Pioneers of Pagonia News

[h2]Dear Pioneers,[/h2]

the last hot summer days have passed, we can feel the autumnal breeze and smell the pumpkin spice in the air. But before we get cozy and play another session of Pioneers of Pagonia, let's look back a great expo summer!

[h2]Gamescom 2024[/h2]
In August, we attended Gamescom Cologne. It was our second Gamescom with Pioneers of Pagonia, and we had an absolute blast! We were part of the Indie Arena Booth in Hall 10.2. again, and had the best time! It was amazing to talk to every single one of you! We thank everyone for stopping by and playing our game.

Booth Crew Day 1

Booth Crew Day 2

Booth Crew Day 3

We also showcased a sneak peek of some work-in-progress features of our upcoming Magic Update, such as the new enemy units called “The Cursed”. It was great to see the excitement on the player's faces, when they send their sorceresses to defeat this new enemy type! Currently, we are working on two more variations of the "Cursed" and can't wait to show them to you.

New enemy type "The Cursed" and their base "Corrupted Oak"

At Gamescom, we also met lot of new players who never played Pioneers of Pagonia before. This is always very exciting for us, because of the way they react to the current state of our game. We received and gathered a lot of valuable feedback by our new players, especially regarding the onboarding of our game. We are currently working on some of the feedback, you guys gave us!

This includes:

• Better UX highlights to avoid missing important notifications and updates about new or solved objectives.
  
• Allowing to continue playing while guidance videos are running
  
• Combat encounter execution will get a rework to better meet player expectations.
  
• Direct attack / patrol / focus point handling for a better overview and to avoid unnecessary scrolling
  
• Easier tool management to reduce the need to continuously track current stock.
  
• Enable to split priorities for construction and economy
  

We hope to make Pioneers of Pagonia as accessible as possible to new players while also providing new challenges for our established Pioneers (a.k.a. our strategic master minds.) :)

[h2]Stamp Rally at Gamescom[/h2]



One of our highlights at Gamescom was for sure the coziest stamp rally ever! We teamed up with 9 other Indie Studios for a fun little stamp hunt! If the visitors played 5 participating games or more, they received an exclusive sticker sheet. We got to know so many lovely indie devs and absolutely loved to work with all of them! Make sure to check out their games as well. We hope to do this again next year!

IAB Indie Devs

We also had the first ever community meet and greet at Gamescom! The participating community members were having a little chat with Volker, taking lots of photos, grabbing a goodie bag and getting their posters signed. Thanks to everyone, who participated! We will definitely think about more events like this in the future. If you are interested in a community meet-up, please let us know.




[h2]PAX WEST 2024[/h2]
Just a week later we attended the next big expo in Seattle, US!

We had a really good time talking to our American players. We also met a lot of people who have never played Pioneers of Pagonia before. Seeing them playing it for the first time, falling in love with the art style and the game in general us really happy. We hope to spread the word about Pioneers of Pagonia in the US even more. Thanks for having us, PAX West!

[h2]Upcoming Quality of Life Update[/h2]

In between all the travelling and showcasing we have been pretty busy working on the next bigger update, which is coming pretty soon! We are currently working on several quality-of-life-improvements.

Some highlights include:

• Major notification improvements
  
• Persistent top bar configuration
  
• Quick access to road construction mode
  
• Combat luck balancing
  
• Guidance videos.
  
• And more!
  

You can already playtest the features in our current Open Beta. Let us know what you think on our Discord channel or the Steam forum. Thank you and have fun testing!

Read the Open Beta Patch Notes here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2155180/view/4588692479139479347?l=english

As always, thank you so much for following our journey. It truly means a lot to us to meet you guys in person and hear what you guys think about our upcoming Magic Update! The Open Beta for the Magic Update will launch at the end of October. In November we will also publish a brand-new roadmap and reveal more information about our future plans. Stay tuned!



See you in Pagonia!
Your Envision Entertainment-Team

the latest Beta test of our upcoming quality-of-life-update 0.8.0 is out now!

