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Stage 4 Complete! - Learning Factory Dev Diaries, October 2023
Hey engineers!
This month was… quite something. The decision to push Learning Factory to Stage 5 (also known as Pre-Release Stage) of our Early Access Roadmap came almost suddenly. We were making plans for our Programmer's Sale event on Steam, and then we thought - hey if we can make Learning Factory shine for the big week, let's do that! That's how the grind started (or should we just say - intensified?).
The result - 3 very packed updates in a month that changed the game a great deal (again), making it more complex, more comprehensive, and - false modesty aside - prettier.
There have been so many changes recently that we decided to do over a huge part of Learning Factory assets. For one, here's the new trailer:
Before We Start: Visit Programmer's Sale!
Every second day of October Ada Lovelace Day is celebrated - to commemorate the famous English mathematician of the XIX century, and the first programmer in the world.
To mark this occasion, we rounded up a party of games that are not only fun to play, but can teach you to think like a true engineer and feel like a tech wizard!
Programmer's Sale is held on Steam until October 10 this year, and there are over a hundred games to browse. Learning Factory is 36% off the price, too - along with many other like-minded games that you might enjoy. Make sure to swing by:
What's New?
Back to Learning Factory though! The two new buildings we added complete a very important arch in the game's development: it is now officially possible to produce all kinds of goods for cats in default, quality, and high-quality tiers.
This triggered us to implement a feature that we have been thinking of for at least a year now: re-balancing the game's crafting. Since there are now items of varying quality around, it only makes sense if crafting more advanced and complex buildings and consumables would require ingredients of higher quality. The list of changes we made in crafting recipes would hardly fit in an email newsletter, but you can check it out in our very deliberate patch notes.
If you have left the game in the late stages and haven't been playing it in a while, you should expect lots of new challenges as you return - when you'll need to upgrade/rebuild your factory and diversify your production. If it seems overwhelming, worry not: Trade Ports will be able to provide you with higher-quality resources until you establish your production.
Check out the new gameplay, and let us know how you like it! You can always connect with us directly on our Discord server:
Another big part of our work was QoL improvements! We've reassembled the Tutorial! We've added a bunch of new useful hotkeys that allow you to instantly find a building in the construction menu or the wiki, instantly make copies of buildings, and do other cool stuff.
Speaking of the Wiki, there's now a whole new section of it, explaining nuances of game mechanics: Loyalty, Mass purchases, Upselling, Machine Learning, Data Quality, Research, Hype, Satisfaction Pyramid, and Legendary cats.
And, of course, there's a new story comics:
Only this time it's a prequel! This chapter tells the origin story of Learning Factory's main characters, to give the players some background of how they met, and why they were noticed by the mysterious Dr. Katz.
A cherry on top: alternative campaign map, which provides more challenge for those who want to play the game another time (or just those who want more challenge in general):
There's more water and fewer resources - enough to keep your mind occupied for the initial part of the game before the real challenge (re-balanced crafting, remember?) emerges.
What's Next?
Our official Roadmap (conveniently available at all times on our Steam Page) indicates that we have now entered the final stage of development:
The biggest thing here is the ‘Story Finale’ part (along with ‘Catopia Enabler’): we will need to deliberate and implement end-game mechanics for the most dedicated cat caterers out there. We wouldn't finish the game with yet another comics page, rest assured of that!
What will this new month bring to Learning Factory? More awesome stuff, obviously. We'll talk about that in some 30 days!