The Curious Expedition (Now at Alpha 27 "Hard Mode") $

[getter77]

Alpha 18

There is now a basically endless amount of visual variety in the tribes that you encouter on your journeys. Also lots of new zero-sanity events, character traits and unlock conditions. And to keep track of all your progress we've also extended the hall of fame. Make sure to read the list of highlights in this update:

Procedural tribe generation
Each expedition will now feature their own procedurally generated native people, sharing a unique and different look each time.
The portraits of your native recruits are also randomly generated now.

Recruiting
Recruiting in villages requires good standing now
You get to chose between three units
You can inspect the new units before recruiting them
You can recruit units even when already having a full party

Treasures
Added lots of new treasures.
Shrines now give a big and a small treasure.
Small treasures might also be found in villages now and traded in.

Loyalty system
Characters now have internal loyalty rating which tracks how they feel about you
Your actions will influence their loyalty. If loyalty gets too low they might become angry
Promoting characters and certain events increase their loyalty

New content
Pyromaniac status
Sexist status
Deathcurse status
Renounced status
Promised status
Red berries item
Fresh air fanatic perk
Lots of new events
Lots of new and challenging explorer unlock conditions

Travel Reports
Now also works in steam version
Allows you to share an automatically generated travel summary of your expedition campaign
Most sicknesses are now automatically healed when returning to London
Added a item section to the Hall of Fame, showing all items found so far in the game

Bugfixes
Fixed inventory for village was not fully stocked in certain event flows
Ammo and spears are considered weapons now
Removed duplicate village resting action
Fixed tutorial submitting highscore entries
Removed easel from item lists since it has no purpose currently
Fixed crash in certain browser vendor/version configurations
Mushroom bonus for shaman did not work properly
Fixed character appearing on top left corner instead of combat area
Survivor quest reward was handed out even when quest failed

[getter77]

Alpha 19

    New locations
        There are now portals which temporarily teleport you into mysterious parallel worlds
        A new stone temple allows to upgrade character units with unique special capabilities
        There are multiple new variations of the stone circle
    The world map now shows a preview of the most important locations to be found in that region
    When overburden you are still allowed to move with increased sanity costs
    After finishing the final expedition you are rewarded with a screen summarizing the life story of all the trek members after finishing their exploration career
    Improved character placement on event images
    Events
        Nature rest and no sanity events share the same pool of events now resulting in more variety
        Added lots of new events
    Ailments
        Infection reduces health
        Added new status bipolar
        Death curse might now be a random outcome of raiding tombs
    Items
        Added icon for mini puppets item
        Added new treasure item
    Harbor
        You may now choose between multiple recruits in the harbor depending on your current fame score
        Quest rewards are now given in funds
    Bugfixes
        Fixed golden pyramid sub fixtures not always spawned
        Fixed person traits for starting characters did not work

[getter77]

Alpha 20

Halloween is coming! We've finally added a character that we've been looking forward to for quite some time. And time it was. Have fun leading expeditions into the unknown being lead by the masterfull describer of the unknown himself. We've also added lots of other new contents and events.

Here are some highlights..

New Explorer: H.P. Lovecraft
Lovecraft is unlocked by default for this version.
Has necronomicon as starting equipment
His perk "Cosmic Indefferentism" gives him custom events when using the necronomicon
Has reduced maximum sanity

New Location: Altar
You can sacrifice items on the altar
We don't want to spoil exactly what this influences in the game

Content
Added new mummy enemy/event
Added giant spider enemy/event
Added new tome page for waterfall creation
Added new tome page healing springs creation
Added some new night camp event
Added new loot item: spider leg
Added new item: pumpkin lantern

Tuning
Reduced gain for British soldier from perk
Weapon dice are now associated with different dice colors
Actions in warp worlds don't result in standing changes anymore
Animal trophies can be sold for funds or given away for fame again, although at a lower value than before

Etc
Updated abomination/canibal status description to better reflect what they do
Added missing status icons

Bugfixes
Fixed entering golden pyramids with moonstones sometimes didn't work
Unlocked destinations should be shown in gold color again
Animals don't generate post-game narration anymore
Sprite crate glitch on water buffalos
Wrong background image when recruiting characters in river villages
Stone circle behaving weird with superstitious characters
Fixed world creation tome

[getter77]

Alpha 21

After our Halloween special we took some time to work on smaller improvements all over the place.

