Changelog for Update 0.71a (added 01 February 2019):

Changes
1. Three new preparation tracks and remasters of the rest of preparation tracks.
-> Commentary: The soundtrack is finished. The game still needs more sound effects, but we do not plan to add more music.

2. Difficulty Description changes
Easy -> Normal
Normal -> Hard
Hard -> Dreadful
-> Commentary: Due to overwhelming feedback from the community we decided to change the difficulty description. It seems like playing on old normal was a challenge for everyone, and old hard was a nightmare. It's clear now.

3.1. Font size in the tutorial was changed to bigger
3.2. Information about career mode
-> Commentary: A lot of players wonder why the career isn't available. Now there is a temporary message to make it clear.

4. Cuppy, if necessary, will talk less.
-> Commentary: Cuppy's commentary was more like a chore to hide than a pleasure. We decided to make it less frequent.

5.1. Option to turn off the Cuppy Commentary
5.2. Expeditions in round 1 won't require more than 7 explorers, and in round 2 it won't be more than 8.
-> Commentary: It's impossible to hire more than 7 explorers in round 1. We feel that hiring 9 explorers in round 2 is a bad move and we don't want to encourage new players to do so. There always was at least one expedition for less than 7 explorers, but we do not want players to suffer because some expeditions are beyond their reach.

6. After clicking the button to return to the menu the game will ask confirmation.
-> Commentary: We don't want players to exit the game by mistake.

7. After clicking on an explorer to set a new manager for a building the game will ask for confirmation.
-> Commentary: We don't want players to set managers by accident.

8. Georadar description changes
-> Commentary: We heard voices that georadar shouldn't be in the game. We disclaimed that georadar is in right place, but we change its description to better introduce it to the players.

9. Flintlock changed to Revolver
-> Commentary: We wanted to place a outdated weapon for +3 CC Booster. However, to show you more consistent world we decided to change flintlock to still outdated model of revolver.

10.1. The calendar during the expeditions is placed a little bit higher
10.2. Attitude values changed
-> Commentary: We wanted to give Attitude more recognition. The bonuses from the attitude are bigger now and we decided for Precarious Attitude to give constant value instead random range.

11.1. Font size in Cuppy commentary is bigger now
11.2. Confiscating Artifacts cost less reputation if the player want to recover the artifact.
-> Commentary: The decision to lose artifact and 1 point of reputation or 3 points of reputation wasn't really a choice. Now it changes to artifact and 1 reputation or 2 reputations. Depends on the artifact it may be better now to keep the artifact instead.

12. Super Easy Opponent on Normal
-> Commentary: The game is hard for the casual players and we want them to feel better after not going bankrupt. By normal we mean new normal (old easy). This opponent has decreased reputation gained in his expeditions. We don't want to make casual player sad by giving him the last place on the summary even on the easiest difficulty. Super Easy Opponent won't appear on other difficulties.

13. Gazettes - Rework
-> Commentary: Gazettes needed rework and we are not done with them. We've added a new stage of relations and a new stage of interest. The relations will take credit of actions even 3 round ago, the gifts will always have an impact (even if it's a wrong one) in the current round, the right gifts will have more impact and the relations will have even more meaning. Our goal is to despite of story value give a chance for the player to get 100% chances of getting favours. In nutshell, if the player keeps great relations with a certain gazette, the favours will be granted for sure.

14.1. Buying a new building - The price next to the Buy button
14.2. The overall potential revenues from land considered in bots biddings
-> Commentary: AI opponents will bid less in further rounds because there is less time to get back the value from the lands. Before that bots statistically bid too high after 12 round.

15. Stimulants are stronger on Normal Difficulty
-> Commentary: To avoid fears game requires stimulants and Attitude Cautious. We decided to give some slack to the easiest difficulty (old Easy) and stimulants are enough to ensure you that there won't be any problems. It means that Cautious Attitude is pointless on Normal, but makes the game better for the casual player. In the future with better tools to introduce mechanics in career mode we might go back, however, for now, it's better this way.

16. Archeopedia - Detailed Description about Random Quests
-> Commentary: There's just too much misinformation going on and we see that players are struggling with understanding how it works. Now there's a place in the game where you can read more about it.

