You can check out Expeditions: Conquistador this weekend. The next part in the series - Expeditions: Viking - will be released next week:

Expeditions: Conquistador

Conquer the New world: In the 16th Century, Spanish explorers and soldiers reached the shores of America. The search for gold, fame, and adventure drove these travelers into a treacherous wilderness where they faced hunger, disease, and dangerous predators. In their wake, the Aztec Empires lay in ruins.

Re-write the history of the Conquistadors: Forge diplomatic alliances with the natives... or crush the savages and bring civilization to the pagan tribes! Create an expedition of individual characters: Choose your followers wisely from over 30 characters, but be careful - they each have their own traits, opinions and moral standards.

Hunt for unimaginable riches and fight intense battles in the unforgiving jungle. In this turn based strategy RPG, a cunning plan is as vital as thoughtful resource management. Expeditions: Conquistador offers a rich storyline separated into two campaigns, challenging players throughout 25+ hours of gameplay. Strategy veterans as well as newbies will find their turn-based El Dorado!

Features

• Discover the New World! Travel to legendary locations in America, roam the jungle on the hunt for mystical temples as well as ancient ruins.
• Create your own party of followers! Choose from more than 30 characters, train your recruits and lead them to battle. Coach them as they will develop from untrained recruits to fierce battlefield veterans.
• Four highly customisable difficulty levels will challenge pros and newbies alike. But be warned: The Iron Man mode is a real beast!
• Choice & Consequence: Use your skills to avoid hostility or, when diplomacy breaks down, adapt your tactics to highly varied terrains across more than 70 battlefields.
• Challenge your friends to tactical PvP combat in either Hot Seat mode or via TCP/ICP.

 

Expeditions: Conquistador is reviewed by Complete Nonsense Reviews.

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Developed by Danish indie dev studio Logic Artists, Expeditions: Conquistador is an incredibly well-designed game, especially when you consider that this was their second release and their very first PC game, the first one being a mobile title.

Expeditions: Conquistador features quite a bit of content, branching storylines, challenging combat, some very interesting resource and party management mechanics and not to mention some pretty atmospheric music to boot.

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Tomorrow at 10.00 CET the embargo ends on letting you know about the new Expeditions game. In the meantime you can get Expeditions: Conquistador at Good old Games with a 70% discount.

The Expeditions: Conquistador Kickstarter page has been updated with information of the sequel they are working on. You can participate in the guessing game of what the next title will be about.

GUESS THE NEXT EXPEDITIONS

We’re going on a new Expedition! It has been two glorious years since the release of our Historical RPG Expeditions: Conquistador and to you, our wonderful community of Kickstarter backers and players we are pleased to announce a Sequel! 

Yes friends, it’s time again to gather a party of allies and explore new lands in search of riches, fame, and adventure. The question on the forefront of your minds might be, but where? Or more appropriately, when?!? Our official announcement will come next week, but until then, you are invited to have some fun with us and GUESS THE NEXT EXPEDITIONS on Facebook and Twitter! 

 For your efforts you will be rewarded handsomely with an exclusive invitation to our closed BETA! Please limit your guess to 1 per person. 

 To participate: 

 On Twitter: follow us @LogicArtists and RT our post with your guess and the hashtag #expeditionsnext 

https://twitter.com/logicartists

 On Facebook: On Facebook like our new Expeditions Series page and comment on the GUESS THE NEXT EXPEDITIONS Post:

https://www.facebook.com/ExpeditionsSeries

I don't think I am allowed to participate as I already know the answer. What they had for the sequel was shown to me and whoever was there from the codex at Gamescom last year.

Thanks for reporting this, goes to HHR.

Gamasutra is hosting another GDC Vault Video this time about Expeditions: Conquistador, and they talk about whether it's worth it to localize your own indie game.

Figuring out whether or not to localize your game, and to what extent, is a personal decision for every developer.

But without the benefit of publisher support, small-scale and independent game makers may be hard-pressed to understand exactly what the process entails, and whether it's a good idea for their project.

Thankfully, at GDC 2014's Localization Summit an indie developer and an experienced game localizer gave a great talk on the topic using the localization of the indie game Expeditions: Conquistador as a case study.

Their brief talk offers key info that indie game developers should know about localization, like: how much does it cost? Will you recoup the investment of the localization? What's the best way to go about it?

Bundle Central sent me news you can buy Expeditions: Conquistador for $1.99 as part of their Bundle Central Debut sale. Not a bad deal if you haven't played the game yet.

Our team is pleased to announce our Debut bundle. In particular interest to your readers is Expeditions: Conquistador now featuring the level editor. Grab this excellent game and as well as: Humanity Asset Thunder Wolves Super Killer Hornet: Resurrection and Rain Blood Chronicles: Mirage Available for a limited time from BundleCentral.com.

Logic Games annouces the Fabula Event Editor is now avaible free to all owners of
Expeditions: Conquistador. I mentioned the editor before in another thread.

Build your Own Story in Expeditions: Conquistador

Editor for tactical role-playing game released

Eschborn, May 27, 2014: As of now brave adventurers can create their own content for Expeditions: Conquistador . The Fabula Event Editor has been released by Logic Artists, the developer of Expeditions: Conquistador . With this XML editor, players can change existing content or generate completely new events. Players can change quests and rewards or write their own narration. With these tools, they can modify the original campaigns to their own tastes and share them with their friends.

