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

[getter77]

http://www.curious-expedition.com/  $12.00 for Web Browsers across major platforms, non-browser versions still to come.

The roguelike expedition simulation set in the 19th century

Explore
procedurally generated worlds with diverse landscapes and precarious challenges for the ambitious explorer.

Manage
your trek and keep everyone alive. Balance the needed supplies with the desire to carry that precious treasure.

Survive
and defend your trek against wild animals, grotesque creatures, giant crabs and even dinosaurs.

The price for the basic game is 12$ US. There are several special editions available.

Our planned final release of the finished game is July 2015. As usual with game development, this date may shift. We would love to bring a version of the game to touch devices, but this highly depends on the success of the game. The touch version would most likely have to be bought separately.

Processor: 2 GHz

RAM: 1 GB

No video card required

Currently supported browsers are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. These are independent from your operating system, so as long as you use one of these browsers you can play the game under Windows, Linux or Mac.

We can’t guarantee a Steam version at this point, since this in the hands of Valve and the community, but we aim at getting a release on Steam in 2015. If we release on Steam you’ll get a free key if you bought The Curious Expedition during our alpha-access sale.



The game is in an early state, but it is fully playable and already a lot of fun. We’ve been running a closed test for more than 3 months now, and the response from our testers has been very positive. The worlds you’ll be able to explore are created from different landscape types which are mixed together to create various settings. The currently implemented landscapes are grasslands, jungles, swamps, deserts, mountain regions, drylands and fantastic prehistoric regions with sulfur lakes and giant mushroom forests.

To put it in numbers, we think that the game is roughly 50% finished. There is still room to add content such as more locations, items or characters, which we’ll be doing throughout development. Some aspects such as feedback elements and the inventory or trading interface are still in a rough but functional state. Most of the features have been implemented in at least a basic form. There are very few aspects which have not been implemented at all yet.

Probably the biggest missing feature is a dedicated skill-check mechanic. This is most obvious in the current placeholder for the combat gameplay. However, we don’t see combat as a major aspect of our game, so we won’t be adding a mechanic that is solely dedicated to it. Instead we plan to implement something that can be used for combat, but also for other situations such as diplomatic encounters with natives or analyzing ancient inscriptions.

Another big aspect which is only partially implemented yet is the lifetime-career which connects the individual expeditions to a combined campaign. While you can already play a lifetime-career, our plan is to include more features and a more dedicated graphical representation for this aspect of the game. Within a lifetime-career you will be able to carry over things like leveled characters or equipment from one expedition to the other. However, beginning a new lifetime-career means a clean cut in terms of advantages. You unlock new player options though. Besides this, there are various other, small aspects we want to experiment with. Some examples are travelling by rafts, procedural river generation, advanced special powers or taxonomy.

Yes, we will provide a DRM-free offline version, which will be made available in the first quarter of 2015. Even though the first release of The Curious Expedition will run in your web browser, it is not and will never be a free to play game with hidden additional costs. You pay for the game once and will be able to play it, just as in the good old times. If there will be additional payments, it will be through the sale of additional content packs like different themed world packs or explorer types.



First and foremost we want The Curious Expedition out in the open and to have it played by more people. As our player base will increase, we’ll have access to more player feedback, which in turn will help us to tune and balance the many procedural aspects of the game. During our closed playtest we have established an update interval of 2 weeks, which allows us to provide you with impactful (and tested) updates. When playing the browser version you’ll automatically have the most recent version, without a need to manually download and update the game. We’ll provide a detailed overview of the latest changes through a changelog (probably from within the game). There will also be a dedicated forum (or subreddit) for the purpose of voicing ideas and feedback. You can also expect twitch streams.

Another big reason for our alpha-access is that we feel our game fits perfectly to this approach. The game can be replayed over and over. We don’t have a fixed story line, so there is no narrative to be spoiled by having early access. Going from version to version will increase the replayability and deepness more and more.

Our goal for an average full playthrough length is approx. 2 - 3 hours, with every expedition taking no more than 10-30 minutes. We don’t want the game to take forever to finish. Instead, we’ll provide enough content and variety to make replaying an interesting and long-term option. Also, as with traditional roguelikes, you'll die often before ever reaching the end of the game. With each playthrough you’ll unlock new characters and options, and learn to play the game more efficiently. We really like how FTL handled this aspect and are striving for a similar quality.
We hope that we won’t need a rigid difficulty setting but provide or more flexible, self-determined approach. You’ll be awarded with fame for every successfully completed expedition. This fame can be spent on equipment to have better prepared expeditions in the future. However, at the end of your lifetime-career the accumulated amount of fame determines your ranking in the hall of fame. So it’s your choice to spend the fame on equipment to make it easier for you or try to get along with minimal costs if you want to score high in the hall of famous explorers.

