Welcome to today's blurb!

We are now on the cusp! The release of Brickadia is almost near! I can't wait to-

Uh oh.

The game is already out! Well, this is awkward.

That's right folks, Brickadia has been out for a staggering 213 days at the time of writing this, more than half a year already! Well, that just makes things look worse for me!

What happened? Where have I been? Will I be crucified for my inactivity?

Before we get into everything, do you guys like the banner? I've been practicing walk cycles. It's not the best, and there are some things that definitely need improvement. Kept it simple for this blurb just so we can start off with something a little neat.

Now for starters, I've been stuck in a constant loop of retail management hours for the past several months. Despite being part-time, I've been clocking in full-time hours. On top of that, this issue was made significantly worse with the recent holiday season. This particular predicament raises a certain problem: If you had to work most closing shifts that ended up with you getting home at around 11 PM and took up half the day, would you focus your day on releasing a community column with a multitude of different aspects to work on? Or would you focus on just winding down and getting more close-proximity, real-life matters taken care of?

To say the least, it's been a nightmare. There is good news, however! You didn't think this would be a doomer introduction to a blurb post, would you? That's right, I've stepped down from retail management! I exclusively open only on the weekdays on half shifts now, meaning I get to have all the afternoons and evenings that I could ask for. All of this just happened on the 1st of this month! That isn't to say there hasn't been any stress to go with it. Could you believe that work asked me to stay another week as a manager to close, despite the fact I asked to step down almost 4-5 months ago? One would almost compare it to exploitation, if they didn't know any better!

That has all been cast aside now. The blurb has been on my mind for the past several months, and I've been wanting to take a crack at it again for the longest time. I haven't even reached 100 posts yet, of course I have to keep blurbing!

With all that in mind, the only thing I want to say is that I apologize for the prolonged lack of posts on the blurb for half a year. It's worse too given that I haven't posted any updates during that time. Things will now be different.

Now, what do we have to look forward to? People have had this game for over HALF A YEAR now! You know what that means. If people have had enough time, then there's definitely been some interesting stuff built! And the point of this blurb is to showcase community builds. And believe me, there is no shortage of content for me to showcase here.

So, without any more one-more-week delays, let's see what the community has been up to!:

Probably one of the more impressive things I've seen in-game: a fully functioning horse! Could use some works on the ankles, but this is extraordinarily impressive for what it's worth!:

Credit: Mauve

Did someone mention an awesome poster for an in-game racing event?:

Credit: Sulfito

I actually ate from here a long while back. The burgers are so overrated, the only thing that actually saves it is the hot sauce they throw in with the burgers, which is wild. Good build though!:

Credit: sink

Yum yum! Time to eat some grub!:

Credit: DessertSource

Careful, one small nudge and the physics explodes. I would love to see this build move around and turn, as if its eyes are following the player!:

Credit: silly robor

"Captain Picard, we still have no signs or indications that the Peaks Cube is real.":

Credit: TastyFaceMelter

POV: you're about to lose all of your son's college money:

Credit: remanedur

ENEMY STAAAAAAND!:

Credit: Honkbyte

Good to know that some people stay awesome over time. This mech is an awesome work of both design and building. Now we just need some sort of giant robot mech seat for us to ride robots in!:

Credit: TheArmyGuy

Hear me out though, if we put an uncharacteristic piece of furniture in the middle, where it just clashes with everything else, then I think we're done here:

Credit: Mittenisu

They say these halls are haunted. At night, you can hear little tip taps and quacks...

Credit: Brickitect

Biblically Accurate Physics Abomination:

Credit: Squideey

ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM:

Credit: Mauve

Seems like this person has been making a lot of neat things! An excellent use of lighting and neon materials for a staggeringly big build:

Credit: 2008nickcody

We love accurate suspension systems and join mechanisms in our brick game!!:

Credit: gar

Now all we need is a giant T-Rex to eat up that small chicken. Awesome use of half cylinder microbricks!:

Credit: Davive

The newest location for BrickadiaCon 2026:

Credit: Brickitect

Okay, forget everything I said. This is the best use of bricks period. No one is allowed to built again. Or they'll be executed.:

Credit: BlueStaggo

Now we arrive at this blurb's user column!

