3, 2, 1... Catopia! - Learning Factory Retrospective

Hey, engineers,

As promised, we're back with some more nostalgic Learning Factory content.

This week is special because (a friendly reminder) Learning Factory goes to v1.0 release on January 27! If you have the game on wishlist, you'll get an email once it's out there. And if not - it's about time to add it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150090/Learning_Factory/

If we count the pre-release stage, the development took almost 5 years, which is… wow. To be honest, we just wanted to make a nice little tycoon-like game with cats in it, but then our players asked for more content, one thing led to another - and here we are.

It's been a long way. The game has evolved tremendously. Just one example: do you know what capsule art on Steam is? It's that picture you see just above a game's description, it's the ‘face’ of the game, in a way. Check out how this image was changing throughout the years, as we were fine-tuning our vision of Learning Factory:

We won't bother you with too much text today - there will be time for words later. As for now, we're still heads-down busy, making the final preparations for the release.

So we'll let the screenshots talk. Take a moment and look at how Learning Factory was evolving in every possible way:

We wouldn't let you go without sharing another portion of weird facts about Learning Factory though! Enjoy.

Learning Factory Trivia, Part 2

• The original plan was to allow cats visit multiple stores, like in theme park tycoons

• We discussed a concept in which a player would have to manage a huge storage unit and plan the amount of goods to order according to the demand

• There were no plans for adding an underground level, initially

• However, the game now supports an almost unlimited amount of levels. We wanted to have more than just two, but it turned out to be madness in many ways

• The idea of Learning Factory was first drafted because the players of while True: learn() were asking for gameplay in which real-life machine learning could be applied

• while True: learn() players were asking for real-life programming gameplay, which resulted in us making Craftomation 101. But that's a whole different story.

Come join us in celebration of Learning Factory release this Monday! Catopia won't build itself, you know.

Until we meet again!