Alpha 2 log:

Ada explores the desert! We’re excited to bring our first update to you! Thank you so much for all the feedback to our Alpha 1. A special thanks goes to all the people posting on our forums and pointing out typos and improvements. We’ve made over 230 changes since the last update, so it’s impossible to list them all, but here are some of our favorites..

Content

Added a brand-new desert terrain type
Includes the camel, your friendly but stoic pack animal
New desert villages
New desert treasure location - Grave
Added Ada Lovelace. Famous mathematician and probably the first programmer in the world. We had to stretch our definition of late 19th century a little bit for her, but we had to have her in the game. For this alpha we’re unlocking her by default.
There is a new resting spot for the grasslands: the stone overhang.
Event images are now made up by combining territory, tile and local position information resulting in much bigger variety. In general many of the used images are still placeholders. To show you the level of quality that we are aiming for, we’ve updated the waterfall image to final quality. We’ll continue to move images to final quality from alpha to alpha.
Changed behavior of horn flute - instead of removing it now distracts enemies in a greater radius.
Added a new camp item - allowing you to rest anywhere.

Gameplay

Removed XP. To level up (promote) your units you will have spend region points. Region points are collected by discovering enough locations in a region until it is conquered. There are now also mini bars showing the degree of exploration for every region in the world. This is still not the final UI/gameplay design and we’re iterating on how to represent scientific work in the game. For now we also have disabled the science instruments. They should be back for Alpha 3 or 4, while we try some new ideas.
Events may now involve previously lost team members. “They never come back.”.. or do they?
Indigenous members of your trek might not want to follow you back into the “civilized” world and decide to stay in their lands instead, depending on how you played.
Added a new anthropolgy perk which allows to gain fame by studying the native tribes.
Changed how the bartering (now called “haggle”) skill of the Parsi trader works. Instead of giving a standard bonus you can now select a haggle item from the inventory for a one-time discount when trading.
Locations will no longer be marked with a “?” if there is nothing to do.
Tuned move costs for various field types.
Fire will now destroy villages - so be careful. We also limited how much fire can spread across the land.
Inactive zones now spawn ZZZ particles to make them easier recognizable.
Clicking with CTRL in barter dialogue moves only one item.

Misc

Added confirmation dialogue when closing the game tab while playing.
Mac: Improved mouse handling and mouse scrolling.
Zooming in/out can be triggered via key shortcuts +/-.
We now also support female random names.
Fame can’t become negative anymore.

Bug fixing

Fixed various typos and improved texts.
Fixed being able to access unavailable actions via keyboard.
Improved save game handling.
The golden pyramid tiles were not always placed correctly, causing the pyramide to just be one tile big sometimes.
The capacity of animals was not correctly calculated on level-up resulting in more capacity than we aimed for.

Yet another one aiming big by all indications!   

[getter77]

Alpha 3

Reports from the port! A happy new year to all of you. After the holidays we are back with a new update. As usual, a special thanks goes to all the people posting on our forums and pointing out typos and improvements.

Characters
Every explorer now has their own pre-determined party/equipment setup.
A preview of which characters belong to which explorer is shown in the selection screen.
Explorers that you have beaten the game with are highlighted in the selection screen too.

Harbor
There is now a special harbor location in-between expeditions. Random encounters and expedition preparation happens here.
The character refilling and shop interaction happens through this harbor now and you will not get offered all items anymore, but only a random sub set every time. The blackmarket perk has been changed to grant you a bigger selection of these random items. Also you may not freely chose from any unit type anymore, but instead get random requests by chracters to join your trek.

Regions
When moving your mouse over a region, you get a preview about which locations can be found in that region.
Once you’ve found every location in the region, it is considered unlocked.
Unlocked regions are shown with a green bar in the region overview.
As before unlocked regions give you region points which can be used to level up your characters.
When zooming out using the mouse wheel or pressing minus (-) on the keyboard you can see all region infos at once.
New ambient soundscapes for all worlds

Sprawl System
Extended the fire system to handle different types of crazy spreading madness. We added desert storms and all-consuming chasms.
Fire will now also restrict your viewing distance and kill trapped animals.

Items
Some items will be now automatically removed after every expedition. See the item info box to see if this is the case for a specific item.
The camp item is created at the party position
When selling your items, you will get less value than their original buy value.

Enemy behavior
Previously the size of the enemy zones represented their attack range, while their aggro range was a hidden internal value. We changed it so that the attack range is always 1 and the zone border now represents the aggro range.
In general the aggro range has been reduced. Occurances of zones randomly jumping into your path are less frequent now. This also allowed us to add more zones in general to the worlds.

UI
The diary is now centered vertically, making better use of high screen resolutions.
We added cute animated clouds to the game.
There is now a ‘return’ button in the character selection screen.
Reworked the expedition selection screen a bit. This screen will probably be heavily extended in the future, allowing you to explicitly send your ship to new destinations.