17. Tutorial changes
-> Commentary: First of all, we set more free space in the character creation process. It's a simple action and everybody knows how to do it. We also decided to make the golden team constant statistics and Cuppy will tell more about Random Quest on expeditions. We cut some text just to not making it longer, but the humorous vibe is still there.

18. Three new outfits for female character (player)
-> Commentary: We heard voices demanding more outfits for the female character.

19. Four new achievements
-> Commentary: We wanted to add some easier achievements to reward all the players, even for failures.

20. Expedition Quest 1 & 5 - Skills+ and Guaranteed required skill
-> Commentary: We’ve seen that a lot of players are confused by this. We added “+” to the skill name in random quest 1 and random quest 5 to inform you better, that those quests are harder than the common ones. There’s no randomness in those quests, in the quest with + the game checks if you have enough efficiency and if not, then it’s a failure. Also, we decided to change random quest 5 the quest with +. What’s more interesting, those quests are always defined by required skills from expedition description. The reason behind no information about it in the first place, was to introduce it after first career mission, but we see that we cannot wait with this any second longer. Now it should be clear, or at least understandable to the new players.

21. The change of the font
-> Commentary: We hear you, now it should be easier for the eyes to read texts.

22.1. Back button 15% bigger
22.2. Hover over back button shows [Esc] information
-> Commentary: We never intended to make you click this tiny button with your mouse. There was always a function under [esc] button on the keyboard, but only a small fraction of the playerbase tried to push the escape. It should be clear now. And we made the button bigger if you still want to click it with the mouse.

23. Report from the land auction
-> Commentary: Now you get the information about bids on the land market. We want to go in this direction with everything in Archeo, to give player more reports on everything going on behind the scenes. And we feel that it’s a wonderful change for local multiplayer when you can see bids of your opponents in your turn when it’s not recommended to sneak peek when they are bidding. We feel your urge to sneak peek, but if you know that you will no matter what see it later, this urge shouldn’t be that strong.

Bug Fixes
1.1. Infinity training people when the player doesn't have money fixed.
1.2. Setting music volume to 0 fixed.
1.3. Resolution 3440x1440 support fixed.
-> Commentary: It's playable now. We want it to look better in the future.

2.1. Hot Seat character creation now it's your turn information fixed.
2.2. Archeopedia and Bidding on Artifact screen fixed.
2.3. Congratulatory Letter bug fixed.
2.4. Spellings fixed.
-> Commentary: At least the big ones like Linquistics.

Summary
We wanted to show to our growing community that we care about our game and about players’ opinion. We are working on Career mode in the background and we have in plans a few adjustments to the gameplay, but with this update, we hope you will feel more secure about Archeo’s future. We focused on fixing bugs and little changes as a response to your opinions. In the next updates, we want to add more to the game, but we know that adding new content and features before fixing the old ones doesn’t look promising to you. Next update will be there in 4 to 6 weeks from now, but we’re going to inform you more about it and probably talk about new features on the community hub.



Cheers!

Changelog for Update 0.75a (added 05 March 2019):

Changes
1) Expedition Forecast
-> Commentary: Basically player has 3 expeditions to choose from. It’s possible to have more choices due to the train station or other factors (random events). The forecast will deliver information about one out of three basic expeditions in advance. Depending on the difficulty the range of forecast may vary.

2) Prices Charts
-> Commentary: Prices charts for stimulants, because the player needs to know when the Merchant Company is robbing him and Prices charts for the land market because the player needs to know how much has he (or the bot) overpaid.

3) Merchant Company Boosters
-> Commentary: There will always be 3 boosters to choose from, and the merchant company will try to personalize one of the boosters for the player and his needs.

4) Black Market - The risk of buying Artifacts
-> Commentary: In a nutshell, it won’t be that risky like it is now. Also, all of the cheap Artifacts won’t appear on Black Market’s sales.

5) Black Market - Demand rework
-> Commentary: We want to give every artifact at least one chance to appear on demand. Also, we don’t want cheap artifacts on the demand.

6) Generating first 5 explorers and their addictions
-> Commentary: To balance the starting condition we want to create situation 2-2-1, which means that on start there will be always 2 explorers addicted to stimulant_1, 2 explorers addicted to stimulant_2 and 1 addicted to stimulant_3. And by 'addicted' we mean that they are very enthusiastic about certain stimulant.

