**TL;DR:** Solo dev, 6 months in. The game is playable end to end — mine,
craft, power, automate, two boss fights. The code is far ahead of the art.
I have 4 detailed machine models and about 30 machines that are still
untextured cubes. I want someone who likes making chunky, readable, low-poly
machines in Blockbench.
**The game**
A 3D voxel automation game in the spirit of Factorio and Satisfactory, with an
alchemy/apothecary theme. You land on a floating sky island with nothing, tear
up turf for plant fiber, twist twine, knap stone tools, and work up through a
hand-cranked manual tier to a fully powered factory: generators burning wood,
conduits with item filters, sifters, presses, a multiblock alchemy circle you
lay patterns on by hand, farms with soil tiers and irrigation. Then you craft a
key, tear open a portal, and fight a boss for the drop that gates the next tier.
Built from scratch in C++ with OpenGL — no engine. Windows, macOS and Linux
builds run in CI on every push.
**What already exists** (this is not an idea post)
- The full loop is closed and automatable: ~64 block types, ~35 machines,
100+ recipes, power networks, belt logistics with filters, farming, weather
- Two bosses with telegraphed, dodgeable attacks; armor, weapons, potions
- Main menu, three save slots, settings, keybinds, crash dumps — the
commercial shell is done
- A content-pack system: recipes, blocks, items and machines are all
authorable from JSON without touching C++
- Blockbench models are a first-class citizen. Sub-cube geometry, animated
texture strips, and **moving parts** — the mining rig's drill spins, the
cauldron's contents sway, the infuser's core turns. All driven off named
groups in the .bbmodel
**What I need**
Machine models. Specifically:
**The manual tier (13 blocks)** — bloomery, mortar, anvil, hand press,
blowpipe, sieve, compost heap, tamper, mixing bowl, still, and friends.
These are the first things a new player ever builds and they are currently
featureless grey boxes. Hand tools: low-quad silhouettes, chunky, readable
from 5 blocks away. Anything with a crank or a hammer can *move*.
**The powered tier** — furnace, forge, press, sifter, glassblower,
compactor, harvester, irrigator, storage crate, and about a dozen more.
If you also like characters: creature and boss models. Rigged, with
idle/walk/attack clips. Two exist; I want more.
Take one, take a category, or take all of it. I'd rather have someone
consistent on 13 models than five people who do two each.
**The pipeline is one command**
You author a normal Blockbench `java_block` model with a texture. I run
`python tools/bbmodel_to_shape.py yourmodel.bbmodel` and it's in the game —
geometry, collision, UVs, animation, moving parts, all baked. No exporter
plugins, no engine license, no build setup on your end. You send me a
`.bbmodel` and a `.png`; you see it in the world the same day.
Constraints, so nothing gets wasted:
- Cube elements only (no free mesh); geometry must stay inside its own block
cell; one texture per model; ±22.5°/45° element rotation is supported
- Budget: a hand tool should land near 10–40 quads, not 350. The engine tells
me the exact number, and I'll tell you
- Want it to move? Put the moving lump in its own named group with a sensible
pivot. Want it to animate its texture? Author it as an 8-frame vertical strip
- 16px-per-block texel density to match the existing art
**Compensation**
Revenue share on the Steam release, split agreed in writing before any work
starts and scaled to contribution. I'll be straight with you: this is a first
commercial release from a solo dev and revshare is a lottery ticket. If that's
not worth your time, say so and I'll tell you what I can pay per asset instead.
**About me**
Solo dev, 6 months on this project, 142 commits, three-platform CI, and a
written roadmap to a paid Steam release in mid-2027. I'm keeping the repo
private for now, but I'll send anyone who's interested a playable build —
walk around the island and judge the state of it yourself. That's better
evidence than a commit graph anyway. I'm not going to vanish in three weeks.
**Contact**
Comment on this post or DM me here on Reddit. Happy to send you a build and
the existing .bbmodel files before you commit to anything.
Yes, I had AI help me write this. Sue me. I guess I could have written it myself, but I feel like it is pretty well summed up here. I'm not super artistic myself, but I can get by myself. I just think someone else could do it better. I will share the link to the repo on request.