We just pushed the latest free content update for Captain Contraption's Chocolate Factory. It includes a new component, the gravity controller, new gravity changing zones as part of a level, a set of bonus levels showing all those off plus some new tracks in the soundtrack.

The gravity controller and gravity changing zones switch the direction of gravity for all objects within their area. This means it's possible to create levels like the one below where some of the entrances and exits are upside down. I've included 5 bonus levels which show off these new components - they are some of the wilder levels I've designed - hope you enjoy them!

As well as a bunch of bug fixes and quality of life improvements we are also super excited to add 4 new tracks to the original soundtrack! These are both in the game and available as part of the OST which you can buy on Steam.

As always thanks for all your continued support, please help us by letting your friends know about our games (we are a two person team so any word of mouth really helps us)!

• Gravity zones in levels
  
• New component: Gravity Controller
  
• Three new tracks in the soundtrack (also part of the OST on Steam)

• Entrance and exits no longer blocked by triggers in the level editor
  
• Entrances and exits can now be rotated in the level editor
  
• You can now lock down level components in the level editor which will make testing easier
  
• The lift is now rotatable
  
• The bumper can no longer be rotated using hotkeys while a machine is running
  
• Fixed bug caused when loading machines which contain components not available with the current modifier.
  
• Slightly improved quality and performance of gallery replay capture
  
• Fixed issue with volume sliders not saving correctly between sessions

Fixed a potential memory leak related to the replay recording.

Improved performance and resolution of replay capture for gallery.

It's content update time!

I'm going to keep this short and sweet because I just spent all day getting a much requested feature sort of working... but before I get into the details I wanted to say thanks for the support - we can spend time adding useless boxes to our games only with your support.



A certain not to be named real YouTuber (one of the more civil content creators I've had the pleasure to interact with) ended their video with a request to add a gallery. You asked, we listened, and there is now a gallery in game to share pictures and videos of your solutions. The feature is very much in beta and something I rushed a bit to get it into the update for today. When you succeed with a solution you have the option to view a replay then upload a small gif to the steam workshop. From the main menu you can browse other replays and look for the tag "Gallery" on the Steam Workshop. Let me know what you think and what else you would want from this feature! I will try to improve it in some hot fixes between now and the next content update.


This is an obvious mode we didn't think to add at launch for some reason, but now when you have 100% completed an area you will be able to replay each level in that area with all components unlocked. Playing in this mode has different leaderboards than the normal mode since it behaves like a modifier - I'm looking forward to people using this to go crazy with optimisation!


One person asked for it and here it is. A 1x1 box which costs 2 bucks. Those new to the game might not see much potential here, but those of you who are experienced chocolate engineers will be excited by the prospect of shaving those costs down!


I've added a new area which showcases the box and how you might use it. These levels are some of the most challenging I've designed so I look forward to seeing what you think of them. I've also added a level in Area 2 to help teach how button entrances work.

- Upgraded to Unity 2022.3.42f
- Delete hotkey now happens on button down
- Bumper now rotates 45 degrees when using hotkeys
- Less likely for objects to rotate at the end of a drag
- Fixed bug where the in game objective indicator for objective 2 was not updating correctly
- Added link to Localizor
- Updated some of the localisations based on user submitted translations

Now stop reading and go play :)

- Added a useless box to the player items
- When you 100% complete an area you can play each of the levels in that area with all the components unlocked. There are new leaderboards for this.
- Added a new area with 5 levels
- Added a level to Area 2
- Added a gallery to share images and gifs of your machines (this feature is in beta!)

- Upgraded to Unity 2022.3.42f
- Delete hotkey now happens on button down
- Bumper now rotates 45 degrees when using hotkeys
- Less likely for objects to rotate at the end of a drag
- Fixed bug where the in game objective indicator for objective 2 was not updating correctly
- Added link to Localizor
- Updated some of the localisations based on user submitted translations

Howdy Chocolatiers!

