Next Stop: v1.0 - Learning Factory Dev Diaries, January 2024
We'd like to say we've been chilling and relaxing during the Holidays, and we were, really! But somehow, we have managed to add a whole new mode for Learning Factory in the meantime… Yeah, apparently that's how we roll. But first, let's take a moment and review the most important transformations the game was going through in that turbulent year of 2023…
Let's start with a quick recap from the past couple of years… It almost seems like we're playing a different game every year, huh?
Originally, our plans were to release Learning Factory into 1.0 version last year. Well, it turned out that the game grew way bigger than we were contemplating back in 2021… But we just couldn't leave our players hanging, especially those brave factory builders with 100+ hours of Learning Factory on their accounts.
That's why we made a huge leap in mid-December, releasing a major update adding the end game part to Learning Factory. That's right, the secret to Catopia is officially out there for you to research your way to. But that's not the end of the game: after you discover a secret of making all cats (and, subsequently, other living beings) in the Universe happy, you'll be honored with a quest to plan and launch an interstellar mission, spreading the catisfaction all over the outer space!
Naturally, you would need to equip your ‘meowthership’ (a.k.a. Catopia Ark) with the finest items from your Factory, because outer space cats deserve all the best! The end game mechanics are far from being final, we still have some ideas for that part, so stay tuned for more news!
We hope that from now on thigs you do on the Factory make sense, but do they though? Come to our Dicord server to let us know, it's important for us to make the Learning Factory experience wholesome for you!
The next hero of today's diary wears no cape. You may even not notice it for some time, until you find yourself in its modern and comforting embrace! We're talking about the game's interface, if course: it's going through a massive renovation right now, which is part of our epic pre-release quest of polishing the game:
More changes to this aspect of the game are happening at this very moment, and will be featured in the next updates! And any feedback from you is always welcome, too.
This last year was full of changes that do not sound very impressive in text, but do make a big difference, especially when they all come together! To save you some time, let's review the most prominent improvements around Learning Factory in 2023:
- All items (included, but not limited to Quality and High Quality items) were re-rendered and now feature their own unique looks
- Most buildings are/were going through the process of re-rendering, too, which implies higher quality animations, shadows for each and every building, and higher quality graphics in general
- The Underground level of the game finally become a full-fledged part of your Factory, where mmysterious Neon Cotton and Underground Algae grow, metals are mined and smelted, and whatnot! Since you'll probably get to spend way more time over there, the Undergound graphics was re-done, too:
- Blueprints are finally there, helping you plan your Factory campus in many exciting ways
- 20+ new buildings made its way into the game, including Chillout Space, Teleports and Schrodinger's Chamber for cloning cats
- Cat Zeppelins: yet another revolution in Factory logistics - they tranfer cats, and also shaped like cats - as seen in ‘My Neigbor Totoro’, but maybe a bit less weird
- Alternate campaign map, with more challenging watery landscape
- The great crafting rebalancing occured: in short, it is stimulating you to produce higher quality items in the later parts of the game
Of course, there were more changes, big and small: you can read about them (along with other stories) in our blog.
[h3]What's Next?[/h3]
If you're asking yourself “Are they done there, finally?”, - the answer is strictly negative: the next update will be out in a couple of days, and it's going to be yet another major update! With some new animations, undergound Storages, many QoL improvements, and something very special. A little teaser: it starts with an “S-”, and ends with “-team Workshop support”.
Seriously though, we're running out of points to check on Learning Factory roadmap, and that means a lot of boring, steady work, preparing the game to the long-awaited 1.0 release.
And of course, none of this would be possible without you, the players! Thank you dearly for being with us, sharing your insights, opinions and suggestions: we take our players’ advice seriously here at Luden.io, and many features in the game are suggested by our community!
Come join us: this year promises to be especially interesting for Learning Factory! See you in the next edition of these Diaries.