Expeditions: Conquistador is available on Steam for PC, Mac and Linux for $19.99 / €19.99 / £17.99. The editor will come free for owners of the game.
Just follow the link to the Steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/237430/

Expeditions: Conquistador is also available on GOG.com, GamersGate, Greenman Gaming, Desura and the Humble Store. The project was financed through Kickstarter and developed by the Danish development studio Logic Artists ApS. bitComposer Games distributes Expeditions: Conquistador worldwide.   

Logic Artists has a new post on the Expeditions: Conquistador forums they have  released a free Event Editor called Fabula that opens the door for modding.

An introductory look at and 'how to' for the Fabula Event Editor we (Logic Artists) used for our PC/Mac/Linux game title Expeditions: Conquistador. The Fabula Editor will allow users to add to the existing game or create their own game MODs, and language translations.

It has been a while since we posted any news for Expeditions: Conquistador. The game had a few updates since november that I missed. Here is a recap.

Well everyone, we did it! 

The Expeditions: Conquistador Kickstarter is done, the game is out, and all the rewards have been sent out! 

Some Lessons Learned:

Regarding Kickstarter we setup our project after spending some time looking at what other game devs had done before us but nothing can compare to the lessons we learned about exclusive content when it comes to making games.

1. Give everyone a Beta Key. After reviewing our experience, and with the feedback from a number of backers, we can strongly recommend that you give all backers access to a beta key for your game. As a small team, it is difficult to get enough feedback pre-release regarding the user’s experience. We feel that you can’t have too much user feedback when it comes to making games and so for those of you out there working in small teams that are looking to kickstart a game the backers are incredibly helpful and passionate about the games they back. Let them help you!

2. Give exclusive in-game content, but only for a limited time. Backers, we know you love that juicy exclusive content! But it makes everyone else sad, and a bit jealous. Ultimately what we want to avoid as devs is exclusive in-game boosts. What we have learned is that this additional content was very cool. So for Kickstarter Devs, giving backers early access instead of completely exclusive assets might be a way to keep the general gaming community (non-backers) from feeling alienated.

3. Constant and Consistent Communication is key. We think that a bi-monthly or weekly update about the different trials of the project could be very valuable, not just to interested backers but to act as a developer diary of sorts, where we was devs can go back and be reminded of the different trials of development. We also think that this update should be performed by various members of the development team based on their role in the development.

What we have Achieved:

1. For our first PC title we are extremely proud of the current 77/100 Meta Score and user score of 8.3/10 on Meta Critic.

2. 30+ hours of Gameplay and the completion of a number of our KS stretch goals, even though we didn’t hit the stretch.

3. This has also allowed us to increase the size of the development team to 12 people which gives us a great deal more flexibility in our development process, and we have begun working on new projects. We’ve already got them in the pipeline, so you will be seeing more games released from us here at Logic Artists in the next few years.

Kudos:

Kudos to you backers! All that stuff we just wrote about in the update and more is thanks to you folks believing in our idea. We could not have done it without your support not just your donations but also all of the helpful comments and suggestions you have shared with us, both here and on the forums!

Destructoid has finally posted their review for Expeditions: Conquistador, and gave it a final score of 8.5/10.

Expeditions: Conquistador is a hard game, because being alive during the time in which it takes place was hard. It's no easy feat to survive the harsh wilderness with an entire team depending on you for treatment and food, all the while waging war on enemy troops and unpredictable bandits.

I do wish that the game eased up a bit in the early-goings instead of using the trial-by-fire approach that seems to be in place currently, as such an approach would've allowed the player to get better acquainted with the deep and intelligent battle system. At the very least, Conquistador's acceptance of player failure makes it possible to experience its excellent writing.

Flash of Steel checks out Expeditions: Conquistador and pays special attention to it's historical correctness or lack thereof.

In short, Expeditions: Conquistador gets the balance of the historical message completely right – the people that chose to become conquistadors were brave, foolhardy and largely doomed. Cortes is, rightfully, seen today as one of the harbingers of genocide in the Americas; his success in Mexico led to a rush of gold seekers and brutal governors. But he was also the kind of man that gets legends told about him because what he did seemed impossible.

The tactical battles in Conquistador are, unfortunately, the weakest part of the game. To their credit, they aren’t as incomprehensible as many of the battles in Omerta or as repetitive as the admittedly awesome fights in XCom. But they also don’t make a lot of sense. Why am I restricted to six fighters if I am being ambushed? Why is this jungle path so conveniently strewn with fallen logs for cover? How did that poison Taino arrow get through my armor? Why did I screw up and choose a priest instead of a hunter for this fight? (Ok, that last one is my fault.)

The Digital Fix has reviewed Expeditions: conquistador and awarded it with a score of 8.

Sadly it’s not all peaches and cream. Some units and abilities feel horribly underpowered. Scholars, who are critical for the crafting mentioned above (which in turn is essential for the more difficult stages), can bolster other units with additional actions per turn but it’s easier and more effective to just have another unit in their place altogether. Ranged units, which should dominate given the theme, are very weak; their hallmark ability Quick Shot (two reduced accuracy shots) is almost entirely useless. Troops can be upgraded with equipment but, as another scarce resource you barter for along with rations and medicine, there’s never enough to go round, so preparation before each battle involves a tedious reallocation of kit to whoever you’re sending to fight.