The question for this blurb is:

With Brickadia being out for some time now, how do you feel about the game? Did it live up to your expectations? What were some of the first things you did booting up your fully-purchased copy of Brickadia™?

Sulfito:

"For me personally, yes, it did, cause I always wanted to do a racing project in Brickadia, which im doing right now, so yeah, but I can understand that for others not so much, the first thing that I did was to finish building my racing track, which was used for a racing event later on. "

Mauve:

"I've waited for Brickadia to release in some capacity for at least 4 years now and even in its Early Access™ state its in now I can say it lived up to all my expectations and then some. [It] was worth it when I got it for 30, and its even moreso worth it for the 20 bucks its priced at until early access ends. First thing I did was try to build a car. It sucked and controlled like buns but it was a functioning car made out of bricks, and that blew my mind as someone who was attached to Blockland for like 9 years"

faik:

"how do i feel about the BRICK well its very great that it fixed my roadBLOCKS addicition, yes, the first thing that i did in brickadia its probably making squidadia (squid game)

Credit: faik

For today's return of the blurb, there will be no blurb comic. There will be one, however, for next week. So stay tuned!

For this blurb's speculation, we'll be looking at what could possibly make it into Brickadia before the game releases-

Oh, right, wait a minute. Hang on. Of course! I almost forgot!

The game is already out!

Huh, that makes this a little awkward then. What's the point of speculating? Everything is in game! Well, yes but really no.

What do I mean? Remember, the game is in EARLY ACCESS. It's not done yet! So, that means we're waiting to see more stuff. Since the game isn't done, that leaves room for more possibilities both in terms of features and content. Okay, what else could they add?

Since Brickadia has been out for a while now, everyone has had their fill of what the game actually has. We've driven the car, now we can gauge how it felt, and what needs to be fixed, let alone improved.

For that, I've compiled a list of answers from people in the community asking what they liked about the game since release, what's busted for them, and what they'd like to see!

1: What do you like about Brickadia after having some time to play?

2: What part of Brickadia do you think could be improved with its current features?

3: What do you want to see come to Brickadia content and feature-wise?

PMA=]:

1: As far as new additions since the EA release, the logic is one of my favorite things, along with the physics joints. It has let me make some things I was waiting a long time to do such as my claw machine during the demo, or when I finally got to add the death traps to a TTT map recreation I had worked on for years.

2: There are certain things I still have not gotten used to about the new controls especially block rotation, so it would be nice to have a legacy mode for stuff like that but more realistically I would just like hotbar presets.

3: Some kind of built-in support for flying vehicles would be a big one, shortly after EA release, I spent many days attempting to make a plane with intuitive controls for pitch/yaw/roll, but I never got it 100% bug-free so it gets wonky when you point up or down too much.

Fish:

1) I normally struggle with creative things but for some reason I feel like I can actually make nice stuff in Brickadia and [make] it not suck.

2) More stuff to let us make gamemodes. From what I can tell they are really focused on getting out more gameplay related gates, so seems we are going in the right direction there.

3) More gates like I said before but also more guns! I’ve been waiting for a sniper that isn’t OP.

Dabinski:

1: I like the overall look of the plastic lego theme going on, but if anything the lighting and weather affects are really good and can make the mood of a build stand out when handled properly, also for a building game, it can do PVP pretty well.

2: Oh man theres alot, honestly I could go on a massive rant about improvements.

I think the current stuff from Demo to now are pretty solid but it always feels like a new feature gets added and its missing like 10 different things, theres no documentation or explanation about these either which annoys programmer laymen like me.

I think the features right now work pretty well honestly and I'd really like to see some improvements to minigames and more gate features. More audio files would really help and flight and turret componentd too. I think the devs kinda overlook some stuff when they add new things.

They added Score Gates which are cool but you don't get scores from killing bots, so you have to use some ludicrous workaround at the moment.

tl;dr: Features are solid but they need to streamline 'em more for laymen like me.

3: I want to see more content that allows us to make a variety of gamemodes and servers.

The game itself is a solid builder, but it can make a great game builder too, much like Blockland.

I'd like some new weapons and items as well, more freedom with gates and a less obtuse logic system, this is speaking solely as a non-programmer.

IMO: the game is a builder first and program second, but the devs seem to go more with the latter atm.

