Hey guys,
After months of closed and semi-open playtesting, finally the gates of Steam Playtesting are open!
Now everyone can test the alpha of HexLands! This phase focuses on the core gameplay and the mechanics found on the early levels. Later phases will include progression between the islands and then even some metaprogression.😄
So hop in, I would love to see you in the playtesting!
And here comes the twist: after a few hours of being open, I had to turn off auto-accept due to too many of you joining.😅 It's better to let people in gradually, more and more after each update, because this results in a nice, iterative development.
But you can still sign up for playtesting and I'll let you in as soon as I can! :)
Click here to sign up!
And for a more open discussion, join our Discord server! :) I'd love to hear you feedback!
Oh, and I already had to update the build, because as it turned out that some of you experienced a "Thanks for playing the Alpha!" dialog at the end of the tutorial levels, instead of the intended story transition to a normal level. Sorry, now it's fixed!😅 But before I could notice this issue, I already implemented volume and autonaming settings, so enjoy!
Now let me talk about this version's changelog, for those of you who were in the private alpha: the last release was nearly 1.5 months ago. But the wait is over and here's a relatively huge update! :)
Finally the learning curve is a bit smoother due to a cool new tutorial system! In these early levels you can meet some people and also a pivotal figure in the game's story: King Aedric! Can't wait to start working on the lore.
The update contains a balance change regarding tile selling, and lots of quality of life improvements! Thanks again everyone, most of them were due to your awesome feedback!
Features, improvements:
- Tutorial levels to smoothen the learning curve, help panel is also adjusted accordingly.
- You can only sell town tiles and tiles neighbouring your towns' borders.
- Settings where you can adjust various volumes and whether you want to name your islands & towns or not.
- New resource panel visuals.
- Currently usable cards are highlighted in green.
- Card selling is now more intuitive: you click on the button, then you click on the card you'd like to sell. (And not the other way around, like it was previously.)
- Sellable cards when selling is toggled are highlighted in gold.
- Draw card, sell buttons are highlighted if they are your only option.
- Next island button is highlighted if you are ready to leave the island.
- New cards have a blueish temporary highlight.
- Highlighted tiles rise from the island's plane.
- Fish tiles are a bit more apparent.
- A town's borders at tiles which contact other towns are no longer hidden, thus it's easier to distinguish the two towns.
- Card hotkeys adjusted to the most common keyboard layout: left-most card's hotkey is 1, right-most card's is 0.
- Camera setup is also saved with the level.
Fixes:
- Hotkeys, camera movement is fully blocked until the game is full ready for start.
- If tried to quit the game when a feedback dialog was open, the quit confirmation dialog was behind it.
- Mines' sound effect was too harsh/high pitched.
- Sometimes draw card button's resource cost was red, even though you had enough resources.
- Sometimes fishing huts were placed on the water tile's water end, and not on the shore.
Feedbacks, bug reports are always welcome, good luck and have fun!
Cheers, Tibor a.k.a. Tudvari a.k.a. Portgate Studios