Please tell us what you think on Discord or in our Open Beta discussion forum on Steam.

Thank you for your support and have fun testing our new features!

[hr][/hr]

[h2] Highlights [/h2]

Interface:

• Major notification system improvements including a history
  
• Persistent top bar configuration
  
• Quick access to road construction mode
  

Gameplay:

• Threatened state to protect civilians
  
• Combat luck balancing
  

Onboarding:

• The first beginner guidance videos have been added
  
• Many UI enhancements for beginners
  

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

[h3]UI[/h3]
Top Bar

• Three different default top bar setups to toggle between
  
• Top bar setups and changes are now persistent between game sessions
  
• Each top bar setup can be reset back to default
  
• The full commodity tooltip including history will now already appear when hovering over a commodity in the top bar drop-down interface. This allows to check all information without the need to enable the commodity for the top bar display.
  
• The numbers in all the drop-down interfaces are now updated while the drop-down is open.
  
• All items of a category can be enabled or disabled with a single click.
  
• The top bar layout is only updated once after the configuration changes of a category are finished to avoid misplaced clicks while configuring the top bar.
  
• Improved the way the top bar distributes the columns between the categories.
  
• The overall amount of hungry miners is now shown in the top bar.
  
• The icons for idle units are now changed to clearly relate them to the unit type they belong to.
  

Notifications

• A notification history is now available by a toggle button. Any notification since game start is still accessible on request later
  
• New notifications get a brief visual highlight to get more attention
  
• The readability of notification icons and text has been improved by an additional outline
  
• The mouse-over feedback of notifications has been enhanced
  
  • The current notification itself is clearly highlighted
    
  • If there is a location related to the notification, it is highlighted in the minimap
    
  • If there is a related object in the game world, it is highlighted in world view
    
  • Notifications reflect their lifetime with a small progress bar until they fade out and move to the history.
    
  • An additional context tooltip explains the functionality of the mouse buttons clicks on notifications
    
• When the list of notifications changes because a new notification appears or fades, all clicks on notifications are ignored for a very brief amount of time to avoid that the wrong notification is selected or dismissed
  

Quick access to road construction mode

• Buildings without a road connection now show an alert flag at their connection point
  
• Clicking on the connection point instantly switches to road construction mode with the building entrance already defined as the first waypoint.
  

Building construction mode feedback

• If a building cannot be placed at the current position, the reason(s) are displayed directly at the mouse pointer
  
• For farm fields, the terrain type and the plants which grow best on it are displayed directly at the mouse pointer
  

Other UI topics:

• Target locations can now be set on the minimap as well as in the game world. This is valid for Focus, Attack, Claim and Patrol points.
  
• The nutrition and comfort values of individual meal ingredients are now shown in the meal tooltips of taverns, residences and mines.
  
• All valid ingredients for nutrition and comfort meals are now shown in the meal type tooltips of the tavern.
  
• When toggling between light settings with Ctrl+L, the name of the setting is now shown for a brief time on screen.
  
• The construction menu now shows the name of the category currently chosen.
  
• Hints are shown during the loading screen.
  
• When an enemy camp is selected all units belonging to it are highlighted.
  
• When placing a market stall or tavern table, related buildings are highlighted.
  
• The game language can be changed directly in the pre-game menu via the small globe in the lower right corner.
  
• The icons of building categories and the icons of some buildings in the construction menu have been improved.
  
• When hovering over an objective related to a building type, the corresponding build menu category and building type are highlighted in the construction menu to ensure it is easy to find
  

[h3] Gameplay [/h3]

Threatened state

• All buildings and landscape piles will now switch to a “threatened” state while hostile enemies are nearby
  
  
  
  • A building under “threat” will display that state in the world and in the selection
    
• While under threat, those buildings and piles will not request carriers to travel to them to deliver or pick up commodities and cancel those already on their way.
  