Brickitect:

1- I think Brickadia is a fabulous game for creative people that figure out how the tools work, the brick geometry/maths (stud is 10, microbrick scale is 2, can move around the smallest grid as 1. I like to explain it as "Roblox but not stupid." There are learning curves, but people I've noticed, overall, are vary happy to teach new people their skills, myself included. [The] best way is to title your server along the lines of "trying to learn/learning things," and I'm at 15331 hours 41 minutes of gameplay since mid 2019 as of this reply.

I have a lot to learn with wires and gates, I am [bad] with math and bad with the gate stuff.

2- Improved? I'd say a robust outliner tool with lots of template options would be amazing, as well as making the gates more intuitive on top of dev-made tutorials that are easy to follow for new people (will NEED to be tested by asking new people to try it vs veteran players trying it out). I'd also love to be able to move around UI boxes so I can move things to stop being in front of the flippin' chat like when I type /gettransform for those coordinates to put into my set location and rotation gates.

3- I'd also say being able to import our own audio files or have a way to play video, like how vrchat has theater worlds that play videos with links or movie rooms.

I'd also love to be able to rotate my head like Blockland's Z-view, and or making glowing parts in the avatar menu.

Another thing is lilyvert's music needs to be adjusted because it either is very quiet or starts low for a while and comes in.

rerere284:

1:

I like the amount of different systems it has for making stuff. Other building games I've seen/played don't have as many, instead only having a couple:

- buildable vehicles without buildable maps (or vice versa)

- buildable vehicles without being able to customize aesthetic stuff (e.g. banjo kazooie nuts n bolts)

- buildable logic circuits without any use/"i/o" for them

Brickadia having all of these systems means I can theoretically make stuff like:

- a car with doors that open/close, which I then use to transport player-made plushies

- a pirate deathmatch that takes place on drivable pirate ships, with sails and wind and canons sortof

- a CtF map that functions (note see Q.3) *and* looks good, where I made the wiring for it, instead of the flags and stuff being dev-made

- a computer with memory and whatever that actually manages stuff and doesn't just sit there to make u go "oh wow that's a big complicated computer"

I also like that Brickadia has a really big size limit for stuff. If the player was average human height, the width of the map is like, 70km wide! That's technically enough space to build the cradle from armored core (4km long), and fly it around a little. ...Though I don't think the game's processing power can *quite* handle that... More realistically, you could use it for long train lines, skyscraper sized vehicles, and driving or flying vehicles between locations that are far apart. Or just NaissanceE-esque huge intimidating architecture.

Also I like the copy paste a looot!

2:

There's a few velocity-related bugs I want fixed that cause issues with vehicles that are big enough to walk around inside of.

- When you get out of a seat, your velocity is set to 0. Inside a fast vehicle, this means you go flying backwards.

- If physics damage is on, you die if you walk against a wall (or go up stairs) on the inside of a fast vehicle.

- Relative teleports don't take into account the speed of the teleporter, so if you teleport to a fast vehicle you'll go flying backwards if your feet aren't touching the floor.

- Fast bricks LoD repeatedly when moving fast, which looks kinda weird.

Also there're quite a few bugs and lack of customizability with the environment settings. The sun always has a bright blob around it that takes up half the sky, and it's hard to have the sky/sun/clouds be different colors (unrealistic, yes, but pretty). I... forget exactly what the bugs were.

Also the clouds should be able to be thin with 100% coverage to have a bright overcast sky, I like bright overcast skies.

3:

- Some way for grids to interact by proximity, without a wire between them. Basically Tags from LittleBigPlanet. This would let you have gas stations, removable batteries, respawn objects when they fall off a map, package delivery detection, and generally more interactions between objects. Getting back to the CtF map from earlier, that flag could only detect the capture point in a janky way by the flag detecting a specific bot hidden underground, since grids can detect players and bots, but not other grids.

- Official support for flying vehicle stuff. (Thrusters, Air Control Surfaces) It's *technically* possible to do now, but it should be easier. Even if you can do the wiring for people and give the circuit to others, people still get scared off by them.

- Gravity/Momentum Zones: Being able to jump and throw stuff around inside a moving vehicle, without the vehicle's movement affecting things inside.

