- The tutorial you asked for in a manual you didn't! - 14 September 2026
I heard you loud and clear: the Clomper needs a tutorial! But what kind?I want you to explore the world of the Clomper rather than be told where to stand, what pipes to make and where to go. I also don't have the time to make one like that.As I started to plan out the tutorial sections, I realised that they were going to need a lot of text. More text means more translations, which I wanted to keep to a minimum. So I opted for a diagram style that looks like an IKEA instructions. Except IKEA don't make huge, mechanical steampowered ladybirds. Well, not yet at least.Since I made the video above, I managed to squeeze in some time over the weekend and got the tutorial completed! From the contents page, you can jump to the page that shows that part of the game.I'm glad it didn't take much longer - although I do expect to make more images after some player feedback.New Steam IndicatorClomper…
- Graphics, Reverse Gear and Improvements! - 16 February 2026
Hello!Thanks to all the player feedback, I have reworked the lighting in the Clomper to make it more cosy and less stark. The Clomper should feel like a warm fire lit Victorian drawing room on legs and not the insides of a brutal engine.Before, it looked like this:It's very dark, isn't it? And some areas are very bright next to very dark. It wasn't making use of bounced light at all. After it looks like this: Do you prefer it? I think it's much better. You want to go backwards? Until now, you could get yourself stuck in a corner like this: While the Clomper can turn on the spot, your visibility from inside is limited. Much better to be able to just walk back the way you came. Well, now you can! Power up the reverse gear in the floor and driving the legs will make you go backwards! Be careful not to leave it on by accident! You can't actually see behind you because of the shell of the Cl…
- You told me my game felt bad… So I fixed it - 4 January 2026
➡️ If you want to get more involved then \url=https://discord.gg/53VMC9veCs]CHECK OUT THE DISCORD!\ Getting feedback from players has been wonderful, it's allowed me to improve the most important parts of the game: moving about, creating pipes and difficulty. It's been a hugely busy six weeks but I expect life will calm down into a tempo and progress will increase.Pipe Climbing You can now climb up pipes, which opens up intricate pipe building high up. Movement feels smoother too.Slick Pipe CreationBuilding pipes needs fewer clicks, making it easier to experiment with placing without having to commit to a built pipe.Pipe repairWhen you crash the Clomper then the pipes take damage. Before, that meant they would pop off all over the Clomper and you'd have to grind them back into scrap and fix your pipe network. Now, the pipes become damaged and you can go into "fix it" mode and repair all…
- Closed Beta Testing Success! - 2 November 2025
I've had an emotional month. Since June 2025, I've been on the brink of giving the game out to you wonderful people and holding off until I felt the quality was high enough.On the 9th of October, I decided to just throw caution to the wind, set up the Steam Playtest and give some keys out to Discord members for feedback. It was a success!I received over 70 individual pieces of of great feedback! Two of the main problems with Clomper is that placing pipes and moving around in the Clomper is kind of hard. So they are the main things to focus on.How much of the feedback was expected? I knew there were some issues but the feedback highlighted that character movement and pipe placing could be improved. So that's what I'm working on next.The only big bug was that you couldn't go from game -> main menu -> game. I'm glad that was the only one to slip through months of testing.The beta testing i…
- 6th Birthday! Particles, Multi-Grinding and Drinking Tea - 31 August 2025
Clomper has turned 6 years old! But I'm in no danger of slowing down development. Open Beta before the end of the year and I'm writing this on the last day of August!I'm strictly working through the bare minimum of tasks before I start a broader test with people from the discord (called a closed Beta). It's "closed" because I will limit the numbers of people playing to keep collating feedback easier.PolishSparks now light up the new pipe and when you let your finger off the mouse, there's a burst of sparks too!You can now grind more than one piece of scrap at a time, which is perfect if you have lots of broken pipes or have collected a bit too much scrap!To reward yourself with a quest well completed and minimal damage, you can now brew and drink a delicious cup of tea (not safe for humans).Closed Beta NextI'll be running a closed Beta using Steam Playtest. If you would like to join in…
