Craftlings : A personal letter to comunity

A personal letter to comunity

Hi, Ariano here – some of you know me at least a bit, but for many I am an unknown person, releasing just another solo developer dream game…

I am writing for those who are interested in me and the project, and I am writing this furthermore to say thank you to everyone who has helped me during this 4-year journey and made my childhood dream real.

I was seven years old when I discovered video games on my father’s x386 DOS machine, with big floppy disks and a Hercules graphics card.

As I played a game, I was instantly impressed by visual objects moving on the screen as I hit the arrow buttons on the keyboard, or felt a huge blast when an object shot a projectile after I pressed the space bar—followed by incredible excitement as the projectile hit another object and exploded into hundreds of tiny pixels.

This experience was so strong—being able to interact with a “cartoon”, something I had only known from TV as a sequence of images—that I started asking myself how it worked. I told myself, at seven years old, that I wanted to become a game maker—probably what I meant was a game developer, but there was barely any official terminology for that, at least in Poland before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A few years later, I had learned coding, played a lot of football, and, as a teenager, chased a school love—while from time to time trying to build a game and find a place in the world for myself.
After school, I started studying computer science and decided to move to Germany, where I am currently living.

I wouldn’t be here typing this without the huge support I received from my wife and family and friends, but also from some strangers I met on the internet—people who used their free time simply to help me with the project – this truly blows my mind!
I feel incredibly proud that I met you, that I talked to you, and that with some of you I have even become friends.

I mentioned a few times that I am a solo dev, but this does not mean that I have done everything completely alone on the game. I run a one-person company, ARIANO Games, and I did all the coding, game design, and the entire graphics for “The Settlings” (before a rename at the end of 2024) — but then I met Milan, Pixel artist from Croatia, and many other people from my former publisher, who helped me bring Craftlings to a new level.

I also worked with some contractors to create new sounds, and others are now helping with the release. And I want to say a big thank you to all of you who have been involved.

Craftlings is a passion project — a dream game from my childhood — but it has been shaped over the years by the opinions and feedback of many people, which I truly tried to listen to.

Thank you for all your input. Without you, I wouldn’t be here, and Craftlings wouldn’t be releasing tomorrow.

Take care,
Ariano

P.S. The “Polarwolf” achievement name for completing all snow biome levels is not a spelling mistake 😉