7) Property Management - Interaction with the map
-> Commentary: Clicking on nobody’s lands or on lands of your opponent will open the brief note about the land.

8) Schedule of land auctions
-> Commentary: The auctions will be prepared in advance and the player will have the opportunity to plan next moves depending on the quality of the lands and their potential value. The auctions will be executed the same as in the current version, but the schedule will let you consider saving money for the next round.

9) Expedition Reports
-> Commentary: Reports contain all the information about the last expedition. The player can access all reports from the current game in the lobby. It’s super important because the information about the chance of success will be there (and it probably will be 100% or 0%, because Archeo gives % chances only for a certain range of lacking skill, and for Quests with “+” there’s no rng at all). With this tool, the player can learn quicker and better how to evaluate the difficulty of expeditions.

10) Background for items in Warehouse changed
11) Credits updated
12) Information for attempting to put artifact on the Black Market without accepting risk and margin.
13) AI opponents’ aggression on the land market decreased
-> Commentary: Bots are aggressive on the land market, and they should be to prevent the player from buying too many lands. But they were too aggressive because they know that they can’t bankrupt. It should be better now, at least after the first 10 rounds, when we feel they should be aggressive.

14) New information for each land - when and for how much was it bought Commentary: With Interaction with the map you can see this information for every land on the map.
15) Getting Fears on Normal Difficulty changed
-> Commentary: We feel that our last attempt didn’t solve this problem for the Normal difficulty. We decided to place a brand new algorithm for this difficulty, which allows 100% security if the right stimulant is present. The only negative factor (which means it’s the only reason for getting a fear) is now the lack of the certain stimulant (based on explorer’s addiction)

16) Cautious Attitude gives a better bonus to the risk of getting a fear.
17) Lands’ statistics are presented by bars instead of raw numbers
-> Commentary: It’s important to see the max. limit od land’s statistics. The player needs to know that a certain value is high or low. With bars, it should be clear.

18) A few adjustments for the random events in the code
19) “Thumb” graphic in the expedition
20) Archeopedia - text correction
21) Changes in random quest on the expedition - RNG factor terminated
-> Commentary: We’ve changed the formula for the random quests. Player probably won’t even see the differences but there are a few. First of all, we’ve terminated raw RNG factor. It was a small value, but after a lot of feedback, we decided to terminate it. After that, we had a void in the formula, and we needed to add a new factor to fill it for the balance. We added new relation for the amount of explorer participating in the random quest with the rule “the more the merrier”.

22) Cautious Attitude buffed
-> Commentary: After changes to getting fears on Normal Difficulty, cautious attitude became useless. We decided to buff it to make it a tool for players, who want to save some money on the stimulants but also don’t want to risk too many fears. Nevertheless, cautious attitude always will be a better tool on harder difficulties.

Bug Fixes
1) The sailor path in animation in the Quarters fixed
2) [ESC] works for Archeopedia
3) The game starts on the best possible resolution for the player’s PC
4) The fired explorers’ salary fixed
-> Commentary: It was a game breaking bug, and we are glad it’s solved now.

5) The bug with land auction report fixed
-> Commentary: Sometimes it showed the wrong winner.

6) Random Event ‘Need more coffee” fixed

Summary
This update provides adjustments to the gameplay and should help a lot with the understanding of the game. We didn’t want players to spend their time in the archeopedia learning basic and trying to figure it out. Instead, we want the player to learn on his mistakes and gather more and more experience with every other expedition. That’s why we added more tools for predictions and reports.

During our work on Update #02, we also had time to work on the career mode. At this time we know exactly what we can add to the game and what we will add in the next updates.

In next days we’re going to talk with you, the community, about our plans for next updates, for the release and about the career mode. We would love to see your activity and opinions and we hope that our plans and your expectations will meet.

Cheers!

Changelog for Update 0.75c (added 12 March 2019):
Changes
1. Information about offered money at Land Stock.
Bug Fixes
1.Game breaking bug in round 30 after the last expedition fixed.

This is a quick, not planned fix. Thanks to the player ‘Stado Baranów’ we have recreated and fixed a game breaking bug in the last round in custom game. Next update will be there on time (04.04.2019).

Cheers!

