Find The Needle is a first-person factory automation game. You dig hay out of a pile of roughly six million strands, find the six needles hidden inside it, and turn hand work into belts, presses, scanners and drones. These pages are grouped by the job you are trying to do, so you can jump to the one that matches the problem in front of you.
Start here
- Your first hour — the manual dig, carry and sell loop, and the two milestones that unlock the factory.
- Manual tools — which hand tools to buy first, and which one to skip.
- Metal Detector — how to scout the pile for needles before any machine takes over.
- Tips and mistakes — what speeds the factory up and what quietly wastes money.
Build the factory
- Factory layout — build the first production line backwards from the sell stand.
- Research tree — the five branches of Yard Research and what each one unlocks.
- Research order — the four-step order to buy upgrades in.
- Conveyor controls — reverse a belt, continue a route, turn snapping off.
- U-Splitters and U-Joiners — split the flow into lanes and merge it back together.
- Power grid — generator, poles and the connections every machine needs.
- Scaling up — when to add robotic arms and drones, and what changes in mid-game.
Hay, selling and money
- Selling hay — how the sell stand pays out and how to push more hay through it.
- Hay products — the machines, the products and the margin question.
- The Silo — hay wads, and a needle trapped inside one.
- Making money — the income order, and what to buy right after your first sale.
Needles and scanners
- Needles and scanners — how detection works, and where the needles actually sit in the pile.
- When a needle goes missing — check the ground, the silo and every branch that leaves the main line.
- Power shortage — why every machine stopped at the same moment.
- Stalled line — diagnose a production line that stops moving.
Find The Needle demo, specs and updates
- Demo overview — how to install it, how long it runs, and what you can finish.
- Save backup and demo tips — copy the save folder, and check three things before you start.
- PC requirements — minimum and recommended specifications.
- Demo updates — what Demo V8 changed and what came after it.
- Fixing crashes — from Steam file checks to the AMD launch workaround.
- Low FPS — why the CPU is the limit here, not the graphics card.
The full game, and playing together
- Release and Early Access — when the full game ships, what Early Access means, and what it costs.
- Multiplayer and co-op mods — the game is single-player officially; how the community co-op mod works.