- Raycast-based (sweep?) Wheels: Basically, the option for wheels to function like they do in most other games, so that they only collide downward and not sideways, and handle bumpy terrain (and seams between bricks) much better.

- Neurons (not like machine learning): There's a game called Crescent Loom that has fairly accurate models of neurons, and they kinda act like analog logic gates? They are neat to work with but Crescent Loom doesn't have much "i/o", so I want them in Brickadia so I can play with them more. I might be able to recreate them on my own? but it would use a bunch of gates, especially with buffers being weird. Maybe with microchips it won't matter that they need a lot of gates...

- a way to get and add velocity relative to rotation

- organizing downloaded prefabs and worlds into folders (!)

- more toyetic avatar parts

- wood material

- proximity/'rope' joint, and maybe springy version of rope

- boat buyoancy multiplier or something, way to reduce buoyancy without adding mass

- way for painter to only paint bricks of a given color (not talking about fill-paint, more like, color masking?)

- Various things that already seem like they're coming: Being able to move circuits without disconnecting wires, projectiles fired by grids, microchips, get-location/get-velocity...

- If the game winds up having destruction, the size of bricks in a grid shouldn't change how an object breaks.

P.S. comparing my answers here to my answers to the steam next fest survey, I'm glad that some of the main things I wanted got added. gamedev be happening.

So clearly, people have a LOT of things to say. The consensus? People love the game! That's what's important, right? Okay, but what about things that need to be improved? Well, it seems to be across the board. Controls, improved tools, more gates, and bug-fixes. That's fair, but what do people want to see added to Brickadia? It swings right back around to the things people want improved: better controls, better tools, more gates, plus the added cherry on top: more vehicle modes. Hey, that sounds familiar, that's something I want too!

Okay, so we've seen a snippet of community thoughts here, but we are missing one opinion. That's right, mine! I run this blurb, I might as well throw in my two cents, right? What do I think of the game?

Well, I love it! Yeah. That's all you really need to know. Show's over.

Alright hang on, let's get a bit more in-depth at least.

The features and what's currently present in-game is good for an Early Access game. A good, huge chunk is in it, and it leaves you craving for more with what is potentially bound to come. Sounds like a pretty good position to have with an Early Access game!

BUT. Yeah, you didn't think this game is off the hook, did you?

Given the current state of the game plus how long it's been out, I think it's good as a starting point.

Now, I DID mention in past posts that I thought $30 was a fair price for a game like this. At the moment? Well, I'm not RETRACTING what I said, but I'm not defending it either. Now look, I am a hyper-fan for this game, so when I was talking about the price, I was talking about it with the mindset that I'd buy it at any price. So when it's only $30, it sounds like a steal for me! But for others? Well, it might be a biiit steep. A good solution could be to bring the price of the game down, or put it on sale when possible, as it IS an Early Access game after all.

HOLD IT!

EDIT: Turns out, just as I had finished this column, news came out that the developers lowered the price of the game.

The game is now $19.99!

So, if you were hung up on buying the game because of its original price-point, you can now purchase it for a measly $20 dollaroos. The link to the announcement is here in this blog post by the developers: Brickadia is now $19.99 until Early Access ends!

Forgoing that, I have to be honest and confess something, first and foremost. I don't feel like I've had enough time to play the game. What? Absurd! Heretical! Well, what did you expect? You didn't forget what I just mentioned at the start of this blurb, work and all, did you? Did you really think I'd be playing Brickadia at work? Or that I even had enough time to pour hours into the game?

However, I cannot say in full confidence that my opinion is final. Given my new circumstances, thoughts and opinions are bound to change!

With all that in mind, Brickadia still has a long way to go. We still need planes, we still need more bot options, and I still want a rat brick.

Oh, you're still here? Wait, I know what you're waiting for. The tried and true tradition...of an arbitrary score rating for any piece of entertainment and media. Out of 10! Ok.

8/10. We can discuss why in further detail. But not right now, I need to catch some Z's. Working this much builds up a lot of sleep debt, you know. See you in the next blurb!

And that's all for this blurb!

If you want to see your creations, ideas, and speculations highlighted on the blurb, contact me at: durb#3215

You can also support me on my Patreon using this link here: Durb Blurb Patreon (www.patreon.com/durblurb)

See you all in 2 weeks!