During my second game, the explore screen got to where the buttons were grayed out; the 'x' to exit the screen did nothing.

I could send more explore parties over and over, but nothing happened, it just returned to the explore screen. So I had to kill the game and lose it.

Same. Also happened on explore screen. For some reason the grayed "explore" button allows me to send out more parties, but I can't exit. Sadly this page is the only google result I can turn up that mentions it...

That sucks...never happened to me (yet, anyway). One reason I try to save my game at least every Sacred Season, just in the event I have a crash or such...at least I haven't lost too much progress. Also, when I am nearing the end of the game (if I make it that far, lol) I will save every Storm season, so I will have the last .txt file to keep as my game history/story

Happened to me too. If i send numerous scout parties, one after another then there is this glitch where i can't return to the original screen and have to kill the game.
Any fix for this?