Hello Petters! A Happy 2021 to everyone. Here in the development quarantine hole, I'm hard at work on the next big update for Industrial Petting.

What's being added?

In the first year of early access I've built ground-level features to the game: new pets, new buildings, new food and a new biome. It's been fun adding these in and fleshing out how the game feels at a moment-to-moment level. Even with the updates, the game has been missing some big items. There's barely any narrative, and a lack of progression and goals beyond the simple research tree. The next big update will start building these, and get us one step closer to leaving early access! We're expanding the story, creating a late game, and making it easier to add new content in the future. The original prototypes five years ago had many of these features, and now it's time to put them back in.

• The beginnings of a narrative.
• Petting will be no longer be a local enterprise: you'll be building your factories at a planetary scale.
• A home base spaceship to plan that construction.
• Per-player upgrades for movement, construction, and petting.
• Factories are no longer in a single area, and those of you who can build layouts quickly or find more pets in the forest will be rewarded.
• Automating building production and food production will be core mechanics.
• Upgrades to make collecting pets in the forest more viable.
• Rebalancing the game so that multiple players helps immensely.

These changes will also make adding new pets and pet areas much easier. For the Crystal Update, I needed to choose how and where to position the new area, as well as make some tools to lead people to the new biome. This new system will allow me to create new areas and new pets with far less overhead, and less of a chance of breaking people's save games. It also means less time wandering back and forth from the mushroom/crystal lands, and more time building pet factories and gathering new creatures.

How far is development?

In the last few weeks, I've accomplished the scary technical challenge. Teleporting between your orbiting ship and different areas on the ground is working, even in multiplayer. The goal in the upcoming weeks is to figure out the specifics of the metagame being introduced, and rebalance the game so that the average player can have an enjoyable time with the current content in 5-8 hours. For more committed players, the new design allows for a longer gameplay tail, and potentially more interesting reasons to start up a new save.

What about currently broken things?

There are some broken or awkward items being worked on, but may not be fixed until after the big update.

• Gatherbots and farming These are hard to use, inconsistent in their output, and not very fun. They're going to be replaced with an older gathering system which was in the beta, but that won't be until after the big update.
• VR movement The teleport movement and controls for smooth movement are awkward right now, and may be fixed before the big update. This has been the number one complaint from VR players, and I haven't forgotten about you!
• Various bugs Game-breaking bugs are going to be fixed and pushed as needed. Cuddlers sleeping during the day, for example.

When do I get to see it?

I'm adding in the new gameplay first, so there won't be any new art for a while. However, I will be inviting people to look at the gameplay with temporary art assets sometime in the next few weeks. If you're interested in playing a janky, broken version join the discord! I'll be posting the information for joining the new feature branch there once it's ready for public play testing. In the meantime, go pet your real pets, and leave any suggestions for the update here or on the discord!