Gameplay
It is now possible to rest in villages even without having a translator or the polyglot perk. However, the basic resting will restore only 30 sanity and cost 2 standing points
The Polyglot perk will remove the standing costs from resting in villages and add a small bonus to sanity when resting in villages (+20)
Added the option to visit a pack saddle artisan at the harbor. Here you can increase the capacity of your pack animals by up to three additional crates. However, this will cost you a significant amount of funds
When being visited by natives in rest events you will be able to do both, trade and recruit. Also, inviting them to the camp does not require a translator or polyglot perk anymore
Improved handling of mission storage. You will now be able to access the mission storage even after killing the missionary or if the mission was taken over by cultists
New location: The shipwreck. Explore it to find valuable equipment
 
Items
Added new item: The native trinket. This can be gifted to a unit to improve loyalty
Dynamite is now usable in combat

Units
A translator will remove the standing costs from resting in villages. Also, the gained sanity when resting in a village will be increased greatly by the level of the translator
Added more visual variations to lizard people
Improved the dice of all lizard people
Added lizard shaman
Improved the dice of abominations and added a special tentacle attack

Perks
Improved effectiveness of native warrior stealth perk
The Bullet Hoarder perk will now generate "marked" bullets instead of normal ones. Marked bullets are weightless and will be obtained up to a maximum amount of 5

Portals
Added new, beneficial world variations when entering a portal
In addition to the automatic return to the normal world when entering a portal, another portal will appear at your starting position in the teleported world. Enter this portal to manually return to the normal world
It is no longer possible to balloon out of teleported worlds

Content
Added many new chat lines to specific events
Added new, unique sound effects to many attacks
Replaced jungle placeholder background with final art

Bugfixes
Fixed issue where entering a village would result in leaving it immediately without being able to access the village options

[getter77]

Alpha 22

Ship
Instead of spawning in the middle of nowhere, each expedition now starts with a ship arrival sequence that stops at the shore line.
You can accelerate the sequence by clicking or pressing space
You can also use the ship as means to escape from a running expedition
You can access the ship storage at any time

Content
Added new loot type: jewels
New events, new chat lines, new text variations, new epilogue texts
New title box for the loading screen

Tuning
Reduced value of animal teeth
Tweaked chasm shrine entry text to be more memorable and fitting to what kind of disaster it triggers.
Final art quality for various images
Cenote location
Shallow river location
Cave entrance
Some cave interiors (not all done yet)
Blessing temple interior
Hill location
NPC info box now also shows capacity for recruits

Bugfixes
Fixed endless loading (hopefully)
Shaman cleanse was applied to all characters instead of just one
Fixed music and sound effects playing with the correct volume setting
Harbor shop can't be accessed multiple times anymore
Fixed Konrad quest not cleaning up correctly
Play explorer jingle at start of expedition

Alpha 22.1

Bugfixes
Fixed endless world gen loop
Fixed pointless attack button for mosquitoes and desert storms
Fixed celebration audience speaking gibberish
Fixed treasure map location correctly restored from save game
Fixed missing title for Konrad NPC
Improved region score calculation by tracking it per location

[getter77]

Alpha 24

Finally! With a delay of one week (sorry again) we have launched our latest update. We've been busy with creating an improved, more detailed and failsafe tutorial. However, we've not managed to finish it completely, there are some more steps we'd like to add to towards the next update. Other than that we've improved several aspects, including more special attacks and a general improvement of the combat tuning. Oh, and there are pendulums in the game now which are new special items that will help you to find specific locations, even 'hidden' ones more easily..

We were not able to finish our update video in time, but we hope to have it online by tomorrow - once we have it it's going to be added to this news.

As usual, thanks a lot for your support and have fun with our latest version!

Detailed Changelog:
Added a new tutorial
Completely reworked the old tutorial
The new tutorial now is more fail-safe and guided
The tutorial now includes a basic combat description
We'll extend the tutorial further in the next update
Harbor improvements
You can re-enter the harbor shop now
Fame/funds are shown at all times in harbor
Failed quests give negative fame

UI updates
The maximum/current party count is shown when recruiting units
The party side bar is hidden during events now, allowing to see more of the event image
You can inspect character boxes in events directly now
Trimmed character boxes size and don't show description text anymore
New events
New resting events
New mysterious dowsing item
New totem stick item
New sickness
New secret locations

World
Added new preview images to the world map
Tuned neigbhors of locations to make patterns more recognizable
Tuned biomes

Combat
Enemies now have different length for how long they seek the player
Added small delay between aggroing enemy and their first movement
Added new buff effects to various attacks
Retuned enemy dice with aim to nerf head butt attack a bit

Misc
Dice are not auto-rolled again when they were pinned before
Doing the initial missionary quest now also gives +2 standing
Automatically stop traveling when traveling into deadly terrain

Bug fixes
Fixed Mac performance issues
Fixed stuck when dismissing units during travel
Fixed aborting resting before spending one day
Fixed empty diary with infected units
Fixed crash when restoring save game
Fixed collection items were not saved properly when stored in ship
Fixed fire works item not working correctly
Fixed some typos

New final swamp and sulfur swamp art backgrounds
Collection items
Painter now creates a single stack of paintings
Butterflies are now also collected in item
Anthropological studies now show the portrait of a tribe member
Collection item's worth depends on the collected items
Fame/Fund tuning remained the same as before
Combat
Auto advance if all enemies are dead
New health bar graphics
Increased health of all player characters
Show full character info box when hovering over player character
Dice that were pinned, are auto rolled when unpinned
New particles
Added new stun effect to headbutt attack (more special effects to come)
Loyalty
Removed chance for internal loyalty boost when promoting characters
Added new perk 'careerist' which always add loyalty boost when promoting