Captain Contraption’s Chocolate Factory may be our fourth game but it’s the first one we have tried to localise. We want as many people as possible to enjoy our game and since we do not have the budget for human translation we thought a Google Translation would be better than nothing. Unfortunately, many of you have fed back that the translations in the game at the moment are less than ideal - frankly a machine will never do as good a job as a human.

Our plan was (and still is) to use the income we generate from the game to pay for professionals to complete the translations. Unfortunately the reality of being a small game on Steam is that it will take us a long time to generate the funds we need to do this effectively. This has led us to consider alternative strategies for completing the localisation.

To our surprise we’ve had a number of you offering to translate the game for us - which is incredible - but until today we haven’t had any tools to allow this or a reasonable way to compensate volunteers for their work. Today we are announcing that we are teaming with Localizor, an online crowd translation tool where players can help translate text in games in exchange for coins that can be redeemed into Steam keys. We are really excited to try Localizor out with you all. This is how it works:

• Head over to Localizor[www.localizor.com] and sign up
  
• Pick a game you want to help translate (ideally Captain Contraption’s Chocolate Factory[www.localizor.com], but there are lots of other projects you can support)
  
• Either translate text or vote on suggestions of translations.
  
• When you have earnt enough coins head to the Localizor shop and redeem them for a Steam key!

If you have any questions, comments or if you want us to add your native language to the list let us know below. We hope you will join us in translating the game together so more people can enjoy the game!

Steam cloud now works as designed. Fixed a bug in cross platform syncing and now all your saved machines and levels will be uploaded alongside your campaign progress.

A big thanks to everyone who has bought a copy of Captain Contraption's Chocolate Factory making this one of our biggest launches ever! I thought it was a good time to introduce ourselves to Pill Bug newcomers and give you some rough details of our future plans with Captain Contraption.


We are Pill Bug Interactive, which is made up of myself (Sean) my friend Dave and unofficially Jordan who is the super talented composer behind our games' soundtracks. Both Dave and I are actually full time university lecturers in Wales working on this games thing in our evenings and weekends - I teach game development at Swansea University and Dave teaches creative writing at Cardiff University.

Captain Contraption's is our fourth game on Steam and (seeing how we are indie developers with bad business sense) all our games are different genres - but long time fans can spot some tell tale things which make a game a Pill Bug game (even if I'm unsure what those things are).

Here is a picture of us at the BAFTA awards where we were nominated for best game made in Wales for our second game Cycle 28 - which is one of my proudest Pill Bug achievements.

We try to be as open as possible about development so please ask any questions and join our discord to chat with us. Which brings me on to the real reason you're reading this...



Part of our update strategy is going to be making changes based on your feedback. Partly that will be bug fixing and partly that will be things like quality of life improvements. My priority over the past few weeks has been fixing bugs which had the potential to be game breaking. I'm happy to report there were only a small handful I failed to spot before release which have all been fixed. My next bug fix sweep will be issues that have been reported which are not game breaking. For example, there seems to be a few cases where objective indicators don't update correctly and the leader boards sometimes update in the wrong order after you submit a score. If you do find any bugs please report them on the forums or discord.

The influx of new players from the launch has been valuable in getting a wider range of feedback from people on the UI. I will be carefully watching lets plays and reading your feedback to decide what needs changing and what can be improved.

Our in-game localisation kind of sucks right now and I am sorry for that. Our lack of budget forced us to use machine translations which is not ideal - but I felt that it was more accessible to include a half good translation rather than no translation. I'm hoping that if the first month goes well enough in terms of sales we can explore improving things with human translation. We will also look into community driven translations if there is any interest.


Our plan with new content is to add some new "bonus" areas to the game, each around a theme. I already have an idea for the first bonus area which I will be working on throughout the summer. To help us with that I would love to know which of the levels in the game you have enjoyed the most - this will help get my game design brain working.

Also, I would love to add some player created levels as a bonus area - so keep adding your own designs to the workshop and I will contact authors of some of the best levels about adding them to the game.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions please let us know - we would love to hear what you think!

Finally here is another Let's Play for you to enjoy!