HexLands News

The Open Alpha Playtest is here, sign up today!

[h3]Hey guys,[/h3]
[h3]After months of closed and semi-open playtesting, finally the gates of Steam Playtesting are open! [/h3]

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.😄

[h3]So hop in, I would love to see you in the playtesting![/h3]

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.

[h3]But you can still sign up for playtesting and I'll let you in as soon as I can! :)[/h3]
[h3]Click here to sign up![/h3]

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

Open alpha! New card system, main menu, saving, and more!

[h3]Hi guys,[/h3]

I didn't want to finish this year without having something more than a closed alpha... so a few days ago I uploaded the alpha of the game to a kind of public platform but I don't want to directly share it here yet because there are still some issues... so I'm still a bit scared of bigger influx players. ^^

So if you’d like try the alpha of HexLands, join the Discord server and look for the HexLands channels! :) But don't worry, in a month or so I'll be confident enough to put the link directly on the Steam page. ;)

There are lots of smaller changes, fixes, balancing, thanks to all you wonderful people on Discord, trying my game, giving feedback, testing, etc! I can't tell you how much I appreciate your work. Thanks again from the bottom of my heart.
But there is still plenty of space in the credits... so earn your place now! ^^ Just play the game, find bugs, suggest ideas, so basically give me any kind of feedback. Can't wait to hear what you think, thanks in advance!

Now let's begin: a big change since my last update is around the card system!

Now it's really flexible, your hands could hold any number of cards! Currently the limit is 10, but we will see how is the feedback. And I guess it also looks much better! :D

As you can see the cards have different colors. This was implemented to have a clearer view on your cards. This way it's much easier to see on first glance what card can be placed where. Previously this was indicated just with a little banner/ribbon in the top right corner. What do you think?

Up until now some cards' description were pretty ugly and/or dense, so 2 information also have been moved: population and number of tiles to be claimed. They are now in the top left and right corners if the card is suitable, and they also follow the colour schema of the particular card. And as some of you may have seen it, the resource costs' design was also reworked!

An lastly, here's the new main menu, the third version in fact, and I like this one the best so far. It also includes a feedback button, some social buttons for community buildings and alsooo...

... A CONTINUE button! After lots of work, finally you can continue a game if you had to quit for some reason or another.

So once again, sorry for taking so long, but the closed alpha went so well that I just couldn't get a hold on myself implementing all the feedback and ideas! :) Luckily I still got plenty on my list but I can't wait to see it becoming longer.

Thanks guys for all the help, really appreciate it, have a nice holiday and a happy new year! :)

A little sneak peek about some of the new mechanics! :)

[h3]Hi guys![/h3]

Check out the bottom right corner. What do you think they are for? :)

I'm planning to send out a few closed alpha builds next week. If the feedback is good, here comes the open alpha!

So if you’d like try HexLands, join my Discord server or my subreddit.

And if you prefer development videos, feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Sorry for the radio silence and not uploading any devlogs lately. I've been working on the game, but a lot of stuff came up, and I didn't have time to post about the progress.

Hopefully, better times will come around.

Have a nice weekend, everybody! :)

Lumbercamps were too OP! So here's my fix! :)

Hi guys,

This time I don't really have time to make a video about the latest change, so I thought I could talk about it the old fashioned way! :D

Lumbercamps were OP. And this not so small issue (because lumber is a pretty basic thus important resource) made me revamp the whole building "ecosystem".

I created a new, special resource: "Workers"!

The problem was that

A, You could only build lumbercamps on Forest tiles.
B, A lumbercamp cost 75 wood… and gave you 250 wood.

This meant that this building was a no brainer… in a bad sense.
It turns some wood into more wood… while you can only build them on forests… which are only suitable for lumbercamps! You don’t have to make any real decision, but you must do it to get lumber. It was so boring, it felt like a chore. A few quick and easy solutions came up:

Like changing the building cost to something other than wood.

Then it would at least feel like a "trade". But I always found it absurd in games that you can BUILD without WOOD! :D

Another solution would have been to create a similarly tiered (so early game building), which could be placed on forests.

So the player has to decide between this new building and a lumbercamp. Sadly I could come up only with a hunters’/foragers’ hut. Basically a food source alternative to farms, but unlike the farms, these are buildable only on forests, and not on plains.
But the problem with this idea is that if I can only get wood from forests, while you can get food ALSO from plains, who would waste precious forests on food?
So I gave up on this direction, but feel free to suggest buildings, because I’d love to have more “forest buildings”!

And now here's the path I took:

Basically if you want to build a production or service building, you must allocate people from your population!
It was still relatively quick to implement, because in the end, it's just a new resource:
Everytime your population increases, you also get the same amount of “Workers”.
So now when you have a forest tile and a lumbercamp card, think before building it. Because maybe next turn you won’t be able to afford a farm, a mine, or a brewery.

What do you think? This is just a quick and experimental solution, issues could surface any day, so I can’t wait to see or hear your feedback! :)

Also I’m getting closer and closer to the next testing phase, so if you’d like try HexLands, join my Discord server or my subreddit. And if you prefer development videos, feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel, a new video is coming soon! :)

Anyway, thanks for reading guys, cheers! :)

Upcoming city-builder HexLands sounds like a relaxing time

HexLands from Portgate Studios has been announced with a new Steam page live, taking inspiration from the likes of Islanders, Dorf Romantik and Sid Meier's Civilization.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/upcoming-city-builder-hexlands-sounds-like-a-relaxing-time