Travel Reports
Added journey pages which are automatically generated during gameplay and that summarize your entire game. These pages can be shared freely on the web, even with people that don’t own the game. Feel free to share these on social networks (we’ll add a dedicated button for soon).

Various Bugfixes
Combats resulted in mostly two persons injured even though you had soldiers in your trek.
Fame was not calculated correctly when players traded in their own goods when equiping for the new expedition.
Fixed graphical glitches when opening/closing the diary.
Biome points don’t contribute to fame anymore, thereby also fixing the double-counting that occured when they were not spent.
Haggle item could accidentely end up in player inventory.
Character info box sometimes did not close.

[getter77]

Alpha 4

Alpha 4 is online NOW. We've been very busy working on one of the last big missing features: Combat! With this whole new dice-game mechanic, encounters and your trek units play a completely different role in the game.

Detailed changelog:

Dice Game
Use ammo to add new dice
All units have their own customized dice
Our goal is to make combat more transparent
Your trek survives as long as one member remain conscious
All unconcsious members gain injuries after the fight
Fighting animals grants a small standing bonus
This is just the first iteration. More dice combos and events will follow
All animal loot objects (except raw meat) will now give fame when returning them home after an expedition
Added new units: The animal handler and hunting dog
Units with a standing bonus (natives & translator) will now grant that standing bonus at the beginning of each expedition
Unified unit capacity - normal humanoids now all have 1 capacity
Added new enemy types: Crocodile, Panther, Giant Bird & Giant Crab

Made support characters more specialized
Animals can't be promoted anymore. Instead use the new character class animal handler to upgrade the capacity of your animals.
Scouts are necessary to get the region info panel.
Translators are necessary to rest in villages.
Missionaries allow to sleep for free in missions.
All other unit perks have their effects improved.

New specialist perks
Multi-Talented: Allow to select from 4 perks instead of 3 when finishing expeditions
Charismatic: Choose from up to two new characters between expeditions, instead of one
Added back the old inactivation system for zones, allowing you to get some head start when fleeing from a territory witout being caught up again immediately.
Resting in nature takes a flexible amount of turns and will automatically continue until you have regained full sanity. You may stop resting at any point before that.
You can now store items in a stash at portable camp sites
Brought Stone Circle event image to final art quality
Pressing ESC opens/closes the settings
Defeating wild animals will now grant a small standing bonus
Exploring the golden pyramid now will show an image of the pyramid
Pack animals now have visual variations
We added the first batch for player names to the credits

Bugfixes
Ida Lovelace abacus item was broken
Fixed random fire spawning
Various spelling fixes

[getter77]

Alpha 5

Another update, this time we have been focusing on adding more content through additional perks or random events. Also, and most notably, we have added a celebration screen for explorers returning from their successful expedition!

Celebration Screen
Depending on how much fame you gathered a differently sized crowd will await you.
This screen replaces the old choose-your-perk selection.
Lots of new events
Added new village night events.
Added new nature resting night events.
Added new harbor events.
Added non-hostile elephant zones, which can be attacked for ivory.
Added a new look-out tower location/event.
Reworked the slaver location/event

Villages
Villages will now become angry once your standing drops to zero. Angry villages will spawn groups of natives that are hostile towards you.
Villagers will now attack you if you deny to pay a tribute after you've been caught looting a shrine or statue.
Trading in native villages will increase your standing by 1 (once per village)

General Gameplay
Streamlined harbor events. You will now only be offered a quest or item, a recruitable unit and then set sail becomes available (or you can purchase equipment)
Added tutorial prompts for combat
If you don't have translators in your trek (or somebody with polyglot perk) all chat texts by native people will be shown scrambled.
Added screenshakes for sprawling disasters

Perks
Perk Multi-Talented was renamed to Polymath. Marie Curie now has polymath as a starting perk (being that she won Nobel prizes in physics AND chemistry).
Added new perks: Bullet Hoarder, Polyglot, Dream Visions, Lone survivor and scouting. In addition, all starting perks of the other explorers are now (potentially) available when you're offered your perks at the celebration screen

Items
Added tome pages, which replace and improve the old "fetish" objects. Tome pages can be used once and then are gone. There are already quite a lot of them, make sure to try them all (at your own risk)

Units
New Unit: Beduin - Can be recruited in a desert village
New Unit: Cultist - Be wary of their treachery, may turn into an abomination when injured. They also like to take over missions... Aleister Crowley starts with cultists by default.
New Unit: Abomination - Very powerful but extremely grotesque and dangerous unit. Bring enough raw meat or they will help themselves.
Injured units will no longer lose their capacity and still be able to carry objects just as normal
Native units can have a "homesick" status. If this status is active, the unit will not return home with you after you have found the golden pyramid. The homesick status will only be applied in the native units home world.
Changed some explorer unlock requirements. Ada is not unlocked by default anymore.