Update #03 - Delay

We regret to inform you that the update scheduled for 04/04/2019 has been postponed to 08/04/2019. We are still working on the scheduled features. The press rework took us more time than we'd planned, we are still testing it, but everything looks good now. We didn't have time to implement the flavour texts for the expeditions, but the content is ready.
The main cause of this delay is our focus on the career mode. We spent a significant part of last month working on career mechanics and implementing story to the game. However, the career mode won't be available until the full release.
We hope you understand and we are going to work even harder to prevent such delays in the future.

Cheers!

Update #03 Note

Changes
1.Press Rework
Commentary: New way to spend exclusive license with guarantee effect, relations reports, Chess Club, new interface and more. We encourage you to learn more in Archeopedia or in the new tutorial.
2. Demand on the Black Market - Notification
Commentary: A notification when the player tries to click on demand when there’s no demanded artifact in the warehouse.
3. Archeopedia adjustments
Commentary: With new features Archeopedia needs adjustments. We added there everything about expedition reports, forecasts, new gazettes and so on.
4. New graphics in opponents’ bios
5. Detailed Salary Reports
Commentary: No more raw paychecks. The player will get a detailed report including every explorer and overdue value.
6. New tutorial (3/5)
Commentary: We have implemented a brand new tutorial divided into 5 parts. The fifth part isn’t released, because we want to keep it for the full release. To access the second tutorial the player needs to finish the first one.
7. Gazettes’ favours - option to go back at the stage when the player should select the target
Commentary: For TAoDJ’s favours player couldn’t go back even if there was a need to check which opponent is a threat.
8. Generation of Artifacts on expeditions changed
Commentary: The player won’t find expensive artifacts on easy expeditions, and vice versa, the player won’t find cheap artifacts on very difficult expeditions.
9. Ruthless Success - a change in the formula
Commentary: We wanted to give more credit to explorers’ skills. Overall high skilled explorers are going to find more artifacts.
10. RAG - Favours profits changed
Commentary: Sponsoring gives 9 instead of 5 items and for one favour the player can get 1 free item.
11. Attitude - Information on hover
12. Local Guide (Booster) - New Icon
13. Black Market - Demand verification
Commentary: The 3 cheapest artifacts won’t be demanded anymore. If a player needs money and decides to sell artifacts on demand, the cheapest artifacts won’t save the budget. This way there will be more space on demand for other artifacts.
14. Black Market - Sales verification
Commentary: The 6 cheapest artifacts won’t be on sale on Black Market. The reason is that there’s no point to do so. The player just doesn’t need to buy cheap artifacts.
15. Shady auction man
Commentary: There’s a shady auction man. Cuppy refers to him in the tutorial, but it’s also an indicator for the player, which shows if the player has already bid in this round.

Bugs
1.Merchant Company - Stimulants’ counters fixed

Old save files won’t work with the new update!

What about the flavour text on the Expeditions?
The texts were implemented and tested, but the feature isn’t working as intended. We need to adjust it because for now, it’s just a bunch of silly comments on expeditions. We’re going to make it more immersive, divide them according to the location of an expedition and we want third flavour text on every expedition to be something more. For now, the flavour texts could get contradictory with random events, we cannot allow such a thing to happen. The feature needs more love and attention, and we are willing to spend more time on it because we feel that in its current state it’s not adding anything to the game.

What’s new about the career mode?
We’ve been working on it in the meantime, the basic mechanics for mission’s goals are ready. We are testing the feature allowing to save explorers for the next mission. We still polish the story and we are not happy about the Career Lobby interface. If everything goes well, we will be able to determine the release date.

Why there’s no tutorial 4 and 5?
The 5th tutorial (Tactics) will be released with the career mode. The content of this tutorial should be hidden from new players because it could affect the experience. It will be accessible after 4th career mission. The 4th tutorial (Shady Operations) was tested before this update (with all the others), and… it’s confusing for new players. Unlike the 5th tutorial, we don’t need to hide it from new players, but we need to improve it. It should be clear for some that ‘Shady Operations’ means the Black Market, and with the 4th tutorial we want not only to show to you that this part of the game exists, but also teach you how to use it in your strategy. However, the Black Market play depends on a lot of variables, like if the player owns a museum, does the player has enough money for the next salary or does the player know the value of an artifact on sale. Our attempt to show this delicate subject in this tutorial caused only confusion. We decided to cut it out and rework it once again. Probably we will reduce the 4th tutorial and place the extra information in the 5th tutorial or in Archeopedia. Our end goal is to create a smooth learning curve, where the player gets one tutorial after each career mission. This way we can prevent the player from failure due to the lack of knowledge about gameplay rules, but also we don’t need to push everything at once. And the implication of this is that the first missions in the career mode will be easy for the early access players, but they will be able to use their knowledge of the game to complete those missions faster.