- Alpha testing - more like destruction testing! - 14 July 2025
I had a great test run recently with my son, who is incisive and honest (and a bit brutal but that's ok). I'm pleased to say that most of the game held together well.Fun BugsTo give you a flavour of the bugs (now fixed), one was that the player's name (which should have been "Bean", not "dddddddwds sw ssssssssss") kept editing even though they had closed the options.Another was that if you piled lots of items into the Grinder, then they would stretch weirdly through the floor.Reworked Steam AlgorithmThe steam algorithm is the bit of code that decides how much power each machine gets once you have linked them up to a boiler. The old algorithm had some weird problems, which I discovered while streaming some game development. The new algorithm is much more predictable - and simpler to boot! A bit of behind-the-scenes for you - I tend to do a lot of the algorithm thinking on paper before I…
- Me: “This Is Silly.” Community: “DO IT!” - 23 April 2025
The big list of tasks has run dry and I cannot avoid alpha testing anymore! Alpha testing is where I ask people I'm close with to test out the game. Some will have played before, others will be new to it. Once I've fixed bugs and polished up from the feedback, it'll be time to run an invite only beta test for those in Discord. Some bug fixing and after that - GAME DEMO! Very exciting. If you're not able to join in on the Beta, that's OK - the demo will follow soon after and that demo will evolve toward a 1.0 release. Think of it as free early access. Making Tea? They say that a game is never finished, you just stop adding to it. I believe that a game without tea brewing isn't finished until you add making tea to it. The most requested feature (and even raised as a bug) was that you couldn't make tea. Now you need to feed the tea boiler with a huge amount of steam to make tea. It has no…
- Throwing pipes, dragging pipes, fog and light! - 30 January 2025
I'm making great progress toward a demo coming to Steam in 2025! I've been concentrating on feedback from my son, who has been playing Clomper on and off for years and gives me no-nonsense honest criticism. I'm eternally grateful for that. Dead pipes are now scrap When you bump into things, pipes break and now you must grind them like scrap to get their value back. You can throw them across the Clomper into the grinder, which is great fun - especially if you still have a partial pipe network built. Lighting improvements There's now moody fog in the Clomper and when the boilers get hot, the lighting changes to warn you. With some practice, you can drive the Clomper around with the boilers running hot but it's a balancing act - get it wrong and they go bang! Inventory drag and drop You can now drag and drop pipes onto the tool and use hotkeys to assign. A small change but a welcome one. C…
- Multiplayer via Steam, Custom Game Rules and 5 years of development - 27 December 2024
My goal is a demo that you can all play for free and to get there I've been polishing and implementing playtest feedback. The latest devlog includes an overview of 5 years of game development but let's concentrate on what's new. Game Rules I have no idea how hard Clomper is to play. It's impossible for me to balance so I have added game rules as sliders so you can set up the game how you want to play. Set all the slides to one side and you get a creative mode. Push to the other and even moving the Clomper becomes tricky! Multiplayer via Steam You can now use the Steam front end to join your friends! Just click on their name and hit join. Clomper also now has a save/load system too. You would think that was obvious to put in but it's not had one until now! Distance to Quest Amongst a bunch of player feedback (from my son!), I've added a cute marker that shows you how far you are from you…
- Bringing the heat with visual effects! - 30 July 2024
You would expect steam machines to spark and throw up clouds of steam when they work. I would too! And now they do! The inside of the Clomper keeps getting more beautiful (if you find steam beautiful, that is) and I have added more visual cues for when you are running the boilers hot or at high pressure. Run them too long and they will explode! And if you crash, sparks will fly and smoke will billow out of broken machines. I'm still on plan for alpha testing with friends, beta testing with the Discord community and then a free demo. The demo will include pretty much all the functionality that is there now. ➡️ If you want to get more involved then CHECK OUT THE DISCORD!
