes; the "Refinebot", for refining raw materials; and the "Cookbot", for combining raw foods into recipes. In addition, a “Resource Collector” can crafted which is used for collecting various resources and transferring them to Refinebot.

The “Farmers Hideout” is the location where trading is performed for items such as the spud guns, garment boxes, seeds and ammunition (potatoes). The Farmer accepts “Produce Cates” as currency along with “Caged Farmers” that can be found at Burnt and Autumn Forest campsites.

Other locations include structures such as the “Silo District” or “Ruin City” filled with enemy robots, “Loot Crates”, and “Ruin Chests”; the “Farmers Hideout”, where items can be purchased by providing “Produce Crates” and “Caged Farmers”; the “Farmers Shacks” that can be harvested for blocks, parts and other resources; and ”Warehouses”, large buildings storing more advanced supplies guarded by “Tapebots”.[6]

The world is inhabited by various robots that attack the players on sight. These include: spider-like “Totebots”, the most basic enemy; as the name suggests, these robots carry item on their head (such as a whip for the green Totebot). “Haybots”, orange robots with red eyes and a pitchfork arm commonly found in “Ruins”, as well as in Meadows and Fields. Tapebots, one of the two robots with a ranged attack which fires projectile tape rolls including a red variant found on the upper floors of the warehouse which fires explosive projectiles. And “Farmbots”, very large red robots with six legs, wielding a scythe arm, a pesticide gun, and a small drill on their undersides. These robots spawn in several locations including: “Farmbot Scrapyards“, “Autumn Forests”, “Forests”, the “Silo District”, and the “Ruin City”. As of Chapter 1 of Survival, the Farmbots are the most dangerous enemies in the game.[7]

Upcoming Features

In Devblog 20 and 21 new bots have been shown, those being: Red Totebots (referred to by the developers as Red Guys), they are confirmed to use explosives by charging towards the player before exploding; Cable Cutter Bots, they will be found in groups in the caves coming in Chapter 2; and the Trashbot, according to the developers, the first boss of scrap mechanic, it will be found on the roof of the warehouses.[8][9]

In later stages of the game, building advanced bases and elaborate machines is possible. Resources can be collected more efficiently using better machines, and farming automation through creations (and the required defenses for nightly raids) make larger scale conflicts with the bots possible.

As of update 0.5.1 most items are available in creative mode except for structure parts, the dressbot and cookbot and other parts like garment boxes, small chests, most consumables, etc.

Several elements described here are subject to change in later versions as the game is still in early access.

In creative mode, players start with full access to an unlimited supply of all items in the game, allowing for the creation of a variety of buildings, vehicles, and machines, none of which require energy or fuel to function. There are no enemies nor animals in the world naturally, but they can be spawned by the player with spawn capsules. In this mode, players cannot be injured or die. There are also harvestables from survival mode such as trees and stone as well as crafting stations, allowing for players to test all sorts of mad resource gathering contraptions. Creations can be saved and shared via the Steam workshop.[10]

In challenge mode, players have to try and get through 50 levels by making or fixing contraptions using the limited materials they are given. A challenge builder is also available for players to build and share their own challenge levels. Levels can be downloaded and published in the Steam workshop. Originally, challenge mode was a developer's experiment with encryption mechanics, not allowing buildings to be deleted, which has evolved into its whole separate game mode.

The survival backstory depicts the setting of the game and can be found on the Scrap Mechanic Steam store page.

It portrays a robot maintenance mechanic that has been sent to an agricultural planet which supplies food to the metropolitan planets. The crew has been tasked to maintain fully autonomous farming robots which overrun the planet. However, as the spacecraft comes in for a landing it loses control and crashes. The mechanic survives the impact however becomes stranded and finds out the robots working in the fields have become hostile and start attacking the mechanics. The goal is now to survive on the planet, using the mechanics quick thinking, creativity and environment as an advantage to stay alive from the savage robots.[11]

As the game is still in development, more story elements are expected to be revealed over time.