Hi again! This month I'm going to share some details on a very important part of the game I haven't talked about much. The Volcano!
The Volcano is literally central to Factory Town 2 (it sits in the middle of the map). The main goal of the game is to feed the volcano with items you make in order to restore its power. There's some fun story details involved but I don't want to spoil too much just yet...
The volcano serves a number of important gameplay functions:
It acts like a guide to the island, giving you quests which move the story forwards, gives you a reason to make specific items, and also teaches new players how the game works.
The volcano gains XP from each item it consumes. When it gains enough XP, it Levels Up and you unlock new tech, upgrades, and perks. So it's a primary mode of progression.
It can create brand new islands for you, each containing unique crops and minerals that you'll need to make advanced recipes.
It's an insatiable item sink, so it gives players a reason to max out production at all stages of the game. Every item you feed it earns you Favor, which can be used to purchase new tech. It also increases your Mastery of the items you feed it, which increases their quality and makes them more valuable when sold to villagers. High Mastery also unlocks new recipes that use that item as an ingredient. (Factory Town 1 doesn't really have a great item sink like this so it should be a very nice balance change.)
I haven't shared much about it, because until this past month the in-game model looked like this:
The eyes and mouth can be animated to create expressions that match its dialogue. It's reactive to the environment - it can track players or objects, get excited when you feed it, and fall asleep at night. I also added code that lets me move the camera around and zoom in and out to make little cutscenes involving the volcano.
A common question is whether this big active volcano poses any threat to the population. And I think in keeping with the chill vibe of Factory Town, the answer is going to be no. Its personality is a little sarcastic, goofy, clumsy, but ultimately it's friendly and benevolent. It wants to be fed, and maybe will put a little joking-but-not-joking pressure on the player to do so, but won't erupt in deadly lava flows if you don't. Plus, my feeling is it would be annoying if chunks of your carefully built town kept getting randomly destroyed by lava.
There is definitely room for some difficulty customization though. Here's some ideas I'm exploring for settings you can optionally enable for a higher challenge:
Increase the amount of items you need to feed into the volcano to earn reward points
Increase the happiness threshold you need to maintain for new workers to join your island
Allow villagers to actually leave your island if they're unhappy for a long time. In Factory Town 1, every worker had a single assigned task, and if one of them randomly disappeared it would be painfully annoying to restore this behavior each time a worker left. But workers in Factory Town 2 are much more flexible and autonomous - they'll work at jobs that are open, and live at houses that are available. So the population can grow and shrink without causing you to redo work.
I'll note that the Volcano doesn't have a default name, and I'm open to suggestions if you want to post them below! I'm also interested as always in any other questions or suggested topics for newsletters you have.
Cheers,
Erik