  
  
  • This will also help to avoid civilians sacrificing themselves to werewolves
    

Combat luck balancing

• The chances of winning or losing a combat fight have been adjusted
  
  
  
  • Whenever a combat unit of a player won or lost a fight, the chance of winning or losing the next fight for that player is adjusted accordingly to neutralize luck or bad luck within the span of several consecutive encounters.
    
  • This also means that reloading a game state to run a combat sequence multiple times will not lead to remarkably different results any longer.
    
  
  
• There will be more combat system changes coming with the Magic Update, stay tuned
  

Other gameplay topics:

• Improved movement of units outside the road network to reduce blocking issues in some busy situations
  
• Optimized road layout around obstacles
  

[h3] Other topics [/h3]

• Procedural map generation improvements:
  
  
  
  • Lakes are much better integrated into the landscape
    
  • More natural shapes of coastlines and cliffs
    
  • More naturally shaped transition zones between terrain types
    
• New shadow renderer
  
  
  
  • Softer shadows and no more flickering
    
• Adjusted the brightness of the coal signs placed by the Geologist.
  
• When the game is started on SteamDeck, the default video settings optimized for this platform are selected.
  
• Improved textures of stone deposits
  
• Improved look of grassland vegetation
  
• Audio mixing improvements
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed: Sometimes the Explorer would not take the last Ration after the Explorer building was disabled and re-enabled again.
  
• Fixed: The market stall road connection had a minor visual glitch.
  
• Fixed: Several very rare crashes were fixed.
  
• Fixed: Dead Scavs were vanishing immediately when their base got destroyed. That is no longer the case.
  
• Fixed: Under some very rare circumstances builders were not finishing a construction job.
  
• Fixed: Underground and surface deposits will no longer spawn under water.
  
• Fixed: When a deposit is claimed into the player’s territory while a gathering building was paused, the new deposit would not be harvested sometimes after re-enabling the gatherer. This is fixed now.
  
• Fixed: The construction support grid cells are no longer shown on the territory of other factions.
  
• Fixed: When buildings of a merged faction got demolished, sometimes white spots of unexplored territory remained. This is no longer the case.
  
• Fixed: Very rarely the game got stuck in multiplayer ping mode.
  
• Fixed: Once all 9 nutritious meals were prepared in the tavern, the list of products disappeared.
  
• Fixed: Rarely a Scav claimer got stuck in an endless loop.
  
• Fixed: Some buildings such as the Construction Camp had a comfort meal history shown even though their inhabitants do not consume meals.
  
• Fixed: Improved line break behavior in objective list for objectives with large numbers
  
• Fixed: “Recruit X unit” objectives now only count recruited units.
  

[h3]Known Issues[/h3]

• Mining deposits spawn on coast cliffs and are sometimes unreachable.
  
• Flags that mark buildings as "threatened" are not waving.
  
• Commodities lying on the ground do not show the "threatened" state.
  

[h2]Dear Pioneers,[/h2]

We have news about our upcoming Magic Update for you!

The Magic Update is the fourth major content update to be released as part of Early Access this year. You can expect new challenging enemies, numerous magical combat units, expanded production chains and new buildings such as the gem mine and the treasure hunter.

[h3]Magic Update – Open Beta – End of October 2024[/h3]
Mark your calendars, because the Magic Update will enter Open Beta on Steam at the end of October 2024. Everyone that is visiting our booth at Gamescom 2024 can play an early version in advance. Look for us in the Indie Arena Booth in Hall 10.2.!

Also, we decided to overhaul the introduction to the game to make it easier for new players to get started in the world Pagonia. Newcomers will be informed about game controls and important game mechanics through short video sequences while they build their first settlements.

[h3]The Cursed[/h3]
The Malthorn and their base the Corrupted Oak

New enemies are emerging in Pagonia in the form of the Cursed, who are spreading to corrupt the forces of nature and abuse them for their own purposes. Only units with knowledge of magic can remove the curses and thus prevent the Cursed from successfully performing their rituals and threatening waves of attacks from entering via their portals.

But warlocks and sorceresses need special magical weapons and armor to defeat the Cursed. New resources, building types, units and production chains are available, which must be used strategically and skillfully. This will definitely change things up in Pagonia and provide a challenge for our strategy experts!

