Coffee Stain’s upcoming Satisfactory expansion, Core Values, moves factory building underground, where players must fit their operations into caves rather than spread them across open terrain. That makes cave design a central challenge: the spaces need to feel enclosed and offer tunnels to explore, while still leaving room for players to build and expand.

The designers test factory layouts across each biome, accounting for players’ progress, available resources and quantities, recipe costs, and building sizes. Director Emmet Burke says they aim to balance room for creativity with the cave-like atmosphere; art director Torsten Gunst describes the design trade-off as a triangle between cave shape, factory needs, and building and recipe constraints. New logistics tools are also expected to help players deal with the tighter spaces, though the article does not reveal what they are.