Bugfixes
Fixed Save Games
Fixed full screen button in settings menu
Sometimes it was impossible to dismiss any characters from your party
Perk Multi-Talented/Polymath somestimes still only offered 3 choices
All characters should be unlockable now
Fixed many spelling errors. Thanks to all the suggestions in the forums :-)

[getter77]

Alpha 6

For this update we spent a lot of time changing the way the worlds are generated. This has increased replayability tremendously, since each world type now has numerous variations and difficulties. You're also able to select between much more landscape types when planning your next expedition.

Here's an overview in video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I64PlkUdUbg

World generation
Increased playable worlds from 5 to 6
Water and mountain border regions are generated around the playable area, making the game map more organic.
The playable region can now have various, irregular shapes instead of just rectangular shapes as before.
Improved patterns of fields to make it easier to guess what kind of location a "?" is
The location spawning algorithm has been completely reworked to create more natural and also more interesting distribution of special locations. Also various cases of not matching fields have been fixed with this (for example lush jungles being spawned in dry forest lands).
More regions are available to chose from on the select expedition screen

Art
New expedition select screen and markers (not final quality, but closer to what we have in mind). The destination markers are not generated randomly anymore, but more consciously placed. The color of the flag indicates its terrain type.
Updated the harbor screen
Added a night time version of the desert village
Added bird particles
New village event image

Several new events
Volcanoes are no longer just eye candy, but set neighbouring tiles alight periodically
Geysirs can flood neighbouring tiles
Secret expeditions can be unlocked through special events
Added new village night events
Added new harbor event
Added a new look-out tower location/event
Added a shrine that requires a rope or climbing gear to enter

Interface
Set waypoints with left click, then click again on a waypoint to start traveling or press space. Remove way points by right clicking (command-click on Mac)
Move around planted waypoints by drag'n'dropping them around with your mouse
Press space or click to accelerate the celebration screen and finish expedition screen

Gameplay
Major tuning pass on travel items. Machetes, Ropes and Climbing Gear will make it much easier to traverse jungles, swamps and hills. However, one of the used items will be removed after usage, so make sure to bring plenty. The amount of travel items used for the leg is shown next to the path. Water has been added for crossing deserts.
The golden pyramid now gives a different amount of fame according to the level one is playing
One can now sell all units and not only natives at the slaver
Units can receive an angry status that causes them to behave differently
Removed the cave that required a rope to enter
The animal handler unit can now be recruited in villages
Added icons to show your active harbor quests
Specialists level up after each expedition
You can now see the toughness of your units in their info boxes
Increased capacity for most units, including animals
Stone statues always have loot
Defeated hostile natives now give loot
Removed Magnetic Pits. They will be replaced by a slightly different location in the future
The maximum amount of days that can be rested has been capped to four. After that you have to retrigger the resting action. (This causes more night events to occur in the game)

Dice Challenge
Item dice use a different color
Increased number of rerolls to 3
Added "reset stats" button to settings menu which allows to reset your unlocked characters.

Bugfixes
Combat triggered blank screen
Fixed numerous spelling mistakes
Fixed crash caused by using mouse wheel on Mac Firefox
Party members could stand on top of each during events
Unspent region points were deleted when loading the game
Missionary could be delivered to village without triggering event

[getter77]

Alpha 7

With this update we have added the last missing piece to our game loop: the ranking screen. Here you decide whether you donate exotic items to a museum to receive fame, or sell them at an auction house for funds. In order to beat the game, you need more fame than your rivals have at the end of the last expedition.

Funds and Rivals
Sell items that you bring from your expedition for either funds or fame
Instead of buying equipment with fame, you'll now use funds
Compete against other famous explorers
More items are now considered to be 'fame' items
There is a new (place-holder) introduction screen that explains the goal of the game

Barter Interface
The barter interface has been iterated and is now positioned on top of the journal (instead of hiding the nice event image)
Your current funds are shown in the barter interface while you're trading in the harbor
The exact item values being shown have been replaced by a more vague horizontal bar, that gives you a graphical overview of the deal state
The party inventory is now shown next to the shop items while trading.
While the changes should in general improve the interface, it is an unfinished and in-between step to our desired final result

Art
New WIP ranking and title screen
Explorer's club image
Alternate stone statue event image
New character selection screen

New content
"The Void" shrine aftermath event (can YOU escape it?)
Volcano eruption shrine aftermath event
New nature night events
The magnetic mountain has replaced the magnetic pit. Blow it up with TNT to get back your compass bearings
(Real-life) quotes from explorers are triggered by certain events

General gameplay
The cook can now cook all the time and not just at the camp or nature rest locations
Meat will now spoil after some time, just like mangos. It will then automatically removed from the inventory
Tuned enemy aggro chance and ranges
Tuned travel costs as well as item and perk effects for thick jungle, hills, swamps and desert fields

General
Added a whole batch of new people to the credits
Pressing space in character selection screen will select a random explorer

