Find The Needle
You stand in a strange warehouse in front of an endless haystack. The only instruction is to find the needles.
Start with the free Steam demo
Find The Needle is a first-person hay factory on Steam. FindTheNeedleDev built it and Hay Passionates published it as app 5160800. The playable build today is the free Find The Needle Demo, app 5165210, which shipped on 10 September 2026 for Windows. Steam's short description puts about six million hay strands in the pile, then tells you to sell hay, buy tools, and let belts take over. The full listing stays coming soon for Q4 2026 with no price. This wiki follows that factory loop: warehouse, tools, automation, hay products, the 300-upgrade tech tree, and what Steam actually says about the needles.
01WarehouseA former farmer, a locked warehouse, and an endless haystack whose doors will not open.
02Manual toolsStart by hand with a metal detector, then buy shovels, buckets, wheelbarrows, pitchforks and vacuums.
03AutomationWire power, snap belts to the Hay Sell Stand, and let scanners and arms hunt while you expand.
04Find the needlesNeedles, plural, sit in the pile. Steam will not say what happens when you collect them all.
Official Find The Needle Trailer from Find The Needle Dev.
Steam header art for Find The Needle.
Official still
From hand tools to belts
Sell hay first, then spend the coins on a shovel, bucket, wheelbarrow, pitchfork or vacuum before a belt to the Hay Sell Stand is worth placing. Demo V8, posted 11 September 2026 by animatemesh, reworked belt snap, added F for No Snap Mode, and let E on a power pole shut the electricity network down. Pulp, compressed bales, eco bricks, hay paper and pellets are the five product names Steam prints. The tech tree promise is over 300 upgrades for machines, speed, efficiency, factory size and new processing; node costs stay off the store.
Keep this listing apart from Studio Bitdot's Needle In A Haystack Simulator (Steam 5159870, five million pieces plus co-op), Roblox needle hunts, Red Key Games' A Time For Goats, and Thinflow's Sorting Game. Find The Needle is Single-player with Family Sharing, Windows only, and Vulkan 1.3, with no achievements object on 5160800. Minimum spec is Windows 10 64-bit, 8 GB RAM, and a dedicated GPU with Vulkan 1.3 and 4 GB VRAM such as a GTX 1050 Ti or RX 570; integrated graphics are not supported. Recommended is Windows 11 64-bit, 16 GB RAM, and a GTX 1660 Super or RTX 2060. Very large factories are CPU heavy. Eleven store languages ship with full audio. The overhead still is the belt network that replaces that hand loop: orange machines, branching conveyors, and the central hay mound.
Not stated by Steam: an ending after every needle, a public tech-tree spreadsheet, or per-machine throughput.
Frequently asked questions
Is Find The Needle free?
The Find The Needle Demo is free on Steam for Windows. The parent app 5160800 is still coming soon for Q4 2026 and has no price_overview. itch.io now sends players to the Steam demo instead of hosting its own build.
Where do I start in the warehouse?
Steam's about text puts you in a strange warehouse in front of an endless haystack. Doors will not open. The only instruction is Find the needles. You start by hand with a metal detector, sell hay, then buy the first manual tools before belts make sense.
Which channels are first-party for Find The Needle?
Official Discord is invite MqcvCz8eyG. X is haydeveloper. Instagram loaded as findtheneedledev. YouTube is Find The Needle Dev, including trailer D1Lecl14rWs and an Electricity Update short. Support email on the Steam payload is neuraltrainers@gmail.com. Developer posts marked Top 10 most played demos on 15 September 2026, Top 5 on 20 September, Top 3 on 23 September, and number one worldwide on 25 September. Reddit and TikTok captures did not yield a usable first-party board.
Sources