It's been an intense development cycle! This update would have been out 2 weeks ago, but right now we are planning to move out from our flat, have some personal issues on top, so I didn't really have a lot of time to work on the game. Anyway, much sought new features are here, new content, fixes, balances and polish! :) Since the last update I managed to complete 72 user reports which I'm really thankful for. Keep them coming because they are what really makes the game better! :)

Oh, and as always: join my Discord server[discord.com] to share your thoughts and receive instant access to the playtest! ;)

Difficulty at later islands wasn't that diffierent from the one at earlier ones', so in the second half of the world map/biome, islands now have two negative modifiers instead of just one, and population requirement is also a bit increased there. Also, content has been increasing for years, while the length of the demo hasn't, so I added a few extra islands to the first biome. There is also a new type of islands in the game, with higher risk but better rewards:

One island before the shops and 2 islands after them are now Sacred Islands. These are harder levels with 1 extra negative modifier, but in return one of their treasure chest contains precious relics! And with that, let's talk about...

The long-awaited relics feature is here! This adds a whole new layer of progression and strategy. these are special effects that persist throughout your run. These relics appear in the same container as negative modifiers, but they have a different visual theme and they have a golden glow around them instead of a red one.

RIght now there are 6 relics, I won't spoil all of them, but for example the Glove of Alard the Meek makes card drawing cheaper, but your hand will be smaller, while the Token of the Masons makes your resource requests give stone instead of wood and food. The Chalice of the Baptist gives you a big sum of coins, but decreases your max reputation, while e.g. the Hammer of Martel upgrades 5 random cards to legendary cards, but add Exhaust to them... and I guess the other 2 are yours to find out! :) More relics are coming, so stay tuned! They can be obtained on Sacred Islands, and from the shop. Talking about shop...

The shop instead of offering upgrade and removal services, now you can buy relics! This makes your decision at the shop much more interesting and meaningful. The Shop UI altogether has also received improvements with better shadows and more polished animations.

When beginning a new game, you can now select your starter deck! Besides the existing default deck, now once you reach the end of the demo, there is a water/coastline themed deck. It has more water oriented card set and a unique starter relic: it lets you build settlements only on coastal tiles, but now all claimed water tiles grants gold. And of course more starting deck to come!

The system is smarter now: conflicting quests are no longer generated (no more "don't increase population" while simultaneously asking for level 3 towns). Quest difficulty slowly ramps up, preventing staying infinitely on an island, and also balanced the ones which felt disproportional reward-wise. Quest descriptions are now a bit more flavorful, and demand notifications now also include the objective of the new demand. New "fail-on-action" quests have been added for gold and stone usage and in general, stone usage quests no longer appear before stone is unlocked. Implemented some extra, special cases where it felt like "this should progress the quest", even if it doesn't out of the box. E.g. while previously manor building quests just counted the usage of Manor cards, now Royal Degree's "House to Manor upgrade" also progresses it! Right clicking on a quest which rewards a card now open the said card in the card inspector dialog.

Cards can now have Charges, which is similar to Exhaust but instead of being exhausted on first use, these cards can be used e.g. twice or thrice per island. This feature is really handy for balancing a lot of existing and future cards which were/would be really strong if they could be used indefinitely. I'm looking at you Landfill, Demolish and Festival! ^^ (Thanks again guys for the playtest!) This also makes cards whose usefulness on a single island is limited less annoying. E.g. stone- and goldmines were just clutter in your deck once you used up all your stone or gold on the island. Not anymore! The mines now have charges, thus they are mostly gone from your deck by the time you use up all the corresponding resources from the island.

The world map generation now has a stricter, grid-like ruleset, which makes it less random and chaotic. At first I thought this is a bad idea, but this way world maps are consistent and easier to understand, and it also fixes the issues of unlucky seeds which have e.g. a much worse chance at getting a good score. Now all players visit the same number of islands!

Each column in world map now receives a "functionality" and all nodes in that column are from that corresponding group. E.g. card upgrade, card removal and treasure islands are in the utility group. Islands and sacred islands are in the island group, and shops... well they are in the shop group, and so on. The order of these functionalities are now kind of fixed, and only the number and type of the nodes in it are random. E.g. the second group/column of nodes are always utility nodes, then comes a group of islands, then another ... the Xth and Yth columns are always shops, etc. (Yes, there are now two shops in each map, the second one is before the "boss", letting you spend all your coins before the big challenge. Even if it's not yet implemented. ^^ )

Thus players now always face the same amount of islands and utility nodes regardless of route chosen, making the experience more fair while still allowing for strategic variations.

New tooltips added, and now they all smoothly fade out and in, while previously hovering between nearby tooltipped objects would cause them to snap.

Finished the model rework with the new gold mine and lumbercamp models, while also updated the logos in the game. However, the main menu one needs some polish, I'm just waiting for the artist. ^^ Also, the tutorial character is being reworked as well!

Added flying resource icons that appear when you gain some resources, and fly to their destination in the resource storage panel. Same goes for population! :)

There are tons of smaller improvements which I already forgot about, but here's a few which I really like:

• Improved outlined for foliage, e.g. forests.

• Royal Decree displays the population of the manor it results in, and now it's also upgradeable.

• The card inspector dialog now displays cards that are granted by the card on usage.

• Resource per-turn providers now generate their first turn's resources immediately when placed, resulting in a better resource flow and pacing. (Great idea guys, thanks!)

• The special move which makes cards go crazy is now finally fixed!

• ... and many more!

As always, a huge thanks for your continued support and feedback! You're helping me shape this game into something much better than I would have if I were alone. If you'd like to share your thoughts on these changes or report any issues, join my Discord server[discord.com]! (and of course I'll grant you instant access to the playtest! ;) )

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the update! :)
Tibor a.k.a. Tudvari a.k.a. Portgate Studios

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!

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!

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! :)

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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[discord.com] 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