Although most levels are well laid out there are inconsistencies. In one example I had surprised my opponent and was given the option to set an ambush. Despite this advantage, I was thoroughly trounced. After reloading the battle to try the other option - a direct challenge on the open field - the revised map was actually much more advantageous than the layout for my “ambush”, which had spread my troops out too wide to be of much use. In other cases levels are a bit busy with foliage or items and it can be hard to accurately select and move your troops. This can be potentially fatal when you’re on the verge of winning or losing and you accidentally send someone in entirely the wrong direction.

Logic Artists SRPG Expeditions: Conquistador has received a free content patch that provides a bunch of gameplay, graphics, and usability improvements.

We promised actual content, didn’t we? Well, you’ll be excited to hear that we’ve added 14 new events: three new Guard Failure events (each of which involves a new battle), two Tinkering events, one new Patrol event (with another new battle!), one new Treatment event, two new Travel events, and five new personal camping events for certain followers that didn’t have any.

There’s a bunch of other little tweaks and additions that you can find in the full changelog, but the last important thing to mention is that Mexico is now substantially harder. If you want the true Conquistador experience, you’ll still have to dial the difficulty up to Aguirre, but all difficulty settings now have much improved balance in Mexico:

• You’ll routinely come up against enemy groups that match your troops in rank and equipment.
• Certain fights are now on a turn timer.
• Food from hunting no longer scales with your party size (such that the more followers you have, the harder it gets to feed them all).
• There’s less meat and herbs in Mexico in general.
• All critical hits break your equipment.
• All enemies now get random passive abilities corresponding to their rank.
• Construction costs for items have been massively increased.
• There is now a limit to how many items of each type you can bring into a battle based on your Tactics skill.

The update is already available on Steam and awaiting approval on Desura. GOG and GamersGate will follow in a few days, they need time to build their own update installers. We hope you’ll enjoy all this new stuff and convenient improvements, and we hope you’ll now find Mexico is the challenge that it was always meant to be. Don’t be afraid to turn up the difficulty if you find yourself steamrolling through! And please do swing by our forums (yes you have to register to comment) and let us know what you think of the update, and above all – have fun.

A rather low score of 6 out of 10 for Expeditions: Conquistador was handed out by CPU Gamer, of which the reviewer also thinks that Kickstarter will never work for computer games.

Expeditions: Conquistador is a Kickstarter funded game. Kickstarter is a neat idea and I totally respect it as a way to fundraise, but I don’t think it will ever work for computer games. Blizzard got where it is today by releasing games “when they’re done”, but Kickstarter games are released on a tight schedule, and generally have to match what they said they were going to be in the Kickstarter campaign, with little room for improvement or refinements that would make a better game than what was advertised. The campaign in this case reached the $70,000 goal with a few bucks to spare, and they did release the game quickly. Props for that… past that, I wish they’d refined the game.

The summary of the game is brief.

There’s just barely enough here to make a passable game, but it’s a near thing, and only those who can handle the short-sightedness of the design will likely get the most out of it.

The people from Leviathyn have reviewed the soundtrack of Expeditions: Conquistador and thought it was very much worth listening to.

Two of my favorite tracks, Conquistador and Xaltocan are often heard on the world map. Being an indie title, you’d think constantly hearing them would bring a bout of boredom, but that affliction never takes hold. Xaltocan begins with a twangy, string-play and, after a short wait, is followed up by an awesome wood-wind ensemble. The center of the track owns a brutally intoxicating melody that is only rivaled by Conquistador’s. Still holding as the most proud of the bunch, Conquistador could probably be considered the signature track of the game. Easily listenable in or out of the game, music would have to be your enemy for you not to enjoy this one.

New Gamer Nation rated Expeditions: Conquistador with an 8 in their review of the game.

Poking around the woods and camping is amusing enough for me not to feel overly disincentivized, but I wish there were a bit more reward for the risk I’m taking and resources I’m using to do it. There isn’t much depth to the overworld exploration; let me stumble upon the Fountain of Youth or something off the beaten path, rather than just bounce back and forth between objective points on the map. In terms of depth, most of it seems to be in the leveling of squad members’ abilities, tweaking them to provide the boosts you need to make a specific soldier the exact right one for a specific tactical situation. With limited capacity to rank up your crew, you will also have to choose these abilities wisely. This is the part of the game that truly shines, and I’ve been having a blast planning out which soldier to design into a hard-charging slugger, and which is one better equipped to pick her way through an area I think might expose her to traps or poison. Should my hunter get more mobile or more accurate? Developer Logic Artists deserves props for delivering the best team-tinkering I’ve played since XCOM.

Here are a few more reviews for Expeditions: Conquistador.

Indie Luchador, 4/5

Outside of combat, Expeditions Conquistador has a lot of great RPG elements. You will take missions from the Spanish governor as well as others along the way. The dialogue for this is great and makes you feel like you're in the historical time period of the 1500s. The characters match the setting perfectly, and saying the right thing can give you an advantage. You can use things such as diplomacy to avoid combat in certain situations altogether. You will also have a lot of interactions with your team of conquistadors -- during exploration you may take some time out to get to know a few of them better or make some decisions based on their actions. This can help them trust you or despise you and everyone on your team will react in a positive or negative way depending on your reaction. These decisions range from outside opportunities for team members or even religious beliefs which really adds morality and your own belief structure into the game. This helps to gain attachments to some of the characters, and it is some great storytelling.