Bug fixes
General performance improvements. Travelling across the map should be much smoother now.
Healing (red) mushrooms and first aid kits did not work properly
Dynamite will now also destroy locations (caves etc)
Explorers can no longer decide to leave the expedition and live with the natives (potentially will return as a proper feature)
The camp item no longer disappears when one tries to use over an existing location
Sanity is now refilled between tutorials
Party is no longer shown as arrow after using teleport or machetes
Normal units can now be properly dismissed, even if an abomination is part of your trek
Units will no longer be covered by the journal in events
Fixed trading exploit which allowed to gain standing without actually trading
Clicking on an item will now use the item from that specific item stack instead of just the general inventory
Reduced minimum diary height, so that the combat should stay playable in ever lower screen resolutions than before
Numeros spelling errors

[getter77]

Alpha 8

This update comes with various, smaller changes and a plethora of new events. The largest feature is the 'Special Region'. These unique areas are only found in the special unlocked worlds.

Special Regions
        All unlocked worlds have a 'special' region, with unique enemies and locations
        Special regions: Elephant Graveyard, White Tigers, Water Temple

Treasure maps
        Instead of directly showing you the target location, treasure maps now show you a small cutout of the target area. You'll have to figure out for yourself where it is in the world.
        You need a shovel to dig up treasures.

Art
        New background image for locations situated on grassland tiles
        New background image for locations situated on dryland tiles
        Various location images have been adjusted to fit with the new backgrounds

Music/Sound
        We added a new theme for the explorers club
        Added cheering sounds to the celebration

Content
        The angry status has been fleshed out with more events
        More nature rest events
        More village rest events
        New zero sanity event
        New mission location event
        New passive animal: Triceratops
        New special unit: Jim 'James' Sterling

Settings
        Added a quick text mode, which shows all text immediately
        Added a scaling mode which scales the 1280x720 to your screen. Don't use if you prefer pixel perfect art.

General
        The inventory of each character is now also shown in the character selection screen.
        Buried treasure can only be recovered with the new shovel item
        English improvements
        Cheering sound for celebration screen
        Improvements to the looting and inventory interface
        Improvements to - and more chatlines for - the chat system

Bug Fixes
        Fixed the infamous enemy-not-disappearing bug
        Enemies did not always chase after you
        Fixed rare crash when dropping items
        Items now store correctly in saved games
        Trek member genders are correctly restored from save game
        The explorer can still die from infected wounds, but the text now changes accordingly

[getter77]

Alpha 9

We've been very busy with preparing for our upcoming Steam release and the Berlin International Games Week. Because of this, we have a couple of smaller improvements this time. Here are some of the highlights:

    Units
        New unit: The artist. Allows to create paintings of natives or locations for fame and funds
        All units now will get additional dice when leveling up. Dice are not gained each level but semi-regularily, depending on unit type.

    Fame & Funds
        Items may now have different fame & funds values. You'll have much more interesting decisions in the ranking screen now.
        We changed the way how items are delivered at a Mission. Instead of giving up all your exotic items automatically, the mission now has a small inventory in which you can put items. These will be sent home at the end of your expedition.
        Increased fame value of anthropological studies. Combined with the artist, a non-disruptive playstyle is much more viable now if you choose to do so.
        It's not possible to trade in items at the harbor anymore.

    General
        We added text hints that allow you to anticipate which curse will be triggered by raiding a shrine. We also increased the effect of shrine curses for volcanos and chasm. Also earthquakes will not block your path that easily anymore.
        The available destinations on the world map are more random now. You might not have the opportunity to select jungle terrain for every expedition.
        Fighting animals will now resolve in standing loss instead of standing gain as before.
        We've added highlighting to some texts to easier grasp the essence of a text. We'll add more highlighting in the coming updates.
        Rival explorers now use a simplified location marker on the world map for better overview.
        Some items don't consume slots (e.g. treasure maps). We added a help text to the item info box to point this out.
        Earhart is now unlocked when recruiting a native scout. Kingsley is unlocked after finishing first expedition.
        Added some animation to the title screen. The screen is still work-in-progress overall.

    Bugfixes
        Player won't start in blocked off areas anymore.
        Character info box that appears when hovering over character names in the diary doesn't disappear randomly anymore.
        Fixed giant tortoise being respawned endlessly.
        Fixed caves with tunnels not property connecting to other caves.
        Fixed stats popup showing twice the amount of change that actually happened.
        Fixed some cases of locations being spawned on the wrong terrain type.

[Rickton]

It's also free to play this weekend!

[getter77]

Alpha 10

For this update we concentrated mostly on improving the dice-game. We heard your feedback: the dice game had some confusing parts which made it a bit hard to understand for new players. We tried to fix those and at the same time make the gameplay deeper. Besides this we also improved usability in various other areas of the game, preparing for the onslaught of our upcoming Steam early access release which will happen: May 19th 2015!