More about Localization -> https://steamcommunity.com/games/1001980/announcements/detail/1734356745767904572

More about Voice Over ->
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1001980/announcements/detail/1813169105641848799

Summary
With update #03 we wanted to finish the gameplay. In the future, we don’t want to change it (like we did with the press), but we are going to monitor the balance and intervene if there’s something bad happening. The game even after the full release will get our support for at least 6 months, and if any problems or bugs occurs we will fix them.
Meanwhile, we are working on career mode. To deliver you a decent story, interesting gameplay and maybe something more we need some time, but it is not going to be years. If you are waiting for the full release we are sure it’s the matter of months now. In the Early Access note, we stated that the full release will be after 3 to 6 months after the early access release, and we are working around the clock to keep this promise.


Cheers!

Update #04 Note (0.83a)

Changes
Cuppy Tips
Commentary: From now on Cuppy will have some random tips to say. We have prepared 20 of those for you. Maybe it will be a good reason for you to not turn her off.
Tutorial IV
Commentary: After all, we decided to limit it (it won’t take more than 3 minutes) and trust that you, the player can use the knowledge and find a way to use it in practice. We were on the edge with the 4th tutorial because the new players won’t get any ideas how to use Black Market in an optimal way. Nevertheless, we decided to leave it without comments and suggestion about the player’s tactic. We feel that even without a good idea how to use Black Market player can still enjoy the game and win on easier difficulties, even if this feature is required to win the game on the harder difficulties.
Random Events - Old Letters
Commentary: The option to open old letter when a random event is linked to an older one event was always there, but we decided to place it in a better place, as a third option under the letter.
Press Favours - Hover with description
Commentary: Have you ever wanted to know what that thing for 5 favours does? Now you can just hover your mouse over it and see the tip.
Random Quests, Boosters Descriptions, Opponents’ Bios and more text corrections.
Institute Portrait in letters from the Institute in Custom Game
30 new names for the explorers
Commentary: We tried to add more names from Europe, like from Netherlands or the Czech Republic.
Legendary Explorers - Skills depending on their story
Commentary: We don’t want to make you believe that John Dillinger is a great Geologist. Their basic skill set from now on will try to stick to their personalities and history. Player still will be able to teach them whatever he (or she) wants.
Player’s Delay in Reports for Hard and Dreadful difficulty
Commentary: The player delay is an important factor and can change the outcome of an expedition. From now on the data will be shown in the reports. The Normal difficulty doesn’t have such a feat, because player’s delay doesn’t affect gameplay mechanics on this difficulty. Of course, you still can lose a random quest due to the time, but it doesn’t matter if you spend 20 or 25 seconds deciding who should do the thing. On Hard (and Dreadful) those seconds counts and the more you wait the harder the task will be.
Flavour Texts
Commentary: Yes, it is here. From now on every standard expedition will have 3 flavour texts. Every flavour text is linked to the place of the expedition and the third one will always be more specific about the course of events. Hovering over the flavour text will slow down the time and the flavour texts will appear in the reports. We have prepared 270 flavour texts for you. 90 per destination.

Summary
We are currently postponing the work with the voice actors due to the changes to the story. We have a lot of little bugs between the last update and this update because we need to change some things n the game structure. The tutorial V is also ready for you but we have hidden it because we feel that information may ruin your first experience with the game (we don’t want new players to start their experience with all 5 tutorials when after the full release the tutorials will be unlocked during the career).
We are running some tests focused on the story part of the game and it looks like it will take us more time than expected to find the sweet spot between the fun and the actual story. Originally the story was way too focused on facts and it used some concepts from the field of archeology and geology which don’t have to be known to everybody. We don’t want to give you a lesson on the topic about sediments or cartography, because that’s not the point, but also we don’t want to use deus ex machina solutions. We decided to change some plot twists and place them in alternatives. Yes, alternatives. After all, we needed to place alternative approach in one mission to keep things interesting for casual players, but also to leave something for the hardcore players (the ones who play the game to translate ancient documents and don’t mind spending time in libraries and analyzing some old writings).
At some point, we fund the story to become a little bit goofy, because we added a few choices which are not good examples how archeology works, but after a few tests, we have limited the amount of those actions. We believe we are close to the sweet spot to keep things interesting but also don’t push it too much. We still need more time to implement the animation clips (and wait for our animator to finish them) and test the whole story.
We also worked on the assets system, which allows the player to use supplies (and explorers) from last missions in the next ones. We needed to limit it at some point (like for legendary explorers) but it works just fine now. It has also caused a few minor bugs, but it’s all fixed now. But again, you won’t see this system till the full release.
We hope you understand that it takes time to polish the story. Have some fun with the new flavour texts and say hello to Cuppy!

