v0.41: Treasure Islands, Level Modifiers, Better Quests, Lots of QoL & Polish!

Hi everyone!

It's been a busy period since the last update! I've added big features, like treasure islands and unique level modifiers, while also polished lots of things both visually and UX-wise. In the end I also managed to mark 78 "feedbacks" completed in my spreadsheet. Though there are still 426 left. It sounds like a lot, but the more I receive, the happier I am, so keep them coming! :) Anyway, let's begin!

Treasure Islands!

A new kind of island with a unique desert biome, where you must race against treasure hunters! There are lots of treasure chests on the island, no population goal, so your sole reason there is to claim as many treasures as possible before the hunters claim them. This mode came to be when I was thinking about scrapping the desert biome to lower the scope of this already huge project. So most likely there will be only two biomes/trees at release, which makes the 2026 release much more plausible. It also makes runs shorter, which I think was already starting to become an issue. Anyway, the visuals were already (mostly) done so I brainstormed a bit and come up with this special gamemode. Let me know what you think!

New Level Modifier System!

I implemented a completely new modifier system which will also serve as the basis of the upcoming "Relics" feature. Each island has a random negative modifier which spices up gameplay a bit and they should add some interesting strategic decisions. Like everytime you have too many workers, you lose some of them. Or when a town ranks up, you get a useless card into your deck. Or when you request resources from decrees, you must also discard a card. A lot more to come and I'm all ears, let me know what you think of the current pool! :)

Quest System Overhaul

I added new kind of quests, making objectives harder. Including new "fail-on-action" quests, whose objective is that you can't do something for X turns, hopefully spicing up the gameplay every few turns. Also, now quests on tiles have a fixed 2 turns to be claimed, instead of their duration already starting when appearing at the tile.

New Cards!

I added three brand new skills that introduce some unique mechanics:

Overtime - It adds one extra turn for all per-turn resource providers (even elapsed ones!), which can be incredibly powerful in late game.

Royal Census - This cardimmediately grants you the next task or demand, thus having more time to complete it, giving you more control.

Reserve - Lets you choose a card from your hand which will return into your drawing pile. This way if you can't afford now a crucial card, but you don't want to discard it, you can give yourself a few more turns to gather the needed resources.

Orchard - It received a completely new role: a food source that can be placed on empty tiles, and generates food after every card usage. It's previous role as a per turn food source on forests is now fulfilled by the new Gatherer's Hut.

Sacrifice - Discard a card from your hand and get a few decrees in return.

Imperial Exchange - Basically lets you reroll a card in your hand: discard one and draw a new one.

Cemetery - You can build cemeteries even outside your territory, and it lets you exhaust one of your cards from your hand.

Card Inspecting!

Besides tweaking the tutorial a bit, I also added a right click feature to all cards: it opens an inspection screen, showing its properties and possible upgrades. Players familiar with the genre won't be surprised I think. This feature helps teaching players a lot about the core mechanics and also lets me have much more complex cards. This is because I can fit complexity-wise more things into the description through having e.g. "Exhaust" in it instead of describing the whole mechanic.

Notifications!

Lots of people didn't really noticed when a town has levelled up and they had to claim new tiles, or when a quest has appeared or elapsed. Now there are notifications appearing in the middle of the screen!

Visual Polish

Lots of visual improvements this update! I know that there are much more important features on my todo list, but I just couldn't help myself! I replaced the old, ugly mountains with more detailed ones. Stone and stone related buildings got nicer models, gold also received an update, but Goldmine needs some time still.

I also replaced some of cards images, made them have a more cohesive style, and also updated the visuals of the node backgrounds. Which by the way now have unique tracks! Tile highlights also received some polish, and now town halls are highlighted when hovering a card on one of their tiles. This way it's less likely to put e.g. a house in the wrong town.

The nodes on the map screen now roll out very nicely, and they also have a new, "tinted church window" look which I really like, hopefully you too. Both main menu and the ingame scene got a lot better shadows and nicer tile textures. There's also a new shadow quality setting which lets lower performance machines run HexLands on a higher FPS. There are now random player/kingdom names suggested when starting a new game, and the intro video is also getting a visual overhaul, though it's not yet done.

Smaller Tweaks

Outside the quest system balance overhaul, there are a few other balance changes, which I won't go in detail. Polished lots of features which either I found clunky, or there were reports about it, e.g. the tile claiming cards, like Expansion: previously you had to select a settlement first, and then the targeted new tile. Not anymore, you can just instantly select the new tile, and if multiple towns can claim it, then you have to choose from them. Also loading screen tips, mentioning e.g. autosaving, tons of bug fixes, which were reported, thank you for that!

As always, thanks for sticking around and for all the feedback! If you want to share your thoughts or report any issues, join my Discord server and I'll grant you instant access to the playtest. I'd love to hear what you think about these changes!

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the update! :)

Tudvari a.k.a. Portgate Studios