All buyers that have bought the game so far, will get a free steam key as promised.


Dice-Game
Added many more actions to perform
Reworked the type of dice and dice faces in the game, making them more manageable and intuitive
Instead of rolling the enemy and player dice at the same time, enemies roll their dice in a separate phase now
Possible dice combos are now hinted at by vibrating dice
The effects (e.g. damage) of the chosen dice are shown as preview below the action button now
Added new special attack attributes like attacking multiple enemies or inflicting self damage
Weapons add dice to combat, allowing to trigger special combos
Improved dice placing, so that they don't overlap with other dice or the center roll button
Portraits next to dice are only shown during the overview and when hovering over the dice now
The blink faces (looked like a star) which did have no effect in the game, have been replaced by more readable blank faces
For players that already have played some rounds, the tutorial prompts are not shown anymore on every first combat
Added various new visual effects to the dice game. The dice game is still work-in-progress, but we're getting closer to our goal

Units
Dice types and gained dice per level has been tuned
Units will now receive 2 toughness per promotion (instead of 1)

General
Waypoints can be added inside of existing travel route
Location reveals are now delayed until the diary is closed, so that you can actually see them appear on the map
The camera scrolls to revealed locations, instead of jumping there directly, making it easier to understand where the new location is in relation to the party.
Flipped barter clicking behavior - left click moves one, right click moves all items in that inventory slot.
Increased fame gain for finding the golden pyramids
Players already start the game with fame 10 to reflect their starting popularity
Moonstones can now also be found in desert tombs
Renamed perk "cartographer" to "navigator"
Regions are not fully revealed anymore once the have been unlocked; instead the a new perk "cartographer" is now necessary to retain the old behavior.
Added info box for items to the ranking screen
Removed death cross from player path when overextending sanity, since it was causing too much confusion. Instead the regular travel costs are shown, adding valuable information.
Also show amount of days used for travel route in info box
Tweaked journal text speed to appear more organic
The maximum days of resting allowed has been increased from 4 to 5 per try. It still yields the same sanity gain as before though.

Items
Usable items are highlighted in inventory. This also makes it easier to recognize which items can be used during combat (currently just the extra bullets)
New weapon items: Pistol, Shotgun, Rifle, Spears and the dreaded Tesla Gun have been added.
Resell value of items has been slightly increased

Bugfixes
Fixed donkeys being able to paint drawings
Camera was not centered properly on player part (by the way.. you may also press 'c' to center the camera on the party when on the map)
The expedition counter sometimes showed the wrong number
Disabled item usage while traveling or resting
Wrong game over text when existing the game via the setting screen

[getter77]

Alpha 11

We're super excited to be on Steam Early Access and very happy with all feedback the we have gotten. We release alpha updates in intervals of 2-3 weeks. For this alpha we're focusing on bugfixing and making the release as stable as possible.


Shrines
Highlight journal text that hints at to be expected shrine curse
Removed some of the less spectacular shrine curses
Added a new shrine curse "flood" which follow the trek around

Pyramid
Fixed pyramid being spawned too close to player position. It will now spawn at a more consistent distance
Made it impossible for moon stones to get randomly lost
Reduced moon stone requirement for last expedition

Characters
It is now possible to preview the character traits of recruitable characters at the harbor
Added option to cancel dismissal of characters at the harbor
Fixed clicking on character that didn't support leveling up, still wasted a region point
Fixed characters restored from save game could have duplicate traits after level-up
Fixed toughness was not correctly refilled after every combat
Fixed some characters had the wrong gender attribute set

Combat
Disallowed to click 'end round' while a dice combo was already selected (this should hopefully help teach about the attack button)
Fixed being able to click the reroll button even though no dice were left
 
Steam version
Fixed crash on startup on some windows machines
Fixed some slowdowns on OSX
Fullscreen state is stored persistently
Quitting from settings while in main menu, quits the game instead of returning to main menu
Fixed multiple Jim Sterling being able to show up
Fixed empty cave appearing in last expedition
Fixed some locations didn't have the correct background applied (e.g. old camp in desert appearing on jungle background)
Fixed special positions on world map appearing offset
Fixed injured characters that entered combat immediately died
Fixed various typos (thanks to everybody reporting spelling mistakes)

Alpha 12 is planned for the 17th of June. For that we will focus on gameplay and content again and have a deep look at the difficulty tuning and how we handle certain frustrating moments currently in the game. Thanks so much for playing the game and see you on the forums!

[getter77]

Alpha 12

In this alpha we laid the foundation for alternative goals for expeditions. We're excited to bring you more in the future. We also worked on reducing some of that frustration when hitting a hard wall in the game: you'll be able to abort expeditions and also to explore locations without having the proper items with you.