[h3]The Treasure Hunter[/h3]
Treasure Hunter being successful

The magic update also introduces a particularly interesting explorer unit: The treasure hunter can discover hidden treasures, secret arsenals and lost artifacts in the world of Pagonia. There are also secret treasure maps, which must first be found or acquired through trade with NPC factions.

[h3]Roadmap Update – August 2024[/h3]
We have updated our roadmap with the current dates. We will release a new roadmap in November 2024 along with the Magic Update. Stay tuned!



[h3]Quality-of-Life-Update – September 2024[/h3]
You might be surprised by the new dates for our Magic Update. We estimated the release date months in advance. In such cases delays in development can always happen. However, you don’t need to wait until November for an update, because we are planning to release our next Quality-of-Life-Update in September 2024.

We continue to work hard on the new features for our upcoming updates and cannot wait for you to playtest them. Keep an eye out for Open Beta News.

Thank you for your patience and for following our journey so far. Stay tuned for updates and if you are at Gamescom or PAX West, don’t hesitate to visit our booth and have a chat with us!

As always, see you in Pagonia!

Dear Pioneers,

enjoy watching a pre-recorded session of our QA-Team playing Pioneers of Pagonia in our shared co-op multiplayer mode! Would you play Pioneers of Pagonia together with your friends?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2155180/Pioneers_of_Pagonia/

[h2]Dear Pioneers![/h2]

It's time to leave our desks, get out of the office and meet our fellow Pioneers in the real world. We are not only showcasing Pioneers of Pagonia at one but two major expos this year! Of course, we cannot miss Gamescom Cologne! Shortly after we continue our journey to PAX West in Seattle, US. Buckle up, because we have lots of cool new stuff in our travel luggage!

[h2]Gamescom 2024: 21 - 25 August[/h2]

We will attend Gamescom Cologne this year and are so excited to be a part of the Indie Arena Booth once again! Last year we had a blast showing Pioneers of Pagonia for the first time to our players (this was even before we had a demo, so waaaay back!) Oh, how things have changed since then.

Watch the full IAB announcement trailer here:
https://youtu.be/k1nKYm5WzPA?si=KcDeYh1sFfmScPX3

If you are at Gamescom, don't hesitate to visit our booth at IAB in Hall 10.2 Booth Booth F010g - E019. You'll find the booth map down below, we are at the lower right corner. Say hi to our dev team, play the latest version of Pioneers of Pagonia (which is not even in the Beta yet!) and grab some super cool goodies. This time we are well prepared: We've ordered some cool stickers (shimmering werewolves!) and brand new posters with the key art of our upcoming Magic Update! So our booth is definitely worth a visit.

IAB Booth Map. You'll find our booth at Number 34 in the lower right corner

This year we've teamed up with 9 other amazing indie games for the coziest stamp rally at Gamescom! Play 5 out of 10 games of your choice and receive a super cute sticker sheet! Play 6 or more games and receive an additional sticker! Have fun collecting them all.



[h2]PAX West 2024: 30 August - 2 September[/h2]
In March 2024 we were already at PAX East showcasing Pioneers of Pagonia there, and let us tell you, we had such a good time! Seeing so many people enjoying our city builder for the first time and loving it, was truly a great experience. We are motivated to do it all again at PAX West and meet all of our new Pioneers! We also take a lot of goodies with us. So if you live close by and plan to attend PAX West, please stop by our booth and say hello!



[h2]What's to come[/h2]
What we will showcase at Gamescom & PAX West shall remain a secret for now (we don't want to spoil the surprise!), but we can show you a little teaser. Grab your cursed coffee mug (if you know you know) and guess what lurks within the fog:



Stay tuned as we are going to announce more details about the magic update and its publication very soon. We cannot wait to meet you guys and talk about all the exciting new features we have planned for the future!

For those of you, we do not see at Gamescom & Pax West: See you in Pagonia!

Yours,
Envision Entertainment-Team