Cheers!

Update #05 Note (0.88a)


Changes
New Achievements
Commentary: We actually prepared not only those few achievements that are presented in this update but also 10 more, which are hidden for now, because they are in relation with the career mode.
GOG Achievements
Commentary: The same ones like on Steam, but on GOG.
Merchant Company - Indicators on the chart
Commentary: We wanted the player to know when and how much was bought in a certain round of certain stimulant.
Letters - Send Button with the price
Black Market - Information on hover about risk and margin
Commentary: It’s different for buying and selling.
Indicator for an unspent exclusive license for press
The Chess Club indicator for the closed club
Visual effects for the button in the whole game
Transition effect between the main menu and game/tutorial
New Screenshots on the game page
Minor UI alterations
Commentary: For example, the panels with Lobby, Expeditions or Quarters react on hover mouse.

Bug Fixes
Explorers’ Training
Commentary: The training is back, we are sorry to keep you with this bug for so long.
Black Market Demand
Commentary: It’s a bug when on the black market you can find the same artifact on Demand and For Sale.
Land Auction Schedule
Commentary: There was a silly mistake, which limited checking the schedule to 1 check per round. This odd limit was terminated.
Chief Editor’s catchphrases
Commentary: Ok, their catchphrases aren’t the bug itself. However, we didn’t want the player to refresh the Chess Club only to get another catchphrase. Every editor is going to have one catchphrase per round.
Flavour texts grammar fix
Random Event ‘The Alpinist’ fix
Commentary: There was a bug in its conditions. It wasn’t a game crashing bug, but it didn’t work as intended. We have fixed its conditions on which it happens, you won’t even see the difference in the game. It took us 2 or 3 days to find this bug, determine the problem and find the right solution, but don’t worry, nobody will ever notice that we have fixed it. But we did.
A bunch of bugs in Tutorial caused by us messing around with the career mode
Commentary: After working on the user interface in the career mode (especially the assets system) we have messed up a lot in the tutorials. We had to relocate some objects on the interface, make a place for more options and add some hovers, which made the tutorial mad. But it’s all good for now.
Flavour text - it’s always Greece
Commentary: The idea is that Flavour Texts, Random Events, the color on the globe and the found artifacts should be all from the same group, for example, from Greece. However, it happened that all flavour texts were always from Greece. What’s even more interesting, this bug didn’t occur in the 0.83a build, and we are talking about it just for your amusement.
A motherload of bugs in Career mode
Commentary: Yes, we did that, but you won’t tell, because the Career isn’t available yet.
Wrong graphic design for Share your story (Press tab)
Commentary: In fact, we didn’t fix it, we just made a step back, because the new graphic design is being fixed and we used our temporary graphic for that pop-up. It’s like we made two steps forward, but the second one was bad, so we made one step back and from your perspective, we did one step forward, which is nice and if you hadn’t read this commentary you would assume that it’s a progress.
A lot of minor text corrections
Gifts in the relation’s reports
Commentary: There was a bug which didn’t show the true impact of the correct gifts for the particular press relations. The math worked good, but the reports contained a bug, it’s fixed now.

