I’ve talked a little about progression level 3 in previous dev diaries, especially in previous release notes and in Diary #28 – Train Cars, but I figure I’ll go ahead and spill more info about what’s included. First of all, for the release of the game I’m planning on having 5 progression levels, stretching from a tiny settlement to a productive town. I’m planning on “rebranding” the levels as permits – basically, you get permission to build a certain new set of buildings. The first level is initial basic infrastructure: small houses, a well, basic farm fields, and dirt roads. The second level permits basic industry: turn the wheat into bread, turn the mushrooms into potions, and dig for stone and coal.

The third level is an advanced agricultural permit. The timing might seem a little weird – shouldn’t most agriculture be in the beginning? Maybe, but this level adds a lot more variety, and sets up for more advanced industry later on. In this dev diary I’ll go through the broad categories of what’s included: food crops, farm animals, double tracking, and town expansion.

There are *six* food crops in level 3, four of which are grown on fields and two on orchards. Unlike the previous two agricultural buildings, which are primarily for making other goods (wheat for flour/bread and giant mushrooms for potions), all of these are usable as food. I’ll note that the concept of hunger and thirst doesn’t currently exist, but I’ll probably be implementing it soon for the purposes of game balance. The new crops are carrots, corn, potatoes, peppers (which will have magical applications as well), apples, and manafruit (a magic-infused fruit with further applications).

No game that claims to be cozy can get away without having farm animals, so cows, sheep, and chickens make their debut in progression level 3 as well. Like everything in Iron Village, they come in via train, where you have the option of buying them. You do need to make sure you have enclosed space for them first, which acts as their storage building. The pens double as workplaces though – a villager can come by and milk the cows/shear the sheep/collect eggs. Unlike other resource producing buildings, the input product (also known as an adorable farm animal) doesn’t get consumed, so you get a nice renewable resource production system. Cow milk has the added bonus of being transformable into cheese, which allows you to make more delicious profit.

Another piece of infrastructure you may have noticed in other screenshots is double tracking. Once you reach level 3, another line of track is built, which allows trains to go both ways through town. The main benefit to you is increased train frequency, allowing for more frequent trade opportunities.

Finally, there’s town expansion. I haven’t actually implemented this yet, but more land will be opened up to the south of the tracks. With the amount of space on the current map, if you try and build some of everything you’ll run out of space. Unlocking the south should help alleviate that, although I’ll probably end up expanding the map in the north as well.

Anyway, that should summarize what’s happening in level 3. Don’t forget to wishlist Iron Village on Steam! After next week I’m going to be down in Florida for 2 weeks (Thanksgiving with the in laws & a wedding), so I’m planning on releasing another update to the demo this week. That 2 weeks may ironically mean more dev time, thanks to my day job’s “return to office” mandates I will run afoul of work from home quota if I try and get any of that work done.