Rock Paper Shotgun

Although the writing, and its depiction of characters both American and European, doesn’t shy from the horrors of the situation, the portrayal has enough complexity to avoid generalisation. Indeed, it uses fantasy tropes – forbidden rites, abandoned temples, mysterious shaman – and then casts them on their head. The writers also avoid the temptation of creating pure and noble natives pitched against thoroughly nasty Europeans. The people, whatever their culture, are flawed, interesting and frequently unusual.

The characters and plotlines are the game’s strength and they’re strong enough that even when I was feeling the strain of yet more wandering, camp management and combat, I still wanted to continue, to see what happened next. In its depiction of the theme and times, the writing hits the sweet spot between historical accuracy and flexibility, allowing female characters much more active roles on the frontline than might be expected, and permitting the player to make decisions that are modern and almost entirely based on hindsight and an anachronistic worldview.

Leviathyn, 9

No matter where you are in the world, what you do, how the people are spoken to, the decisions that you make, everything affects each and every person in your crew. Have a few aggressive followers? They won’t hesitate to assert their feelings on the natives, but don’t be too hasty! The more open-minded, peaceful folk might take offense to purging a town full of women and children. Do enough to upset specific followers and they could leave your expedition altogether or, even worse, rise up in attempted mutiny. Character interaction on this level hasn’t been done this well since Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn – which, to those in the know, understand how large of a feat that is.

This last review is also available in a video version

Universal Gaming Reviews add their positive review of Expeditions: Conquistador to the list.

Overall, Expeditions Conquistador is an excellent game that isn’t without its own foibles but it’s a game that feels like a lot of work has gone into crafting the experience and is not only well written but incredibly in-depth and well thought out. It’s a game that may not appeal to some people and it’s incredibly high difficulty and somewhat steep learning curve may deter a few people but it’s a fun game overall and while it may be aggravating losing battles often the game gives you a lot of customization in the difficulty of the game and it’s a game that I can gladly recommend giving a shot, especially if you like historical turn based strategy games or tactical RPG’s with a twist.

GhanBuriGhan jumped on the review copy I had to offer for Expeditions: Conquistador and came back with a lot of things to tell us about the game.

Combat is brutal: while ranged attacks may miss, melee attacks always hit, though damage is variable. It's an interesting choice that works well: you'll get the nail-biting "please, please, hit!" effect when your hunter tries to take out an enemy that is bound to incapacitate one of your soldiers the next round. At the same time you get a considerable amount of predictability for the melee units, which supports tactical decision making: if a combatant gets surrounded and attacked by two or three opponents he will usually be incapacitated in the same round. An incapacitated follower has a chance of receiving a wound of varying degrees of severity, which after the battle will need to be treated in camp before the follower can be used again.

In most battles your goal is simply to eliminate the opposition, but some scenarios have you fight a defensive battle, where your objective is to survive a number of rounds, or where you have to get everyone to an escape zone instead. I found that a "victory" often meant having one or two doomed men left standing surrounded by enemies when the counter ran out and the opposition miraculously decided that I had beaten them after all. A bit too abstract for my liking, but the different win conditions force you to use different strategies, so from a gameplay perspective it does add variety.

While our review of Expeditions: Conquistador will be published later today, here are two other reviews.

RPGCodex

Throughout the game, you’ll combat an array of foes: Aztec, Totonac, Spanish, Mayan, Carib and Taíno. The combat map requires that the player be clever in positioning his/her troops in order to minimise ranged damage taken, to funnel the enemy into choke points, and to cut off access to the player’s own ranged units. There are several different combat modes on offer, from survival (survive ten turns against hard odds), to cutting off an enemy’s retreat (prevent enemies from reaching an escape zone), escaping an enemy yourself, and of course, straight up melee. As I mentioned above, the player is able to deploy a number of aids in combat—barricades and traps—which give the player an advantage in directing the flow of enemy movement; beware, however, that the enemy can sometimes employ these same tricks.

The combat AI has been, in my experience, very good if not excellent. The enemy will attempt to flank your position; they will focus fire on a weakened, cursed or poisoned companion; they will make a bee-line for unprotected ranged units, or undefended zones which would allow them to outmanoeuvre the player. Occasionally, they will suffer a bout of stupidity, and charge straight for the player, usually falling in the process, but overall the AI is intelligent and solid and on harder difficulties provides a firm tactical challenge which can easily stop the unprepared player in his/her tracks.

The Leet, 3/5

Expeditions: Conquistador looks nice however lack polish, players and NPCs glitch here and there which shows the lack of polish however the environments look highly detailed and nice and sharp especially during combat.

When it comes to venturing in the wilderness, the sense of danger heightens which impressed me as it feels eerie and lonely until you come to any signs of civilization. The cut scenes look like a series of paintings you would see at your local museum which didn’t do it for me however it does manager to tell the story.

Replay value comes in the form as multiple difficulty levels and a multiplayer skirmish mode.

While you are still waiting for our review, here are again two other reviews of Exepditions: Conquistador.

IncGamers, 8:

Combat itself is a turn-based, hex-centric affair between (for the most part) skirmish parties. You’ll usually have six people on your team (but sometimes three-five) and be up against similar numbers. Six versus eight may sound especially daunting, but if you get complacent the enemy AI can take you apart. Troops who go down on the battlefield may pick up an injury, so if you get crushed in a six-on-six match you could end up with a severely overworked doctor and the chance of losing someone.