Events
New events for Tim/Luis
Added new nature resting events
New secret alternative game ending
Added wiki button to main menu
Cleaned up font usage in the game, reducing visual clutter (ongoing)
Added new blessing "leather skin"

Bugfixes
Bongos should not stack
Removed binoculars from Earhart starting equipment
Fixed NaN output when doing events in warp worlds
Clear chat queue when entering combat
Fixed enemy head shown in combat instead of body

[getter77]

Alpha 27 and such~

Steam Trading Cards!
Hard Mode
Zero starting funds
Zero starting fame
Return to your ship after finding the golden pyramid. If your ship is destroyed there is nothing you can do but use the balloon, so be careful!
Unlock platinum frames for beating hard mode
Improved scrolling with cursor keys
Performance improvements
Butterfly perk now yields more sanity
Added more epilogue entries
Bugfixes
Not successfully completing the Konrad quest will no longer skip all further events in the harbor
Large enemies now have a proper portrait in their infobox

Alpha 27.1

Fixed travel reports.
Fixed being stuck in ranking screen on certain occasions.

Easy Mode
Increased starting funds
Increased loot in many occasions
No standing loss when killing animals or blowing up mountains
Starting compass accuracy is always 100%
More places to rest and regain sanity across all landscapes
No seal or moonstone pyramids - just find the pyramid and you're golden (heh) on all expeditions
Less enemies will appear in combat
Mummies will never attack you when you are carrying them in your inventory
No spider encounters when exploring caves in darkness
No void will be triggered from looting a shrine
Resting in missions is cheaper
No portals or altars will be spawned
General
Improved feedback when using the Necronomicon
H.P. Lovecraft now needs to be unlocked
World generation tuning improvements
Tome pages now are also weightless items
Added a dice check when trying to steal an idol from a village
Added a new treasure item: The Golden Slokra (Treasure Edition Item)
Improved inventory - when inventory slots exceed a certain amount, multiple rows will be displayed. Added a proper icon for discarding objects. Added a frame around the inventory slots.
Reduced price of native trinket
Lower value treasure items will now stack up to 10 times
Bugfixes
Blue Mushrooms and weather baloons are now improving your range of vision upon usage again
Fixed multiple music tracks playing at the same time
Fixed promotion stars not placed properly
Fixed missing particles in combat
Fixed offset zone icon positions
Fixed drawing of shield icon in combat
Improved position of health bars
Fixed bongos did not reset enemy-attention counter always
Improved info box for statuses that change travel base cost

Dice actions
Some diary actions now depend on dice rolls!
These actions will portray the required dice face required on the action button. All dice of your party are rolled excactly once.
If you get all required faces a positive outcome is triggered. If not a negative outcome is triggered.
This makes its easier for you to understand what the odds are for certain actions to succeed depending on your trek setup.
We've updated various old events to use this new mechanic. More events will be added in the coming updates.
Resolutions
So far the game had two resolution modes. Stretched and native. If you played on higher resolutions (i.e. 1080p) both of these modes had disadvantages: Stretched mode made the pixel art appear blurry, while native mode was hard coded to a 1:2 pixel ratio, making the HUD elements and event images appear relatively small to your display size.
The new version now supports 4 modes and allows to set custom pixel ratios, resulting in pixel perfect art, big event images, proper HUD element sizes and sharp text.
When you play on 1080p the game has literaly never looked as good as it does with this new version. Hundreds of changes where necessary to make this work, so please excuse any hickups that might still have made it through our testing. Let us know if you're missing any more options.
Also the size of the info box now adapts properly to the resolution.
Persistence
The player data and save game data is now stored inside a TheCuriousExpedition folder inside your user data folder. In case you want to move your profile to another computer simply copy that folder. Also this should make it easier to create backups of your data.
Steam Cloud support for savegames and player data will also be enabled within the next couple of days.
Phobias
When ignoring phobias of party members, they will reduce their individual loyalty instead of reducing the overall party sanity. This should make phobias more readable and relevant.
We added a new phobia Dendrophobia, which is the fear of trees.
New content
New item: voodoo dolls curse your rivals
New item: tin cans are nutrious, but pretty bland in flavor
New quest: a gentleman may ask you to escort a native to London
New blessing: your trek member might grow some animal claws
New perk: ruffian, adds a attack die
New perk: protector, adds a defense die
New perk: adept, adds a support die
Tuning
Buffed native enemies, they have spears now!
If overburden, mounted animals don't yield extra dice. This counters the exploit of mounting the animals while overburden and then unmounting them after combat.
Rivals don't all start at the same time, spacing them out more on the race track bar
Misc
There is a screen prompt warning you about stashes that were destroyed in the world containing items of yours
Reworked the gentleman scene at the start of a new game
Bug fixes
Fixed musician quest could not be completed correctly in some situations
Certain disasters like voids were spreading way to fast and have been reduced to their original growth speed.
Fixed some overlong description texts in world map screen
Fixed lots of typos
Fixed overburden status was not properly updated after putting items into stash
Fixed character unlocks were not checked when using hot air balloon during final expedition
Fixed sometimes unreachable villages were spawned in tutorial
Fixed additional trek members not shown in side bar when trek was already at regular maximum size