Fay's Factory
Gameplay Stream for #TurnBasedThursday
Development Update
coming to you live from my apartment
Why so long? Weren’t there several release dates already?
Ah, I see you are of the old guard. I see you’ve been playing the demo all the way back in June 2022. You remember when the trailer used to say 2023 in the end. You wrote to me and said don’t forget to update “about” channel in my discord to say 2024. I see you.
Long story short, it turns out that games take a lot of time to make! Truly, I’ve been chipping away at this game for 4 years, and there’s still work to do. But seeing how much the game grew during these years inspires me to continue working and making it better, right up to the finish line (and beyond!)
Also, I've been overly ambitious. Novice oversight, really — it's my first big game. On the other hand, you, the person that is about to play Fay’s Factory, get the game with so much care put into details! I envy you sometimes, old guard.
Why Early Access?
The most exciting and productive times for me so far have been the two demos, during which I got so much feedback and fresh perspectives from you! Developing the game alongside people playing it was always my dream scenario. I didn't think it was appropriate to release a narrative-first game into Early Access. However, latest releases have convinced me otherwise: Baldur's Gate 3, Hades, Cyberpunk 2077 all were developed with the help of the community, and are better off for it. I hope that by the end of Early Access we will have the most polished balanced surprising game out there.
I recognize this is the first time I mention this Early Access plan. I see it as the best way to continue making this game, but I know that some people have a suspicious view on Early Access. There will certainly be bugs, spelling mistakes and unfinished content in this version that’s about to be released. If you have any doubts, please wait for the full game, polished and complete. I’ll be here waiting for you, don’t you worry.
You ok? Money-wise? Delays cost money, don’t they?
Yeah, I'm good! Let me paint you a picture. One of my favorite games is Game Dev Tycoon — in fact, it inspired me to become a game maker. For those of you unfamiliar, you start as a little guy and make better and better games from the 80s to the 2010s. Sometimes you take breaks to research something, write a new engine, or make a little money on the side, and then you go back to making your game. Just like your little guy in Game Dev Tycoon, I’ve been doing a bit of moonlighting, and that’s how I have enough money to continue development in these turbulent times. I’m very lucky to be able to work on this game, so don’t worry about me. And thank you for asking.
Oh also one of the games I’ve been working on for a bit is SANYA, it was released last week, look it up!
Why release now?
That's a secret! But keep an eye out for whatever events are scheduled for this beautiful spring (or autumn for the southern hemisphere) we are having, and I hope to see you in the Hundred Kingdoms soon, Factory Overseer.
I leave you now with a little tease of one of the new, never before seen features. Come chat with me at the Discord if you are so inclined!
Road to Release
I'm here with a little update on development, new trailer and a release... window.
First of all, development is going smooth as butter! But the butter has frozen in a fridge a bit — but it's a sunny day, and it needs only a minute to melt. Little by little, game is shaping up great, and I'm pretty proud of what I have at my hands now. Also, I have a good estimation of what's left to be done, and how much time it will take. With that, let's discuss...
The release! Mark my words, the game will be out in summer 2023. Please, do actually mark them — I know I have a tendency to spend too much time on details and features, so I'm committing to this release window as a guiding star. Under the pressure of publicly announced release date, we will get "Fay's Factory" videogame product into your hands!
And to top this update off, here's a new trailer! It has a visionary sorceress, self-assembling factories and a thing stuck in a tree — all of our favorite things.
Thank you for sticking with me on this road to release. Hold on for these final few months, and I'll see you in the Hundred Kingdoms, Overseer.
(also! i'm showing off a very early cut of the trailer in in discord! join or else)
I f**ked up and Steam won't let me curse on here
Because of circumstances absolutely in my control I missed the Base Builder Fest deadline, and I need a couple of days to finish the new demo. It's great and will worth the wait, just like hold on for a sec.
Here's the patch notes for those who come from previous demo, that was released during July (and really it's still up and it's all my fault but you can play it now and compare with the new one later! It's like when you rewatch an old tv show and there's like cliffhanger at the end of the season but you already have next episode downloaded so you feel like a time-traveler):
- New adventure! This demo is about a totally new adventure to play through — there's a lot of illegal activity in this one.
- The new calibration system. Replaced cores with factory power, making calibration less tedious.
- Overhauled engines. New UI and gameplay tweaks for engines, making them more viable.
- Spell quirks. Spells now have quirks, like Doubled or Shy. They have adorable animations to match, and they also now react to you hovering or dragging them around.
- Fine-tuned character creator. Change the body shape of your character by dragging different body parts!
- Quest log. Don't you have some errands to run? As a real rpg, we now have a quest log.
- Interface improvements. My favorite part! There are new battle interfaces, conversations, icons in text and more.
- Control rebinds. Rebind any shortcut to your favorite button.