Knowing the strengths and talents of your group is crucial; from the quick, hit-and-run scouts to supportive scholars. It’s also handy to know that playing defensively tends to be key. Make good use of traps, look for flanking opportunities (this occurs when you’ve got someone on each direct side of an enemy) and utilise your troops’ abilities. It helps to know what skills your foe might have too, but unless I’ve missed it there doesn’t seem to be a way of finding this out. Instead, you just have to learn what (for example) a shaman is capable of.

Combat is also where I encountered my most serious bug; an infinite death loop that forced a full quit from the game. I’ve also hit one that reset my leader’s scouting stat to five (ignoring the points I pumped into it at the beginning of the game,) and at one stage was unable to turn in some completed quests. Though that latter issue was solved by doing some other activities for a bit and then returning to the area.

Playturn, 7.5:

 

The game presents a very tight view of your nearby surroundings. This view does a good job of keeping the sense of exploration in the forefront, as it keeps you on edge as what’s coming around the next bend.  As you progress through the game, the sense of the unknown doesn’t really abate very much, as the scope and scale of the maps are pretty impressive.  The terrain itself was a formidable component of the game play, as foraging, finding campground, food and supplies is all portrayed in a enjoyable and engaging way. And the endless amount of foliage provides great cover for countless native ambushes. It all combines to be an asset and a liability in a way that is pretty unique.

 One thing about the game that may bother some players is the amount of reading that is required. It’s not an obnoxious amount, but it is sizable. However, it is often rewarding, as much of the text reveals more about your party and the people you encounter. It helps you to develop better bonds within the world of the game, and provides a great deal of back story about your environment. But, if you’re looking for a click and dash type of game, the amount of text may be off-putting.

While you are waiting for our review, here are two other reviews for Expeditions: Conquistador.

Armless Octopus, 4/5:

Overall, I was surprised at how much fun I had playing Expeditions: Conquistador. Underneath the complex systems is an easy game to play, requiring just the one hand on the mouse to do everything. Discovering how the different systems affect each other was also intriguing given how new I am to the genre. The game is rather pleasant to look at, too. Though it doesn’t feature exceptional graphics, the land is colorful and varied and easy on the eyes for extended play sessions. Sound effects are appreciably visceral, and the soundtrack for battles in particular is invigorating without going overboard. The shortcomings in execution come through as bugs, such as infinite death loops that prevent input, and one bug that was almost game-breaking and required a quit to the main menu to shimmy out. I saved often, but the game could afford more checkpoint saves, such as right before battle. Thankfully, bugs didn’t happen often or consistently, and the game loads quickly.

Gamezebo, 4.5/5:

Expeditions: Conquistador uses an interesting advancement mechanic where experience is gained by the part as a whole, and then doled out as you see fit. Followers learn new abilities as they get promoted, in addition to getting better at what they already do. Loot falls into one generic “Equipment” category, where it can be spent as points to upgrade the weapons and armor of party members. That and the valuables you gain (which can be traded in towns for more supplies or equipment) are some of the few colorless parts of an otherwise imaginative game.

Since you don’t even get to the mainland of what we now like to call North America without proving your mettle by assisting the governor of Hispaniola, the campaign seems like it provides plenty of material to seek your RPG teeth into. Replay value comes in the form of multiple difficulty levels, and a multiplayer mode was recently added to allow players to match wits within the combat mode.

Expeditions: Conquistador is available now for download at various locations such a Good Old Games for $17.99, and Gamersgate and Desura, which lists the game for me at 17.99 and 19,99 Euro respectively, both more expensive than Good Old Games, but this might be difference if you see all of them in dollars.

Here is the launch trailer.

Forum member Ranger brings news of his sites review for Expeditions: Conquistador from Softpedia. If anyone has any questions be sure to ask him.

  The good:                                                   The bad:
   + Deep game world                                      - Strategic map viewpoint
   + Interesting exploration mechanics            - Some text overload
   + Solid tactical battles

                                        Final score: 8 / 10

 

The island of Expeditions is a rather inhospitable land and players will have to manage resources ranging from food to medicine, deciding each evening how to best protect their camp, how far to range for new supplies and how to use specialists like the party doctor.

Starvation is a real threat, as I found out during my very first game, when just a lucky boar encounter allowed me to get back to base after thieves made off with the majority of my rations.

As the game progresses, gamers can also talk to their followers, uncovering more information about them and about their views on the colonization mission and the natives.

Expeditions: Conquistador could have remained just a management game focused on the overland map and it would still have delivered an impressive set of gameplay ideas. The biggest problem is that the start of the campaign is relatively set in stone, which makes restarting to explore new options somewhat of a chore.

We have another early review for Expeditions: Conquistador. This time from a site called Invisioncommunity.co.uk.

Expeditions: Conquistador is a fantastic little strategy game which incorporates the best elements of the strategy and role-playing games of old while adding new elements to construct what is a highly tactical, well thought out and exciting game to play. Every element of the game and the survival of the player’s crew is placed in the hands of the player to control; from exploration to camping to fighting. Straight from the off you are put in charge of your destiny as you select your crew members from a details and varied selection which will genuinely influence the way the game unfolds. While you follow a set storyline to an extent, you have the power to influence the direction of this story and very much make it your own. While high end, modern graphics may have been sacrificed in this instance, this decision does not affect how enjoyable the game is to play, and can indeed be seen as a worthy sacrifice. All in all this is a game well worth picking up for fans of detailed strategy adventures and will certainly provide a great level of enjoyment and thought-provoking situations which will impress and entice strategy game fans in general.

