Update log
Full Hexiv update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Extracted changes
- Gameplay
- Events
- Fixes
Thanks everyone who has been playing the Hexiv Demo!
This patch is focused on improving new player onboarding with new contextual information widgets. In addition, I added 3 new artifacts, and simplified the Heat mechanic!
I've gotten a lot of feedback from demo players that they didn't understand certain mechanics and I noticed many first runs ending in failure in years 1-2 or around 20-30 minutes, indicating a failure to grok some of the core mechanics. Consistently missed early on is the idea that crew must be present on tiles to work them. I'm optimistic that these changes will help new players get through the early confusion faster and with less head scratching!
I also now force first time players to select a good spot to land with their first Lander. I have distaste generally for scripted tutorials, but where you land makes such a huge impact on your first time playing I don't want new players accidentally screwing themselves and then misattributing it to a boring game!
Also of note is I reworked the Heat mechanic to be much simpler. Heat now always decrements by 1 each turn, and 1 heat will be consumed to defrost a Frozen tile. The previous system was complicated and factored in all sorts of things like proximity to water, marsh, and season to determine how fast Heat dissipated. It was neat, but it was impossible to explain so ended up just being confusing. This change better aligns with my design philosophy that game mechanics should be simple enough to explain and operate as if it was a board game. Hopefully this clears things up! Heat tooltips have also been added to Artifacts that interact with Heat.
Changes:
New Crew Common artifact: Herb Jar.
New Crew Rare artifact: Thermal Cape.
New Resource Uncommon artifact: Crop Rotation. (I may need to be promoted into a Rare in the future, but it fits the timing of a run much better as an uncommon imo.)
New warning icons on placed card tiles that are not worked.
New warning icon added to worked crop tile that will not finish in time for winter frost.
New info text box when attempting to select unplayable card.
New info box explaining why the card cannot be played when placing it on invalid tile.
Added missing ai card info for Idle and Awakened status cards.
Fuel keyword on Landers renamed to Refuelable.
Apiary card can now be placed on Dirt tiles, Apiary+ also allows marsh.
Simplified heat mechanic by removing all % chance effects. Heat now just decrements by 1 each turn, and always clears Frozen tiles at the cost of 1 heat.
Updated Radioactive Pellet artifact to reflect new heat changes.
Added Heat tip to all artifacts that reference Heat. Combined with card right click properties, this means all times players are offered something that provides heat they can learn how heat works.
Bamboo card is no longer a crop. Turns 3 -> 4. Output 6 -> 7.
Replaced old ruins reward window with standard reward menu used for everything else.
Update reward menu to use newer UI background and in/out animations.
Added reward menu popup when acquiring Boot artifact.
Included game log when submitting bug report. Should make fixing obscure bugs a lot easier on my end.
Renamed cards in Compendium that are unavailable in Demo as "Locked" and sorted them after other cards.
Various improvements to Tutorial text. Some missing/incorrect tutorial images were also fixed.
Force first time player to select recommended location. Biased Trader to always be near that spot.
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