- Fire Sprite petting and Damage Animations - 16 June 2024
The theme for this update is when things aren't going so well! When you collide with the world, you damage the Clomper. Until now, the machines in the Clomper didn't show that they were damaged but now have animations. I've also finished polishing the boiler movement (they shake when hot!) and improved the fire sprites. You can now pet them. Adorable! It's amazing how much different the inside of the Clomper feels with many small changes. Check out the video for the full details, see you in the next update! Rob
- Pouring love into graphics: the map and periscope - 21 April 2024
➡️ If you want to get more involved then CHECK OUT THE DISCORD! I've been improving the graphics across Clomper, pouring love into the lighting and adding animations. The map and periscope together are how you navigate the Clomper. The map is strategic and for general clomping about, the periscope is for close up work. Until now, the graphics were simply there to test the game features but didn't feal alive. Map The map now sinks down into its plinth with an iris closing over the top. Periscope The periscope, when switched off, is pushed telescopically into the floor and is eaten by the cowel. Sumptuous boiler handles Deliciously round handles. I've never described them like food but now I have, I want to eat some. The animations are simplistic, juicy movement coming next. About me! This is a hobby project, I have a 9-5 in enterprise healthcare software and 2 kids along with all the oth…
- Breathing life into a steampunk ladybird - 16 February 2024
➡️ If you want to get more involved then CHECK OUT THE DISCORD! Until now, the floor was just to keep you from falling out the bottom of the Clomper. But now there's life! I've added 4 new machines, an actual floor and a charming little seating area. They all move in pace with the amount of boiler output you have set, you can see them spin up in the devlog video. Let's get up close and personal with the machines... The Masher When you feel the bits of scrap you find in the world, it turns it into teeny-weeny bits of scrap that you spend on new metal. The Guv'nor A steam governor is a real thing! It uses mechnical feedback to regulate the steam supply. The Gyro No matter what's happening in the Clomper, the Gyro always points north. Handy if everything else is broken and you don't know which way is up! The Steam Reservoir Beautiful and fantastical, the only purpose it serves is to glow b…
- Making the Clomper feel alive! - 10 December 2023
➡️ If you want to get more involved then CHECK OUT THE DISCORD! Although home life has become rather tiring, I've managed to beaver away at updating Clomper's graphics. I've really been enjoying it as the graphics have remained largely unchanged while I worked on game systems and netcode. Progress! My goal is a Steam demo and as you can see by the big yellow arrow, I'm getting really close. From left to right: I gave the Clomper legs, set up the Steam page, did a multiplayer test, put in better controls, added menus, created the inventory and updated the claw. Left to do is: finishing off the graphics (that's going to take a while), alpha testing (with friends), beta testing (with the Discord peeps) and then Steam demo! Adding life to the floor The Clomper is a living machine. If you've spent any time around steam locomotives then you'll know that the heat, sound, smell, steam and heft…
- New Claw and Economy Balance - 13 September 2023
➡️ If you want to get more involved then CHECK OUT THE DISCORD! Two big things in this devlog and I'm quite excited by both of them for different reasons. Which one to do first? Alright, the economy. Economic Balance Game economies can be hard to balance. Make the pipes more expensive then scrap you pick up more valuable then more expensive pipes and so on until you've escalated and everything costs millions! I started with some numbers, wrote a surprisingly small amount of simple code in Jupyter Lab (in Python) and tweaked numbers to make sure that new games give you enough resources to collect more resources and that it doesn't take hours to make a really cool network. New Claw The new claw is controlled with two wheels that you turn to make it move. It works much better than the differential steam method I had before. It's so much easier to use! Still takes a little skill but without…
- How do you tame a huge inventory? - 14 August 2023
➡️ If you want to get more involved then CHECK OUT THE DISCORD! Clomper currently has the bare minimum number of pipes: 5. You can play with 2 different pipes (the unit and the bend) but... it's quite a challenge! Much more fun to put a few valves and switches in to make your life easier. I will gradually be adding between 100-200 pipes, at which point finding that perfect pipe to fit your network might be quite hard. Paging through loads of pipes is boring, so it's better to jump to the one you want. How do you describe which one you want? The number of holes it has? How big it is? Whether it has something fancy like a valve or switch? That's what filters are for. Select the filters and it shows you the pipes that match. The filters run down the left side: number of ports, size, interactivity, cost and then a nice reset button at the bottom. I also slammed on a scrap counter on the top…
- Introducing the Inventory - 4 June 2023
➡️ If you want to get involved then CHECK OUT THE DISCORD! The Inventory Clomper now supports hundreds of pipes thanks to the new inventory! The old hotbar has gone, replaced with a 3D tool that you can fill with the pipes you like to use the most. Once on the Tool, you can then use them to build your fiendishly complex or elegantly simply pipe networks. I much prefer diegetic interfaces, which means that the information you need is in the game world. The old hotbar looked stuck on and while there are still areas that need to be made into physical models in the game, this is a big leap forward. Next up: Paging, Filtering and Ordering As my full time job is as a lead web developer, the inventory has definitely felt like home and I am looking forward to adding paging, filtering and ordering to the pipes so that you can find the pipe you're looking for more easily. Right now there's only 5…