Here is something you don't see too often: A review of a soundtrack. In this case for Expeditions: Conquistador and Game Scouts is reviewing it.

Odds are you've never heard of Leonardo Badinella or Danish publisher and developer Logic Artists; but, that's absolutely no reason not to pay attention to this sensibly composed soundtrack. Allow me to set the scene: Exepeditions Conquistador is a story-driven tactical role playing game that has players managing various expedition resources and troop morale, while playing as a Spanish expedition. Throughout the course of your exploration of the New World, you will encounter other Spaniards and various native tribes. Badinella, who has experience composing for television commercials and working with independent musicians and bands as a recording engineer, mixer and producer, had quite the project in front of him.

And the devs of the game also went on Twitch.tv to play the game and answer questions.

Although we were told not to bring a review before the release date (which we won't as we won't have it ready by then), here is IGN Denmark's review of Expeditions: Conquistador, which is in Danish, but I could figure out the rating was an 8.

This is the Google translated version of it, which is bound to be funnier than the original one, from which this is the conclusion:

Expeditions: Conquistador is in spite of many small errors a large Danish success. It contains many different elements, and yawns perhaps more than it can accommodate, leading to bugs and design flaws here and there, but sometimes it is the sum greater than the parts, and indie game, engulfed me as games rarely do. The good story, the depth of one's expedition, the harsh consequences and the tactical battle is all helping to create a total experience that made the trip to the new kingdom to an exciting and engaging and, above all fun experience.

Perhaps one of our Danish residents could give us better intel on this review.

Gamezebo has taken a look at Expeditions: Conquistador, which could not have been too long as the article about it is rather short.

Instead of leading a party through monster-filled dungeons, Expeditions: Conquistador will challenge you to assemble a group from more than 30 different followers to help your explorer seek out riches and fame in the mysterious land that a bunch of us now call home. That would be the Americas, though the game includes both real and legendary locales. The choice between slashing and burning your way across the New World or trying a more diplomatic approach is yours, but the developers at Logic Artists are claiming that there will be serious consequences for every decision.

Logic Artists sends word on their kickstartrer page that the launch of Expeditions: Conquistador is Imminent.

Hello again backers and welcome to one of the very last project updates for Expeditions: Conquistador.  The long awaited and speculated release is finally at hand, and we are very eager to deliver our release build to you all, but first, the update news:

What?

The full version of the game Expeditions: Conquistador, this very Kickstarter project is on the last leg of its amazing journey! But some of you may not know that we did a fair bit more than we promised for this game in our original goals here on KS, so you are in for an even grander gaming experience than you might be expecting!

For starters we achieved our first two stretch goals, even though we didn’t reach the stretch pledge numbers. So every time a player promotes one of their expedition members they can select from 30+ passive abilities to boost the unit in combat. Our second stretch goal also was reached, we created greater variations in character models, and further boosted the quality of the character animations as well.

We also implemented two concepts that came out of KS Backer suggestions: the Player Fortress-- which you as the player can capture and improve, and the detailed camping system which also includes ‘tinkering’ a skill in which the unit can build equipment or research expeditionary improvements.

We also implemented something that we really wanted to do as well, a Multi-player skirmish mode. And while we got some negative feedback for it, if you enjoy the game, and enjoy the combat, you will most likely also enjoy the PvP. It is available in two modes oldschool Hot-seat (taking turns on the same computer, like back in the days before the internet), and TCP/IP which will allow you to play with a friend on a different computer, whether you are on Windows, Mac, or Linux system.

It has been a long and exciting road, we want to thank you for being such helpful and supportive backers, it is with your shared thoughts and feedback that we’ve been able to complete this project. Expeditions: Conquistador is something we are very proud of and we hope you enjoy it.

Where?

Expeditions: Conquistador will be available on all of the distribution channels we asked you to choose from earlier in the project, that includes GoG, Desura, and GamersGate but we are also pleased to announce that leaving Steam Greenlight and partnering with bitComposer has got us now on Steam as well. While hints have been made to that end throughout various discussionary forums around the web (including here), we wanted to wait until we had the SDK in our hands before we started getting too excited. The good news is that our preliminary work with it has taken quite nicely to our code and we’re ready to announce a release date.

But before that, Steam is decidedly not DRM-free and that may not matter to some of you but it does matter to others, so we are offering a Steam key to each of you our backers who pledged 15 dollars and up on top of the GoG, Desura, or GamersGate option you selected in the Backers Survey. If you would like a Steam key simply private message us using your kickstarter account with tagline ‘Steam ID’, send us your actual steamID in that message, and we will send a key directly to the Steam account you message to us once the keys are generated. This should prevent any of you who want a Steam version but don’t want to publicly lose your anti-DRM street cred. here on Kickstarter from being found out-- if that type of thing is of particular importance to you. To be double clear, you will be getting a DRM-free key to one of these three sites: GoG, Desura, and GamersGate, and if you want a Steam key write to us, we will send you one of those as well.

Back to more news, bitComposer is doing more than just putting us on Steam, they have also offered to help with regionalizing and distribution in Russia (and perhaps Germany if all goes well), this is terrific news for us all as we don’t have the manpower or resources ourselves to do a proper Russian or German translation. We also have provided a tool for users to play with their own translations if they want to (some people requested this feature), the readme file explaining the process is included in the game build.