- More accessibility settings. Added a couple of new accessibility options (fade bright backgrounds, dissolve camera cuts, no button holding). I'm always looking for more things I can do here, don't hesitate to reach out!
- Console. Added a dev console to— Oh wait that's not for you, do not seek that out and if you stumble upon it, do not type anything into it.
I would be happy to hear your feedback on all of these points and more! Whether you are a returning player or a new demo-ee, I am glad to welcome you to Hundred Kingdoms.
(which again are not available right now because i (a real game maker) missed a deadline but it'll be ready in a couple of days, tomorrow perhaps! join the discord to get notified)
Better Save than Sorry
it takes time to figure yourself out
While we have a lot of rpg-elements, and I’ll talk about them in next diaries, every role-playing game starts with a robust save system. With different paths to walk, and all the bad decision to make, you have to know that your progress is safe and sound, waiting for you to roll-back and see what would happen if you take the other route through the quest. (and then decide that your first route was slightly better, but you forgot to save at the end of it, so now you roll-back again and speedrun through the quest, but at least you now know that this is the best route. rpgs!)
Over here at “Faye's Factory” we strive to push the boundaries of rpg genre, so here’s how I approach saves in this game.
quick saves
“Faye's Factory” is coming to personal computing machines first, and so I had to include the foremost staple of pc-gaming: save-scumming the shit out of F5. Yes, just as you expect, you can press F5 to quick save, and F9 to load up after making a real dumb choice.
You can’t quickly save in the middle of a duel or a conversation. The reason for this is I didn’t want to make save-scumming *too* easy, because it corrupts the best of us (remember how you could quick load *in the middle* of a dialogue in Fallout 4, and retry the charisma check with zero hustle?). With just a little friction, I’m hoping you would think twice about this absolutely illegal way of playing the game.
In any other situation, you are allowed to quick save any number of times, and the game stores three latest quick saves, while erasing anything older.
begone, notification!
manual saves
If you want your save file to be more permanent and more prestigious, you can save manually from the pause menu. I know that some hardcore old-school rpg players like to save their progress often (old games were hard!), so there is no limit for this (except your disk space), and it’s quick and snappy. Again, you can only save outside of a duel and conversation.
snappy?
turning point saves
Saving is a hustle, really, and takes you out of the game flow. Of course, what takes you out of the game flow even more is encountering a fatal bug or locking yourself into a terrible decision by accident which you are too late to reverse.
No worries, “Faye's Factory” got you covered here. At certain points (mostly when you start an adventure), game creates permanent saves for you to rollback to. This happens automatically, so you don’t need to worry about losing too much progress in case something very undesirable happens. It also was very easy to implement, but I don’t think any game does? Innovations!
you spent so much time creating you character, we had to save it!
and, of course, autosaves
Come on, it’s the 2022th century, so your progress automatically saves on certain points: when skipping between islets, starting and finishing duels, conversing, etc. We also keep three latest autosaves so you have more options when something goes wrong.
a lot of saves!
All these savefiles! But how do you tell them apart? Basically, there are three things game like to do:
- timestamp a save (you remember what were you doing in the game on february 28th 16:32, right?)
- give savefile a name (maybe, current quest or location), or, worse yet, make a player name their own savefiles (which inevitably results in new_save#1, new_save#2, and a bunch of other new_saves)
- attach screenshot to a save (this is good, no notes!)
I’m doing all of this in some form, but also - game knows the context for saves, and tells it to you in human language (“duel against Arie began”, “factory layout changed”, “arrived at new islet”)! We are generating those from the origin script that prompts the autosave, and for your own savefiles, we use the latest save reason we had (hopefully, it closely matches what prompted you to save.)
we show the same reason when you need to know when game was saved as well: yes, we remember how you’ve just defeated that Arie character, you can quit the game with a peace of mind
This is the save system in “Faye’s Factory”. I’m hoping it’s familiar to Professional Gamers, unobtrusive for casual players, and still has a few surprises for rpg diehards. Thanks for reading this deep-dive into a completely technical part of the game, join the Discord, see you next time!
Power to the Factory
I will check in regularly and keep you updated on the game progress: overviewing game systems, explaining my intentions for them and giving a behind-the-scenes look at the development. The classic dev diary experience!
Today we’ll have a close look at departments. Departments are basic building blocks of the factory. During the duels, you give them some spells to work this, and this in turn wins or loses you the fight. In a quiet moment, you can look closely at any part: check out its stats, talk to workers, and, most importantly – Calibrate the department.
Get in the trenches with the common workers, Overseer
Each department has a set of policies for you to enact. Policies change the look of the department, but they also modify what the department does. Add more damage to that ice spell, or a crit effect, or change the spell entirely. You can’t see the effects in advance, and that’s by design; you have to try out the policies and see the changes for yourself. All policies are easy to repeal — you are the Overseer after all, and you are free to experiment.
