HexLands Windows, Mac, Linux game

HexLands

Portgate Studios | TBD

Your goal is to expand your empire to as many harder and harder procedural islands as possible to maximize your empire’s population!

You have to efficiently use the available resources, tools and perks, adapt to the environment, complete procedural quests... otherwise you can’t establish a strong enough colony to set sail for the next one!

Set sail, and choose wisely! Which island's perk and biome fits your playstyle and strategy the best? How far will your empire reach?

Your first building is always a town hall, which claims some tiles around it.
If you reach a specific population with a town (i.e. by building houses), its territory grows, claiming even more land!
If your island is populated enough, you can leave for the next one!
But why waste those valuable resources? Build as much as you can so your empire prosper!

Though every island is a clean slate, you won’t start them empty-handed!
Every island rewards you with a perk, helping you till the very end! So choose your next island wisely, build synergy!
Collect various tools, special cards and save them for later! Maybe planting a forest or discovering a mine is what’s going to save your colony!
Build structures like trading ports, which benefit your future islands as well!
A balanced toolkit is the key: a harmony of perks, tool cards filling the gaps and buildings on previous islands supporting your future endeavours!

Once you can’t expand any further, you meet with your empire’s population, your final score.

Can your colonies reach the top of the leaderboards? ;)

If you want more challenge, try the time limit mode! (looking at you, speedrunners!)
If you want to chill, try the sandbox mode!

This game offers you:

High replay value - Explore endless procedural islands!
Roguelike elements
Chance management
City building on relaxing medieval islands
Resource management
Procedural perk tree, offering you customisable playstyle
Master the game and climb the leaderboard!

But doesn’t offer you:

Battles
Complex story
4X Strategy
Multiplayer
Lootboxes
40 man raids

Please keep in mind that I’m just a solo but passionate developer. This is not a AAA experience with hours and hours of content. I love Civilization, but HexLands is not really close to the 4X genre. What I’m creating is a simple at first sight but hard to master game. And you don’t even have to get a second mortgage to afford it!

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have feedback, questions, or problems with the game. I’ll try my best! Oh, and let me know if you enjoyed the game, because that just makes my day! :)

HexLands is inspired by such great games like:

Islanders
Dorf Romantik
Sid Meier’s Civilization
and many more! (like I was listening to an endless Age of Empires soundtrack during the first month of development)

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Lumbercamps were too OP in my roguelike city builder! So here's my fix! :)

May 14 2023 Feature

Hi guys,

This time I don't really have time to make a video about the latest change in my roguelike city builder, called HexLands, so I thought I could talk about it the old fashioned way! :D

Lumbercamps were OP. And this not so small issue (because lumber is a pretty basic thus important resource) made me revamp the whole building "ecosystem".

I created a new, special resource: "Workers"!

The problem was that

A, You could only build lumbercamps on Forest tiles.
B, A lumbercamp cost 75 wood… and gave you 250 wood.

This meant that this building was a no brainer… in a bad sense. It turns some wood into more wood… while you can only build them on forests… which are only suitable for lumbercamps! You don’t have to make any real decision, but you must do it to get lumber. It was so boring, it felt like a chore. A few quick and easy solutions came up:

Like changing the building cost to something other than wood.

Then it would at least feel like a "trade". But I always found it absurd in games that you can BUILD without WOOD! :D

Another solution would have been to create a similarly tiered (so early game building), which could be placed on forests.

So the player has to decide between this new building and a lumbercamp. Sadly I could come up only with a hunters’/foragers’ hut. Basically a food source alternative to farms, but unlike the farms, these are buildable only on forests, and not on plains.
But the problem with this idea is that if I can only get wood from forests, while you can get food ALSO from plains, who would waste precious forests on food?
So I gave up on this direction, but feel free to suggest buildings, because I’d love to have more “forest buildings”!

And now here's the path I took:

Basically if you want to build a production or service building, you must allocate people from your population!
It was still relatively quick to implement, because in the end, it's just a new resource:
- Everytime your population increases, you also get the same amount of “Workers”.

So now when you have a forest tile and a lumbercamp card, think before building it. Because maybe next turn you won’t be able to afford a farm, a mine, or a brewery.

What do you think? This is just a quick and experimental solution, issues could surface any day, so I can’t wait to see or hear your feedback! :)

Also I’m getting closer and closer to the next testing phase, so if you’d like try HexLands, join my Discord server or my subreddit. And of if you prefer development videos, feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel, a new video is coming soon! :)

Anyway, thanks for reading guys, cheers! :)