When?

The long awaited release date: May 30, 2013 (Which is before the end of Q2 by a whole month!). Once the game is up on the various distribution sites we will be able to generate the redeem codes for each of you based on the platform you chose already in the survey.

Logic Artists sends a press release that a deal has been made to publish Expeditions: Conquistador.

Copenhagen, Denmark / Eschborn, Germany - April 12, 2013: Expeditions: Conquistador, a tactical role-playing game will be out by end of the second quarter 2013, offering PC adventurers an exciting and until now rarely used theme: the time of the exploration and conquest of the Americas.  Players will face difficult moral decisions as they attempt to successfully lead an Expedition of NPCs through the harsh wilderness of the historical New World. The game project, developed by Danish development studio Logic Artists was completed with the aid of a successful Kickstarter campaign. bitComposer Games will market Expeditions: Conquistador worldwide.

About Expeditions: Conquistador

It is the 16th century – an era of intrepid explorers and adventurers. In Expeditions: Conquistador, the player takes on the role of a famous—or infamous—conquistador, landing on the shores of the Americas, and with that, the New World. On the search for gold, fame, and adventure, the player and a few companions venture into regions never before explored by Europeans. Expeditions: Conquistador offers the player in single or multiplayer mode the opportunity to conquer an unknown continent, or to fight on the side of the indigenous people as they defend their homeland from invaders. This will require not only tactical skills in battle, but also diplomatic finesse. The multitude of tactical possibilities in the turn-based battles, the numerous role-playing elements, and the wide scope for decision making all pose a daunting challenge.

Further information on Expeditions: Conquistador can be found on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ExpeditionsConquistador or www.bitcomposer.com

KEY FEATURES

·    Four different difficulty levels for beginners and pros alike. But beware: the Aguirre (pro) difficulty level is a real monster!

·   Brutal battles or peaceful diplomacy: survive all engagements on over 70 battlefields!

·   Discover the New World! Journey to legendary locations within the Americas and blaze the trail to mystical El Dorado.

·  Select your expeditionary group from more than 30 characters. Train your recruits, and lead them into battle. Direct their development from inexperienced beginners to proficient warriors.

·     Create your main character with individual qualities – as well as strengths and weaknesses.

·  Journey across a gigantic world map full of authentic and legendary places.

·   Challenge your friends in multiplayer battles, whether in hot seat or in TCP/IP mode.

·   Taking turns: a turn based strategy role-playing game with plenty of retro charm in modern garb.

 

More information about the delay in the release of Expeditions: Conquistador is given on their Kickstarter page.

 

You may have been wondering what the hell is up. Our website has been down for ages, we’ve been a bit tight-lipped about the reasons for the delay, you’ve started wondering if we sold the game to a social gaming company and moved into a monolithic office building filled wall-to-wall with cubicles.

Let me assure you that this is not the case, and that other than the continued delay, there is only good news.

A week or so ago we let slip on our forums that we’ve signed a deal with bitComposer to bring the game to market. This deal has changed precisely zero things about the game. We didn’t want a publisher to interfere with our product (hence our use of Kickstarter to fund a considerable part of it) and bitComposer didn’t want to interfere with our product, so that all worked out nicely. Just to be absolutely clear, we already had multiplayer done and polished by the time we signed this deal, that was entirely our own decision and bitComposer had nothing to do with it.

bitComposer brings three things to the table: they’ll fund a German localisation if the game sells well enough in English and Spanish, they’ll help us out with marketing, and through them we’ll get access to a greater range of distribution than we could reach on our own, including physical distribution via Amazon as well as in shops. Yeah, apparently some people still buy their games in shops – go figure.

So what’s with the delay? Well as you may have picked up from our embarrassingly uncoordinated attempts to explain it, there is more than one reason for that. First, the delay was because we were talking to bitComposer. Then the delay was because we were waiting to work things out with some major distributors, and though we’re still waiting on that, we expect to be able to release the game this month.

Throughout the delay, we’ve been fixing the new bugs in the Mexico campaign and polishing everything off. Other than bug fixes, the polish mostly took the shape of extra animations (new animations for the horse, turn animations in combat, a cheering audience for the tournament, and so on), a whole lot of interface tweaks (better Info screen layout, some flashes to call attention to resource changes during dialogue or probability changes in the Camp Management screen), a few more sound effects (mainly different GUI sounds so you don’t get sick and tired of that one sharp click we had before), and we even managed to fit in a little more environment art while we were at it.

As for the website, that’s actually completely unrelated to any of this, believe it or not. A friend offered to make us a new website for the game, and he did a very good job on it, but he also accidentally nuked our old WordPress database while he was at it. The new website is done, but it needs a few tweaks to reflect the state of the game. We’ll try to put the finishing touches on the site ourselves and then get logicartists.com redirected until we get around to making a new website for the company.

Thank you for your patience, and please accept our profound apologies for the delay and the vagueness. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments, and we’ll answer everything that we actually know the answer for, scout’s honour.

With a rating of 4 out of 5 Invision Community reviewed Expeditions: Conquistador.