WARNING: Savegames from Alpha 11 will not load in Alpha 12

Here is a more detailed of highlights in this Alpha:

Alternative Goals
A new pyramid type was added, which is buried when the expedition starts. Find all the golden seals to unearth it!
The world map screen will give you an idea what goal to expect at each destination.
Different types of goals will you award different amounts of fame.

Quests
Added various new quests. We don't want to spoil exactly which, but be careful with Snarfrattle, that's a dangerous beast.
Each quest type will only be offered once per play-through

New actions
Added a button for waiting. Does nothing else, just waiting.
Added a button for balloon escape. Allows you to abandon your current expedition, but you won't get points for finding the golden pyramid and you might have to leave behind some of your inventory.

Locations
Tower shrines can be visited without having a rope (at increased risk of injury)
Caves can be visited without torches (at increased risk of injury)
Villages and biome types are not hardcoded anymore, so you now might also find scouts outside of dry lands now

Item changes
Improved quest rewards loot table
Slightly reduced health kit price
Increased value of whisky in missions
Tuned various item values for villages
Weather balloon now gives a small sight advantage and also has no waiting cost anymore
Canvases max stack increased to 10; harbor shop now sells more canvases.
Improved overburen handling: when losing party members or discarding items, empty slots will automatically be cleaned up.

Perks
Increased sanity gained when having a translator in village
Improved occult vision perk to work without having to rest first
Improved power of dream visions perk
Nature Disasters
Traversing through fire might be deadly now
Made the void more readable by adding new particles
Abominations
Its no longer possible to heal abominations in shaman huts
The chance of turning into a abomination when being marked has been increased.

Bugfixes
Restoring a save game with multiple cultists was broken. Unfortunately you won't be able to move your save games from Alpha 11 to Alpha 12.
Explorers should automatically level up after each expedition
Fixed incorrectly applied injured state
Fixed party could rest in village without translator
Fixed natives staying back on expeditions, even though they were not homesick anymore.
Fixed unreadable treasure maps
Fixed exploit of being able to reset treasure maps or crystal balls by trading them.
Deserts did not spawn any oasis anymore. Oasis now appears again, also giving much needed opportunity to refill water and to use the Bedouin perk.
Fixed easter egg in menu
Clicking while traveling could result in unwanted changes to the travel route
Fixed feather item appearing after combat even when not fighting against giant birds.
Fixed voids that covered whole regions were not drawn correctly.
Various spelling fixes

Music
Added music track for pyramids
Increased the fade out time of the music, so you will be able to hear the event music tracks longer.

[getter77]

Alpha 13

This is a big update for us. We've added the much awaited dinosaurs and riding pack animals (including the just added dinosaurs). Also, we've taken a huge step towards the final UI layout of the game.

As usual, let us know what you think in our forums. The next update is scheduled for July 22nd.

Mounting
All pack-animals (including dinosaurs) can be mounted by the explorer now.
Mounting animals reduces their carrying capacity, but reduces base movement costs and unlocks special combat dice.
Have fun finding all the new dinosaur unit types that we added.

New Locations
Bone village, home to the infamous lizard people
Raptor nests, great place to find living dinosaur eggs

Layout
We've reworked the overall layout to feature a new party side bar with character portraits for all units. The party side bar is also visible during events, allowing to inspect the party quickly.
The sanity bar is now bigger and centered on the screen. The path cost for the current travel route is also previewed on the bar.
The standing bar has been replaced by a more visual icon on the right side.
The fame counter has been removed. Hover over the day counter to see your current fame count.
All chat lines are now shown in chat bubbles.
Less statuses will be shown next to the character. Hover over characters to see the full list.
The character portraits shown on top of the event image have been optimized in size.

Character selection screen
Its now possible to hover over the items and support characters of each explorer to get more information.
Explorers that have finished the game are shown with a golden frame.

Misc
Show region info only for regions which already have been entered
Missing adventurer does not consume a unit slot anymore
Magnetic mountains have been reduced in their influence over distance
Angry villagers are stronger now and immediately aggroed towards the player
The celebration crowd will now comment on the party and your success
New particle for explored regions
Hot air balloon now needs at least two humanoid party members to set up

Bugfixes
Fixed world gen sometimes creating unreachable locations. Sorry about that!
Haggle icon was missing
Wrong Schroedinger sprite was drawn at harbor
Clicking multiple time on celebration medals caused extra level ups
Clicking the "stop wait" button didn't work properly
Fixed zones being drawn on the wrong location
Fixed various typos

[getter77]

Alpha 14

After the amount of major feature additions in recent alphas, we felt it was time to take a moment to make sure that we have a stable foundation for our upcoming updates. We pushed around 7 updates already during the last two weeks updating the game as we worked through our bug list. We will still work through more bugfixes in the next couple of days. We hope you enjoy one of our most stable versions so far.