Of course, the policies have a cost. You can’t expect the policy-makers to actually do *everything* that you need, can you? So, what limits the policy-making process?
If you played the demo, you are familiar with the old core system. Each department had a power core, which you had to manually install and dislodge to try new things. Cores also could get hopelessly buried in the inventory. The system overall proved fun – there are interesting strategic decisions here, but it was a bit too micromanagery. At first, I thought to solve this with some sort of a Manager screen for cores.
Concept for Factory Manager — it felt too Excel-y
Sometimes though, you need a hammer, and not a duct tape. Cores have been banished from the game, and in their place comes Factory Power. Now, to enact any policy, the department needs to have enough Political (will)Power routed to it. What produces the power? Why, the Political Reactor, of course. You start with just three points of power, and will have some opportunities to upgrade the reactor during your adventures. Initially, each department can get up to two power points, but with better engineers, you surely will crank that number up.
It all handles effortlessly: click to add power, right-click to detract some. You can even power off the department by right-clicking it from the factory view – no need to enter and close so many menus. Departments in the inventory don’t consume factory power at all, but they still remember the policies you've enacted. Put them back to work at your convenience.
Route Power, enact Policies — and see how department changes
The more… creative overseers might try to abuse this system by dragging in departments with more power demands when the factory can handle. First, I tried to constantly run checks and forbid this, with departments refusing to go in the factory if there is not enough power for them. This turned out to be annoying – you worked too hard to get this middle-management position to be denied like that.
Next, I tried to power down departments that you dragged from the inventory, so they would stay within the limitations of your Political Reactor. That was confusing – the department would go from 7 damage to 4 damage for seemingly no reason.
In the end, I landed at the perfect solution for malicious or simply inattentive overseers — the factory blows up! You have to be careful around Political Reactor. Or, at least, be just in time to power off some departments of your choice for now — you *do not* want to know what happens when this timer runs out.
Political Reactor is about to explode!
Overall, the Gamers enjoyed the clunky calibration system in the demo, and I hope extra ease-of-use will lead to more experimentation, and some truly wild and broken factory builds. Of course, using the same factory over and over is not considered stylish… But the Style system is a topic for another dev diary.
That’s it for now. Questions? Suggestions? There is just the Discord for that! Keep an eye out for more dev diaries, and thank you for reading.
– egor
Fest is over, Demo stays up
If you, like me, can never keep track of the timings of these things, do not fret — the demo stays up until the release, so you have around half a year to find some Gamer Time (tm).
In other news, kind people from the Discord have been working on the fan wiki! We are becoming a real game it seems! Check a look for some secrets you might've missed: fays-factory.fandom.com
What's up with me? I'm starting a full-time production, making more adventures and duels for the Hundred Kingdoms. I will also start publishing dev diaries here, once a week at least! Anything you in particular are interested?
Anyways, there's a welcoming Discord with some secrets still being discovered,
Thank your for your time,
— egor
Get the Closed Beta
Here's an overview:
- about 1 hour of content
- runs until Steam Next Festival starts (public demo after)
- saves will
- not* transfer to the full game (but there will be a token of appreciation)
- some duels, some building, and one factory turned art gallery
- certainly a lot of bugs
- feedback is much appreciated
- possibly beta-exclusive secrets?
To get a key you'll have to hunt down the Discord, since it's a serious and closely guarded beta.
For those with tracking skills though,
Have an enjoyable Demonstration Festival!
— egor
Welcome to Fay's Factory
In this post I'll explain some basic things about the game, before doing more specified dev diaries.
What do you do in the game?
You are a factory overseer and you go on adventures with your sorceress. Sometimes she gets into duels, and you have to supply her with spells from the magical factory, which you build and fine-tune between fights. Adventures consist of islets, with things and characters and you'll have to seek out, talk, and argue with to achieve your sorceress's goals (unless you are doing your own little side-adventure?)
What is the setting?
Hundred Kingdoms is a small nation at the edge of the world, which just discovered and started using magic (other countries think it's a silly obsession). Magical industrial revolution changes the way people work, do art and entertain themselves. It's the time of change, and a great opportunity for new ideas.
Is it a rogue-like?
It's not! You go on hand-crafted adventures, then return to you home town, Edge Harbor, to chat with your friends, enemies, co-workers, and the Board; prepare for the next adventure or kick back in the comfort of your little customizable company home. The game will be about 10 hours long.
Is it really a disguised deck-builder?
Yeah.
Is there a working class revolution, a first person camera, character creator or a government bureau conspiracy in this game?
Answer to some of these questions is yes.
When is the release?
I'm aiming at Autumn 2022 release date, and there will be a demo in time for the Steam Next Fest, this June!
Sounds good and you want to hear more? Or something not too clear? There is a welcoming comfy Discord, where I'll be happy to see you!