Summary
It’s probably our smallest update, or at least we feel like it’s the smallest update because we did so much more in last month, but we can’t show it to you yet, because we were working on the career mode. There was a lot of testing for us, adjustments and preparing structures for new animation clips and sounds. We have been debugging our game just to place new bugs in it a few days later. It was a rough month for our development team, but our effort won’t be seen in the current build. In fact, this is the last update before the full release. We plan to exit the early access and we would love to do so in 6 to 8 weeks from now, but there’s still a lot to do. We have currently 32 tasks on our board and we are completing them one by one.
With this update, we also launch a week sale on Steam (20% off) and it is also the last sale before the full release. We don’t want to tell you that it’s the best time to buy our game, but it’s the best time to buy our game if you don’t want to wait for the full release.
We are excited and thrilled because we are closer to the full release with every day of our work. But with the excitement there’s also a lot of stress, the pressure is on, we hope that you, the players will like out career mode, we don’t want to disappoint you and we are doing our best to deliver you the best quality. We know (and you should know it too by now) that Archeo: Shinar won’t be AAA game, but in our hearts, it’s not just a little indie game, it’s our little big adventure and we are going to give our best to polish it.
During the early access, we have heard a lot of criticism, which wasn’t always constructive, but there were also words of support. And we are going on and on thanks to your kindness and patience. We love to see you playing Archeo, we scream when we see that you're doing something wrong and we smile when you achieve new goals in our game. It’s been a wonderful 5 months in this early access, but we don’t want to stay here for longer than it’s necessary. The money is tight, but the money is always tight and we don’t take it as an excuse.
Before the full release, we are going to present to you a new gameplay trailer (the old one is from the un-updated game, which doesn’t show a lot of features) and the story trailer. We hope you are thrilled just like us and can’t wait for the full release. We have that big twist prepared for you in the career mode, and it’s harder and harder for us to stay quiet for us.
What’s also interesting is that we are going to announce a new project. We are still busy with Archeo: Shinar, and we didn’t have a lot of time to work on it, but we think that a few weeks after the full release you can expect this announcement. And don’t worry, we won’t go back to the super hardcore arcade games like Zquirrels Jump, our next project will be developed by us (no second developer or publisher to interfere) and you should expect unexpected! Hope you like new changes (yes, we know, it’s more like bug fixes than changes or new features) and we can’t wait for the full release.
To sum it up, it’s the last update before full release, it’s the last discount before full release and we will have 2 new trailers for you in the next weeks (probably closer to the full release).


Cheers!

Update 1.02


Update note
Spellings fixes - we have fixed a few spelling (the pop-up for 3rd strike for example)
Tutorial frames and stability - Some of you were creative enough to find a way to mess up the tutorial. It was fixed, just like a few simple visual errors.
Sound Options Check - There was one case of a problem with no in-game sound. It should be fixed now.
The ultra-wide resolution, high resolution, 16:10, 16:9 and more resolution support - basically better resolution support. The bug with 'unavailable' resolution for certain setups should be fixed now.
Option to change the place of currency symbol - some of the players found it irritating to have to watch the currency symbol on the other side. Now everybody can easily change that.
Archeopedia from the exit options - we have added a new way to enter the Archeopedia. It's our first move to add the option to hide the Cuppy.
The pointer graphic in the tutorial optimized - more pixels for better resolution.
Window mode - if you want to play the game in a window you now can. To do so just uncheck the fullscreen option in the options.
A few minor bug fixes - there's no place to talk about them because it would be more writing to explain what was done than it was done. There were some minor bugs related to new features or new changes and it wouldn't tell you anything about the current update.

Summary
We have fixed minor issues, created a new task log for next month and prepare the game for further changes. It may not look impressive like story DLC or localization, but the game needed this minor changes. Our next update should cover a few more fixes and options, like hiding Cuppy or introducing a Cheat for the easiest difficulty. We have seen a lot of players wanted to enjoy the story without the struggle. However, the localization won't be that easy for our game. A lot of text is in various forms, tabs and 'flexible' frames. Changing language could cause havoc in the interface and we're going to prepare the game for this scenario. Thank you for your support, warm and kind words, but also for your constructive critique and contribution to our small but growing community.
Cheers!

Update 1.03
Update note
Spelling fixes - we have fixed a few spelling (the unicorn in the explorer's bio for example)
Optimization - We have optimized a few things in the code to make the game run better
Cheat - We have added a cheat. Yes, a cheat. You can acquire money from your family funds just by inputting 'familyfunds' in the game. However, it works only on EASY. You can find a hint about that in the Archeopedia.