Villages
Added new events
Angry villages now constantly spawn angry villager zone
Angry villager enemies now can have a shaman on their side

Misc
Natives only visit your trek once per expedition now
Reduced water buffalo health from 12 to 8
World map now allows to select destination via double-click
Added a new magic die which is used by native shamans
It allows to trigger healing combos

Bugfixes
It was possible to overburden the hot air balloon
Destinations on world map are now properly restored from save game
Healing action for abominations was offered at shaman hut even though they can't be cleansed
Animals could get angry during night events
Fixed characters becoming angry and superstitious at same time
Region score is updated corretly when locations are destroyed
Items should not be usable while selecting destination for stone circle
Improved missing husband location placement
No medals should be shown during final celebration
Fixed freeze when resting in fire

[getter77]

Alpha 17 and...

This is a big one! After plenty of bugfixes and working on the surrounding systems like save games and highscores for the recent alphas we're finally back to focussing on the core gameplay again. We've made some major improvements to core areas like traveling and combat. Here are some of the highlights:

Map Knowledge
Butterflies are now visible on the map. They are automatically collected when moving through these zones without needing to stop. The previous random encounters of butterflies has been removed.
Mosquitos have been added to the map. These fields carry an extra risk of getting certain sicknesses. Sicknesses are not directly visible but rather shown through their symptoms, so make sure to observe the statuses of your trek members carefully to understand what kind of sickness they might be suffering from.
Points of interest '?' are now always revealed when passing by within a range of up to two tiles. That should make the results of your movement much more predictable.
All fields on the map are now drawn in the same color, making it easier to recognize patterns on the map.

Perks
Several explorers how have unique start perks that can't be gained by any other means. The new perks so far..
David-Neel can promote her animal trek members, but not humans
Kingsley is especially stealthy, but can't use weapons
Garvey has one additional unit slot, but lowered max sanity

Rival Bar
During expeditions you can see the progress of your rivals on their current expedition. The sooner you reach your destination the higher the racing fame bonus that you gain.
This gives you a better idea about if you're doing well on your current expedition and fits better to the fiction of the game.
The old day deduction has been removed from the game.

Combat System
The toughness of your characters doesn't regenerate immediately after combats anymore. Instead it will only regenerate slowly. Certain statuses like sickness might block the regeneration. This adds some more depth to the game and should increase the impact of combat even against weaker enemies.
The worth of various hunting trophy items has been reduced. The animal teeth don't count as fame items anymore.
Enemy attacks are now shown sequentially instead of all at once.
Fleeing is now especially dangerous for characters with zero toughness.

Tome pages
Added three new tome page types (we don't want to spoil what they do exactly here)
The mountain tome page now allows you to point at where to create the mountains

Misc
Added Luis & Tim special characters. The special perk of Tim causes him to give you a general fame bonus multiplier at the end of the expedition.
The worth of paintings has been increased and the painter does not require the easel item anymore.
Character will now consume multiple region points to advance into higher levels.
You gain a standing bonus from generous trades with natives. You can see the standing change outcome in the barter interface.
The region bar on the top right is not dependent on the mouse position anymore, but will instead just always depend on the current party position.
Characters don't return immediately anymore. There is a varying minimum amount of days that has to have passed.
Spells that cause regions to become deserts now also cause waterfalls to go dry.
Added back the green plus signs hinting at possible level ups.
Its not possible to recruit multiple animal handlers anymore.
The way the inventory is shown as overburdening has changed a bit to be more intuitive. It also does not highlight weightless items as being problematic anymore.
More statuses (like paranoid) will now show their icon next to the character gallery again.
Desert storms in the desert now are more stationary and have a bigger impact on the party when being traversed.
Anonymous metrics are sent by the game to our server to support us in balancing the game. You can disable sending this data through the settings screen.

Bugfixes
Fixed notifications for unlocking characters and special sites did not appear
Fixed slow down in main screen
Fixed the unlock description text for Garvey
Fixed wrong sort order in hall of fame screen
Fixed enemies are now being spawned more reliable

Hall of Fame
Can be reached via a new button in the main menu
Shows your 8 overall best highscores
Shows your best highscore per explorer
Content
New enemy type: zombie pygmins
Added new variations for map background (more to come)
Added new icon for enemy attention status
Reduced the darkness of far away tiles to make them more readable and allowing better pattern recoginition
Improved character info boxes on ranking screen
Added particle for stone circle reveal
Only give golden frame when finishing on first place
Don't show cam shake if party is too far away from source of cam shake (this should make playing the prehistoric worlds less crazy)
Web version
The web version now also supports saving at any point
Bugfixes
Fixed not always getting region score properly (There sometimes still is a delay. Will look into that for next version)
Fixed village beast master not using up animal teeth properly
Fixed tuning for deadly riposte (it was weaker than triggering riposte twice)
Fixed medal jittering on celebration screen
Fixed stuck celebration sound after final expedition
Fixed possible to click 'save' button even while grayed out
Fade out title music when continuing game