Steam News 28 February 20262mo ago

Steam Next Fest Recap

Hey everyone! As we're nearing the end of Steam Next Fest, I wanted to write this post to first of all thank you for playing the Mining Merchant demo and secondly to address some concerns that were shared by the communi…

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Full Super Mining Mechs update

The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.

Repeated intro

Hey everyone!

Extracted changes

0 fixes2 additions4 changes0 removals

Gameplay
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addedIf you haven't had a chance to play the demo yet; don't worry, the demo will remain available even after Steam Next Fest ends. And if you have played it, please don't forget to add it to your Steam wishlist. You can check it out right here:

changedhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/3843030/Mining_Merchant_Demo/

changedThe crafting systemThere seem to be two major pain points here. The clunkiness of the system, and the repetitiveness when having to craft a lot of items.

changedThe crafting systemFor the clunkiness, I feel like this is caused mostly by the fact that you have to manually drag everything around. I've already reworked the crafting system during Next Fest to require less object dragging. For example, selecting the handle of the ingot press will automatically have it rotate, and selecting the smithing hammer will automatically move it in the right position, where you can just click to have it hit the anvil. This update is already live on the beta branch.

addedThe crafting systemThen there's the repetitiveness of this system. To address this, I'm planning on adding automation mechanics, which will allow players to automate the crafting once they've 'discovered' new items. What I mean by this is that you need to craft it once by hand, and from there you can choose to either automate the production, or keep crafting by hand. The speed and quantity of automated crafting will be based on the level of your workstations as these are upgradable (not in the demo).

changedThe crafting systemIn addition to this, please keep in mind that there was already a bulk crafting option in the game, that would allow you to make up to 20 items at once based on your workstation level. So even for manual crafting, you would not have to individually craft every single item.

As we're nearing the end of Steam Next Fest, I wanted to write this post to first of all thank you for playing the Mining Merchant demo and secondly to address some concerns that were shared by the community.

If you haven't had a chance to play the demo yet; don't worry, the demo will remain available even after Steam Next Fest ends. And if you have played it, please don't forget to add it to your Steam wishlist. You can check it out right here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3843030/Mining_Merchant_Demo/

5 Million!

Let me start off with a big thank you to all people who showed up to play the demo. Thousands of players jumped in and mined over 5 million tiles in just a couple days, which was really fun to see. I've also seen a lot of players show up who had already played my previous games and it's just been very nice to see people have stuck around since then. Thanks for the support, it really means a lot to me!

Feedback

Throughout the week I got a lot of feedback about the game through Discord, Steam Community Hub and even directly from players as I joined random lobbies to ask for feedback. I'd like to share the biggest learnings I got and what changes I'm planning to make as a result of this.

The crafting system

By far the most mentioned was the crafting mechanic. It's fair to say it's gotten mixed reception as people either seem to love it or hate it. I had obviously hoped for everyone to love it, so I'm sorry for missing the mark here for a lot of you. Luckily, there's still time to improve before full launch, so let me explain what I'm planning to do.

There seem to be two major pain points here. The clunkiness of the system, and the repetitiveness when having to craft a lot of items.

For the clunkiness, I feel like this is caused mostly by the fact that you have to manually drag everything around. I've already reworked the crafting system during Next Fest to require less object dragging. For example, selecting the handle of the ingot press will automatically have it rotate, and selecting the smithing hammer will automatically move it in the right position, where you can just click to have it hit the anvil. This update is already live on the beta branch.
Then there's the repetitiveness of this system. To address this, I'm planning on adding automation mechanics, which will allow players to automate the crafting once they've 'discovered' new items. What I mean by this is that you need to craft it once by hand, and from there you can choose to either automate the production, or keep crafting by hand. The speed and quantity of automated crafting will be based on the level of your workstations as these are upgradable (not in the demo).
In addition to this, please keep in mind that there was already a bulk crafting option in the game, that would allow you to make up to 20 items at once based on your workstation level. So even for manual crafting, you would not have to individually craft every single item.

Shopkeeping

The second most mentioned was the shopkeeping part of the game. Based on all the feedback I got I think most people seem to enjoy the shopping phase, but were also a bit worried about repetitiveness and scalability.

As your shop scales by adding additional floors and unlocking more rooms, you'll

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Steam News / 28 February 2026

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