- The next Captain Contraption game is a safari park - 20 August 2026
If you built chocolate machines with us, you already know we like watching a system run without us. The next one takes that further than is probably sensible.Captain Contraption's Safari Park: clone creatures into a park with no fences, design the tour routes that carry visitors past them, and find out what happens. You do not control the animals. You control the visitors.The playtest is now permanently open to everyone. Free, no invite needed.
- All Our Games Are on Sale and Playtest our Next one for Free 🎉 - 23 July 2026
If you’ve been meaning to check out any of our games, they’re all on sale right now, and you can playtest our next game for free! Thanks so much for the support — it really helps us keep making weird little games.
- All Our Games Are on Sale 🎉 - 27 January 2026
If you’ve been meaning to check out any of our games, they’re all on sale right now. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2166920/Captain_Contraptions_Chocolate_Factory/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1098220/Making_it_Home/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/749560/Cycle_28/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/627620/Intelligent_Design_An_Evolutionary_Sandbox/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/4186590/Captain_Contraptions_Safari_Park/ Thanks so much for the support — it really helps us keep making weird little games.
- All Our Games Are on Sale 🎉 - 27 January 2026
If you’ve been meaning to check out any of our games, they’re all on sale right now. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2166920/Captain_Contraptions_Chocolate_Factory/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1098220/Making_it_Home/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/749560/Cycle_28/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/627620/Intelligent_Design_An_Evolutionary_Sandbox/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/4186590/Captain_Contraptions_Safari_Park/ Thanks so much for the support — it really helps us keep making weird little games.
- Captain Contraption is back! - 7 January 2026
Hey everyone!Just wanted to quickly let you know about our next game, Captain Contraption’s Safari Park, which we’ve just put up on Steam.It’s a safari park management game built around a fully simulated ecosystem. You run a park where animals (and some less sensible things) live together in open spaces. Expect farm animals, lions, dragons, and the occasional questionable decision.If that sounds like your kind of thing, you can check out the Steam page and trailer below. Wishlisting the game helps a lot and means you’ll get notified as we share updates and open the beta.Thanks for all the support — genuinely means a lot.
- Want to playtest our next game?! - 18 December 2025
Hello fellow chocolatiers!Dave and I have been quietly working on our next game and are looking for volunteers for playtesting.You can sign up here https://subscribepage.io/hZKgliIt's a safari park with a fully simulated ecosystem in a nostalgic tycoon sandbox with rewarding roguelite elements. Clone bizarre species, unlock new toys and design clever paths to guide guests through the attractions. Don't worry, there's only a small chance they’ll become dinner....oh and it's totally a sequel to Captain Contraption's Chocolate Factory!
- Hotfix for Unity Security Vulnerability - 4 October 2025
A patch has been released to fix the vulnerability described here https://unity.com/security/sept-2025-01/remediation
- Celebrate Automation Fest – 50% Off Captain Contraption’s Chocolate Factory! - 15 July 2025
Captain Contraption’s Chocolate Factory is 50% Off for Automation Fest!To celebrate the Steam Automation Fest and the 1-year anniversary of our launch, Captain Contraption’s Chocolate Factory is available at its lowest price ever – 50% off!In this post-apocalyptic, physics-based factory game, you’ll design and build elaborate contraptions to combine ingredients and automate chocolate production. Inspired by classics like The Incredible Machine and Factorio, it’s a satisfying blend of creativity, logic, and sweet chaos.🧠 Design machines 🍫 Automate chocolate production 🛠️ Solve physics puzzles 🎉 Celebrate one year of chocolate-fuelled contraptionsWhether you're a fan of automation, puzzle-solving, or just love watching machines do their thing, now’s the perfect time to jump in.👉 Grab it now and start building your chocolate empire! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2166920/Captain_C…
- Welsh Localisation Now Available in Game! - 1 January 2025
We're super excited to announce that we have added a Welsh translation to the game! Massive thanks goes out to our composer Jordan for organising this. As a Welsh development studio it is something we have been wanted to do for a while so are glad that we've managed to do it with Captain Contraptions!
- Things get turned upside down in the Gravity Update! - 10 November 2024
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…
- Patch Notes v1.36 - 8th September 2024 - 8 September 2024
Updated to Unity 2022.3.45f Added a copy component hot key Enabled assignment of mouse and controller buttons to hot keys (should help with steam deck) Fixed all the memory leaks introduced by the replay recorder
- Patch Notes v1.32 - 4th September 2024 - 4 September 2024
Fixed a potential memory leak related to the replay recording.
- Patch Notes v1.31 - 31st August 2024 - 31 August 2024
Improved performance and resolution of replay capture for gallery.
- The Useless Box Update! - 26 August 2024
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. New Stuff A Gallery 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 St…
- Patch Notes v1.3 - 26th August 2024 - 26 August 2024
New Stuff - 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!) Changes and Bug Fixes - 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
- Help out translating Captain Contraption’s Chocolate Factory! - 9 August 2024
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 th…
- Hot fix 31st July 2024 - 31 July 2024
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.
- Future Content Plans and Nice to Meet You - 29 July 2024
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. Nice to Meet You 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…
- Real Civil Engineer Plays Our Game plus Linux hotfixes! - 25 July 2024
Three exciting bits of news today. Firstly, yesterday I pushed some sneaky hot fixes to the native Linux build which fixed a nasty bug which meant some people were losing their progress - apologies to anyone who was effected by that. I've also added a launch option which forces Vulkan which should help with a graphic glitch a few people were getting on Steam Deck and Linux. Secondly, we earnt enough Steam reviews to get a Positive score! Thanks so much to everyone for helping us achieve that, I'm going to keep saying this but I'm blown away by how much people are gelling with our game and enjoying it. In the launch stream I said that we make games to give people 30 minute slices of happiness in their day - and I really meant that. Thirdly, and most excitingly, Real Civil Engineer posted a video about our game! I know it's probably not cool to get excited about this, but I am. It's not o…
- Launch Discount Ends Soon - 23 July 2024
The Captain Contraption's Chocolate Factory launch discount will run out around 24 hours after I post this, so if you are planning to pick up a copy of the game make sure to do it before the discount ends. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2166920/Captain_Contraptions_Chocolate_Factory/ Thanks so much to everyone who has already picked up a copy, we are a super small team on a tiny budget and every sale makes a huge difference to us. And double thanks to everyone who has been leaving reviews, chatting on our discord and posting levels on the workshop. It is fantastic seeing a new community grow around our little indie game. If you are still unsure if the game is for you, then check out the let's play by Glidercat below. If you prefer reading check out the Steam reviews or this article by PCGamesN.