Bugs
Currently, Archeo: Shinar uses the Unity game engine's DirectX 11 renderer. However, on a small number of systems we've found it can be less stable and sometimes cause crashes (or frame drops) for some users.
You can use the steps below to force DirectX 9 mode, which might potentially improve stability for you, at the potential cost of image quality and performance issues. This solution worked for all of our study cases.
Fix
Find Archeo: Shinar
In its properties set Launch Options to force DirectX9 (you may need to type "-force-d3d9" (without the quotes)).
Close the properties and enjoy the game.

Summary
We have seen that a lot of players struggle to finish the game, even on easy. That's why we decided to add a simple cheat. We have tested the cheat and put a limit on it (you can't get more than 100k money using it in a single play) to make sure everything is stable (AI sanity especially). This should not only make it easier to finish the game just for the story but also allows to change starting conditions (or to give an advantage to someone) during local multiplayer (custom games). For now, it's just a simple cheat, but we want more than that, we want to allow players to customize custom games even more. However, in our industry, and in life, one needs resources to realize goals. It will take some time to deliver more advanced updates. We are here, working for all of our supporters, on Archeo and also on an unannounced project. With this little update, we wanted to present a fix to the DirectX bug and force a simple cheat allowing you to mess with the game.

Cheers!

Hey dev, there's a bug with the demand on the black market.

Update 1.04


Update note
Spelling fixes - we have fixed a few spellings (the " after 'moderate')
The required explorers' glitch - The game sometimes didn't want to show the number of required explorers, now it's fixed.
Tutorials - From now on the player doesn't need to finish career missions to unlock new tutorials.

Summary
The locked tutorials were a thing in the game to force players to play and learn in a flow, but it's clear that the game isn't easy and significant number of players would like to spend some time in the tutorials before playing real games. Same for local multiplayer. We admit that locking the tutorials behind the career progression was a mistake. It doesn't cost us much work to unlock them, but it cost us a lot of time to talk it through. We asked a question like why should we force players to jump in the game after the first tutorial, what about players who don't want to play career and what if the player is going to spend his first 1 hours of the game in the tutorials. The answer? Unlocked tutorials.

Cheers!

Update 1.05



Update note
Spelling fixes - we have fixed a few spellings (press favours and minor others)
The Demand Bug - The black market decided to cut the demand. Now it should be fixed.


Summary
This is just a quick fix, we felt the urge to fix the demand on the black market as soon as possible.

Cheers!

Update note 1.06
Spelling fixes - we have fixed a few spellings (Press Bio, the letter with expedition reward)
Font size in Press Bio and Opponents Bio - The font is bigger now
Recompense for a strike - We've changed recompense for a strike. Now it's 3000 Pounds on Easy and 1000 Pounds on Normal.
Crashing bug fix - There was a bug causing crashes on some devices. It should be patched now but we are going to keep an eye on the problem. Devices with low RAM (less than 2 GB RAM) can be still vulnerable.
Starting Funds in Custom - We've added an option which allows changing the starting funds for the players in custom games from 0 to 20 000 Pounds.
Highlighted information in Press Bio - The information about preferable stimulant in the Press Bio is now in italics.
The bug on first career letter fix - On some devices, there was a bug messing the first letter in the career from Francisco. It was hard to trace because it didn't appear on the second or next time.
Menu window for Custom and Career updated - new UI design.


Summary
We have traced some bugs which were reported some time ago. We managed to fix them but we are going to keep watching the reports because there can be always more to it. We also wanted to add more options to the local coop custom games, which we did, but only on a micro-scale (aka starting funds).
What are we going to update next? We see that a lot of you struggle with the game (which is ok for us but is not ok for the sales). We are running some test for a new solution to these problems. Hard and Dreadful difficulty won't be affected.
We also want more customization, like the starting funds but in a more creative way.
And yes, we are still working on the spellings and texts, but we are not focused on that at the moment.

We would like to thank you for this year (it's almost a full year for us, we entered the Early Access on 17.01.2019), your support was heartwarming and helpful! We will keep working on improvements in the future. What's more? We are working on our unannounced which we hope to share with you soon!

We would want to especially thank YouTubers, streamers, influencers and people talking about our game for your time and effort! Without you, there would be no Archeo: Shinar in the first place! What a year for games, what a year for archeology, what a year for us! Thank You.

Sincerely
Artists Entertainment