Dev Diaries, April 2023: Cat Blimps, Underground Fishing & Endless Research
If you didn't know that already, Learning Factory is being developed by a team of just four people. Back in 2020, when we started drafting the game, none of us would expect it to become as big! All we wanted was to make a tycoon game about a cat store… And here we are, with a giant map of 3 biomes and an underground level, Trade Ports, Cat Guilds, the I.L.L.U.M.I.N.A.T.I., and now - cat blimps! Among other things.
And we're far from done. Let's try and sort out all the good stuff that appeared in the game in the past month.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150090/Learning_Factory/
[h3]When Cats Fly[/h3]
Cat Zeppelins have been in the game for some time now, helping you transfer your goods to the harder-to-reach parts of your Factory campus. One thing they could not carry was… well, cats. However, our very curious players have tried to fit their furry catstomers into Zeppelins. Some of them even succeeded, naturally resulting in the game crashing. That's when we decided that passenger airships are a good idea. Enter Cat Blimps!
One of our Discord community members, Jiiniasu, has contributed as well with a sketch of their own:
It took some time and effort from Sergei the artist to come up with something mad enough while prototyping the design of these mighty airships. The earliest versions looked somewhat like a flying beaver:
It became more cat-like after a couple of iterations:
…then we've just added some cats, and:
The Blimps are designed with all your cat's desires in mind: the insight of the gondola is shaped as a cardboard box, with scratch-resistant walls and catnip-flavored shakes served on board! We'd remind the pawssengers to fasten their seat belts, but, knowing the nature of cats, we don't expect them to comply.
Blimp stations (or, as we call them, Pawssenger Docks) also took some time to contemplate:
Sergei found inspiration in a special book dedicated to the bus stop design of the Soviet Union - apparently, they were very diverse, often astonishingly beautiful! Anyway, here's the final version, with cats and whatnot:
Take your cats for a ride in the sky!
[h3]Endless Research for Filthy-Rich Engineers[/h3]
This next feature might not look as spectacular, but boy, is it useful! Since Learning Factory is a stress-free game, the players who made it to the late stages of the game often find themselves with ridiculous amounts of in-game currency on their deposits.
However, even with all the technologies unlocked, the potential for optimization of one's Factory is endless. That said, you are now allowed to invest your profits and acquire very useful perks for your Factory and your character, so you could optimize more, earn even more money, get better perks, and optimize again, times infinity:
The aforementioned perks include a speed increase for the character and/or Zeppelins, a research speed boost, an overall profits increase, boosted growth of plants, a chance to create two buildings instead of one while crafting… and much more! They're as powerful as they are expensive, so if you happen to be a minmaxer kind of a player, those research projects will keep you busy for dozens of hours. No need to thank us!
[h3]Another Round Underground[/h3]
When we introduced the underground level of Mars in Learning Factory, it was a rather boring, lifeless place that was only good for facilitating de-spaghettifying the logistics. Here's a brief list of features that we have added since: underground oceans, lava & lava Rafts, underground Zeppelins, underground Metal sources, Lava Furnaces, and now - fishing.
Yes, really. But it's not just that: upon upgrading your Multitool you will not only be able to catch fish in the dark subsurface waters, but you'll also be able to fish for metals in lava! And if you need more space or more confidence - you can now pour concrete on lava, thus making it traversable!
With all that, it makes the Underground of Mars a pretty fun place to hang out! But we still have a couple of things to be added up our sleeves. Just you wait! In the meantime…
[h3]The Big Redesign [/h3]
If you are following these diaries regularly, you might already know that one of the most important tasks on our table is to make Learning Factory prettier than ever for when it goes to full release this year. We've done that before, too: the game has changed more than once, including the big rehaul of the visual style last August.
The work on this aspect of the game continues! In the next update, we're planning to change the looks of certain items. As it already happened with Yarn Balls and many more items, Copper will look different depending on the quality of items you produce. Here's a work-in-progress teaser:
A new Gold design is on the way, too:
New Iron, Cotton, and Gems are also to be expected! This upcoming update (scheduled for release on April 25) is going to be pretty! Oh, and we've also re-rendered the good ol’ Cotton Collector, it's already in the game:
Bear with us! With each passing month, Learning Factory is becoming a more beautiful, deep, and wholesome game. See you in the next edition of our Dev Diaries!
