HexLands News

[h3]Hi guys![/h3]

Sorry for not posting earlier, but ~17 days ago 0.34.0 was released, but I was too lazy to post the patch notes.
The reason is that I immediately got a lot of feedback, and jumped into developing because I guess it's much more fun! ^^
But here are the changes, better late than never:

• Reaching higher than the required population increases the starting resources of your next island!
  • Now that highscore is no longer the goal of the game, it felt wrong that overachieving didn't give you anything.
  • So now there are 3 tiers, which upon reaching, each gives more and more extra percentage of resources on your next island!
  • This way if you are good at the game, you get rewards, but the rewards won't scale endlessly, so you won't feel like you have to optimize the hell out of the game. ^^
• You no longer automatically carry over 10% of your resources to your next island.
• Instead there is a new Trading Port building. Each time you build one, you'll increase the starting resources on your next island by a fixed, additive amount.
• Updated the image of Fishing Hut.
• Small balance changes and fixes.
• Lots of DevOps improvements.
• Updated the game's description accross the stores to indicate that the game is no longer highscore but a campaign oriented. 

That's it, I know it ain't much, but a good step towards the right direction. And due to this delay of publishing the patch notes, I'm happy to announce that v0.35.0 is soon out with tons of new cards and card mechanics! They are going to increase the depth of the game tremendously! ^^

Can't wait to show you all the new stuff, and as always, join my Discord server, just hit me up and I'll grant you instant access to the playtest! I'd love to hear you feedback!

Thanks for reading and have a nice week!
Tudvari a.k.a. Portgate Studios

[h3]Hi guys,[/h3]
[h3]Long time no see, the last update was 5 months ago... Sorry for the long wait, let me tell you what happened... ^^[/h3]

First, I "just" wanted to add a huge feature: choosing your next island! It wasn't just a quick feature, so it took some time. Thus as the weeks went by, unfortunately, I got out of the habit of releasing and iterating quickly. So when I finished the feature, seeing that I was already a bit late, instead of releasing, I thought: why not add another feature as a compensation? And everytime I finished something, I still had this mentality so I started developing the next feature. Well... and that's how 5 months quickly flew by! 😅

And with finally releasing this huge update, I'll let in the next wave of playtesters! Still, if you don't want to wait in the queue, and for a more open discussion, join my Discord server! :) Just hit me up and I'll grant you instant access! I'd love to hear you feedback!



Without further ado, here are the major changes:


[h2]Deckbuilding[/h2]

• Instead drawing cards from an "infinite deck", now you have a "regular" deck which in the beginning only contains the basic cards.
  
• Collect cards, adapt to your luck and build synergy.
  
• Each time your deck is out of cards, reshuffle it, select a new card and fill your hand to 5 cards!
  
• Added a 6th tutorial level to teach the deck mechanics.

[h2]Choosing your next destination[/h2]

• After completing an island, you can choose your next destination!
  
• Choose from 3 islands, all having random card rewards and affixes.
  
• Maybe you'll find an island with cool cards but the affixes make it really hard... Or maybe you find a perfect island with both awesome affixes and great rewards!

[h2]New resource: Gold[/h2]

• Build Gold Mines or sell resources to get some gold! (new cards)
  
• Once you acquire a card requiring gold, your town's level up grants you increasing amounts of gold.
  
• You can buy resources or spend your gold to use some other cards.

[h2]New cards[/h2]

• Fill water tiles with soil, turning it into land! (even if there's a fishing hut on it)
  
• Get some free supplies from the capital!
  
• Claim tiles for your settlements without building a thing!
  
• Plant forests! (even if the tile already has a building or some other resources)
  
• And some more! (also don't forget the cards mentioned in the other sections!)
  
• Feel free to suggest some card ideas! And keep in mind that some has placeholder art. :)

[h2]Better card drawing and starter hand[/h2]

• Drawing a card now lets you choose from 3 cards, but it costs more! Previously you had to frequently spam card selling and then card drawing. With this change it feels like it's no longer case. Also spending resources just to draw a bad card wasn't really good. This way most likely you'll be happy with at least one of them.
  
• Rather than starting with just a single Town Hall, you now begin with 5 cards. One of these is a Settler's
• Wagon, which essentially functions as a free Town Hall. This way you can see your initial cards, therefore you can make a better decision regarding your first settlement.

[h2]Other Changes:[/h2]

• Cards when selected are now attached to your cursor, instead of just being higher in your hand than the rest of the cards. While holding a card, the cursor is also highlighted with some visual effects.
  
• New loading screen! It's been 2 years, so it sure needed to be improved.
  
• Tile hovering is enhanced for the sake of better readibility: now highlighted hexes also rise from the ground!
  
• Card drawing algorithm improvements, less chance to be unlucky! :)
  
• If there aren't enough resources for something, the missing resources also flash on the resource panel. Also now only the missing amount is displayed in the error message.
  
• Existing tutorials got a more immersive look and they teach the mechanics better.
  
• Various other smaller fixes and polishes.

Once again, sorry for taking this long, I'll try to release the next feature a bit quicker! ^^ (Though a new WoW expansion has just come out, so who knooows... :| )

Feedbacks, bug reports are always welcome, good luck and have fun!

Cheers, Tibor a.k.a. Tudvari a.k.a. Portgate Studios

[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

[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! :)

[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! :)