Find The Needle enters Early Access with five stages, twenty orders and scrap metal

Find The Needle leaves the demo for Early Access, adding five stages with twenty orders, many new machines, building tools, power and water systems, customization and an ending.

What changed

• The Pelletizer is renamed the Hay Bricketizer.
• The belt splitter and joiner are renamed the Y Splitter and Y Joiner.
• Demo saves do not carry over to the full game.

Stages and Orders

• The demo had seven orders; the full game has twenty in five stages.
• Stages end with The Dairy, The Garden Centre, The Paper Merchant, The Builders' Merchant and The Engineering Works.
• A big order waits until the cabinet holds enough needles.
• The 24 needles give bonuses to every machine, including three new ones: Big Depot, Deep Well and Fired Up.
• One pile lasts the whole game.

Scrap and New Machines

• Over twenty kinds of iron and copper scrap are buried in the pile; scrap can be sorted and sold.
• Scrap that enters a hay machine jams it, and a banner plus a glow shows which one.
• The scanner gets a scrap cannon, and generators burn scrap instead of jamming.
• New machines include the Panel Press, Smelter, Fabricator, Assembler, Sugar Cooker, Bioplastic Reactor, Fibre Spinner, Carbon Kiln, Biogas Digester, Depot, Yard Fan, Jump Pad, Hay Landing Pad and Scanner Mk III.
• The Gas Plant now burns Fuel Discs.

Diggers, Drones and Rakes

• The Hay Excavator digs a marked zone and feeds the belt.
• The Skyline Crane can follow a set zone or be driven by hand.
• Arms and drones carry every kind of item a belt can carry.
• Drone Mk II and Mk III carry 3 and 6 loads at once.
• Rakes gather scrap and wait when the belt is full.

Building and Structures

• Blueprints are laid out on the Blueprint Designer in three sizes and can be placed anywhere.
• The Needle Hammer shows the refund before dismantling and can mark up to 50 buildings.
• Machines can run from 1% to 100%, and needles placed in a Needle Socket push past 100%.
• Splitter routes allow up to eight named, coloured routes switched ON or OFF together.
• New structures include catwalks, ladders, ramps, pillars, steel beams, several wall types, glass floors and glass roofs.

Power, Water and Lifts

• Generators and poles get a POWER tab with graphs, and a PRIORITY tab sets machines to FIRST, NORMAL or LAST.
• Wall Outlets and Double Wall Outlets are added, and pole reach now counts height.
• Pipe Pump Mk.1 and Mk.2 lift water 20 m or 50 m, and a well pushes water 10 m up.
• A Valve caps water flow, and underground pipes and a four way Water Cross are added.
• A compact 2 m Hay Lift fits platforms either way round.

Interface and Economy

• Every machine panel is redone in glass, with recipe pictures and an UPGRADE tab.
• The build menu is sorted by stage, and Escape pauses the yard.
• Selling too much of one product drops its price, with prices shown on the chalkboard.
• Tuning cards offer sixteen endless upgrades, and most buildings now cost parts as well as money.

Customization and Bubba

• The Customizer paints machines, belts, pipes, floors, walls and roofs.
• Signs, street lights, ceiling lights, flood lights, candles and a Light Sensor are added, along with day and night.
• Bubba has a body, an emote wheel on Y, photo mode on P and four outfits.
• Falling now hurts.
• The jetpack and a flashlight on L are sold at the Supply Co, and a vac hose is on H.

Modes and Ending

• Six pile sizes range from SMALL (Easy) to MOUNT HAYVEREST (Impossible).
• Sandbox unlocks everything and makes building free, but its runs stay off the leaderboards.
• The game has 60 Steam achievements and leaderboards with a run sheet for each game.
• Finishing the last order unlocks a Bubba Statue in later runs.
• Finding all 24 needles leads to an ending.

Good to Know and Next

• Demo saves do not carry over.
• The Pelletizer is now the Hay Bricketizer, and the belt splitter and joiner are the Y Splitter and Y Joiner.
• The developers expect the full game to be much bigger and to have multiplayer.
• Constant updates are expected over the next 6 to 12 months.

Check out the interactive calculators and database on findtheneedlers.com.