Here's an adorable factory game about machine learning and cats

An image from the game Learning Factory — (Image credit: luden.io)

Machine learning is perhaps old hat by now, but what's never going to be old hat is cats. People just can't seem to get enough of them. Learning Factory is an Early Access game that released last month about building an automated factory that produces the things cats want to buy, then sells them. Your job is to keep the shelves stocked and the cats happy—and earn money by selling at optimal prices.

By making offers to cats your factory can train up machine learning models that will then automatically adjust market prices to account for trends and the wallets of the cats in question. Rich cats want fancy expensive cat towers and food, while normal cats just want a good deal on a ball of yarn, and construction worker cats want raw materials. It's a neat concept that bears out pretty well in action: Do you want to make a huge, all-inclusive single machine learning model or instead focus on specific models tailored to each customer type?

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Learning Factory has just released on Steam Early Access. It's not that complicated yet, with about six hours of gameplay for me, but there's a lot on the developer's roadmap. Luden.io's previous game, While True: Learn(), also focused on Machine Learning and cats—but from the angle of language rather than commerce. You can learn more about Learning Factory on the official website.

If you're into factory games, have you checked out Dyson Sphere Program yet?

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.