Combat is always tricky. If you actually loose a fight, the enemy takes advantage and raids your supplies and injures (or kills) members of your camp. Experience is rewarded by progressing through quests and not from winning battles, so the risks associated with fighting are not always worth the rewards. As combat has large implications on exploration, it should never be undertaken easily. The fighting Is well designed, but simple and has been crafted in such a way that its extremely difficult, risky an always meaningful. Each member of your team is a cog in a larger machine and is vital, so putting one at rick is never something to be taken lightly. As each member has different skills necessary for exploration and balancing resources, even characters that do not fight can contribute to camp.

Also each of the characters in your party have different personalities so they stick out instead of being back characters to the main protagonist. When starting the game, the player is not just choosing from the best stats of each player but also choosing a backstory as each member comes with a well written narrative and explains why they want to explore the new world. Each character has a nice big oil painting of them, which is a cool feature. Moreover, they also have three personality traits each such as peaceful, greedy, adventurous and so on which makes the game feel quite Neverwinter Nights esq. These effect the way they will react to your decisions and they may go up or down depending on the choices which you make throughout the game.

A bit late as the info was already sent out, but we recieved the official press release on the delay of Expeditions: Conquistador and its new multiplayer mode.

Logic Artists, developer of the eagerly awaited tactical RPG Expeditions: Conquistador, today announced that the release date of the Kickstarter-financed title has been pushed back by a few weeks. The additional time until release will be invested in balancing and graphics. Kickstarter supporters who contributed more than $30 for the development will receive the current build of the game for download on the previously announced release date as a goody to tide them over during the wait. But fans of the Kickstarter-financed tactical RPG can look forward to a previously unannounced multiplayer mode.

Expeditions: Conquistador
Release delay and multiplayer

The official release date for Expeditions: Conquistador has been pushed back a few weeks. But fans of the Kickstarter-financed tactical RPG can look forward to a previously unannounced multiplayer mode.

Copenhagen, Denmark; 27 February 2013 – Logic Artists, developer of the eagerly awaited tactical RPG Expeditions: Conquistador, today announced that the release date of the Kickstarter-financed title has been pushed back by a few weeks. The additional time until release will be invested in balancing and graphics. Kickstarter supporters who contributed more than $30 for the development will receive the current build of the game for download on the previously announced release date as a goody to tide them over during the wait.

Logic Artists is also pleased to be able to announce a brand-new multiplayer mode for Expeditions: Conquistador. This will be a part of the main game from the first day. By hot seat or Internet connection, players will be able to discover who has the better strategy in a skirmish mode. Logic Artists wants to ensure their fans that the delay of the title has nothing to do with the multiplayer mode, which is already finished.
For more information on Expeditions: Conquistador, visit the official Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ExpeditionsConquistador. The new release date will be announced as soon as possible.

Besides that also a set of five screenshots were distributed. The first two are displaying UI elelements of the multiplayer mode.

The most recent update for Expeditions: Conquistadors informs us of a shift in the release date, without mentioning the new date and also that they now have multiplayer support.

Let's just get the bad news out of the way first: we have to push the release date. I suppose this is particularly disappointing given both the lateness of the announcement as well as the fact that everybody has been lauding us for making the release date, but this is how it is: the game is in a pretty good state, and we could release it now, under other circumstances. Of course we're missing some of the polish we'd like to apply to the game, but it works, it's playable, and it's good fun.

Unfortunately some distribution complications have come up. We're honestly not sure how much we're supposed to talk about this, and I don't want to cast anybody as the villain here - nobody has done anything wrong, it's just that kind of situation where things turned out to be a little more complicated than we'd hoped, and we need a little extra time to get our ducks in a row.

The upshot is that we'll have time to finish polishing the game, implementing the last little nice-to-have animations and helpful GUI details, and testing it more thoroughly to make sure there are as few bugs as possible upon release. Additionally, to mitigate the disappointment of the pushed release date, we're going to release another build of the game for all Kickstarter backers who gave $30 or more. You can expect a link in your e-mail on Thursday when the game was supposed to come out.

That's not the good news though. The good news is that we're going to have multiplayer. A few of the previews that hit the Internet over the past couple of weeks mentioned it, but here's the official word: Expeditions: Conquistador will feature a hotseat and TCP/IP skirmish mode where you and a friend can connect to each other and pitch your tactical cunning against each other. I assure you this is not the reason for the delay - the multiplayer is already implemented and working quite nicely.

If adding multiplayer seems a bit tacked-on to you, then... you're correct. It was basically something we added for our own amusement, because the more we tested the combat in singleplayer, the more we wanted to play against each other. In particularly, I just had this powerful urge to see if I could beat our combat programmer Casper (I couldn't - in fact he completely destroyed me). I'll even admit that the multiplayer has in fact detracted a little bit from the singleplayer, in that Casper has had less time to polish the campaign because he had to work on the multiplayer, but now that we have a little extra time on the clock, we'll be able to catch up on that.

We'll also be able to localise the game into German, as we've long been hoping to do. I know we've flip-flopped a little on that question, as our financial situation changed along the way, but we finally sent all the text yesterday to be translated into German, a few days after our Spanish translation came back from Pink Noise (and word from Juan is that it's very nicely translated, and they really hit the right tone for the game).

RPGCodex has an article offering some development info on Expeditions: Conquistador based on a visit to the Logic Artists studios.

The combat in the preview build of Conquistador that we got our hands on felt very basic at some points, and it seemed the optimal strategy was often to focus on bringing down single enemies, going from enemy to enemy. When faced with this opinion, Wæver ponders for a spell, and then says: “I think the tactical challenge in our combat doesn't necessarily come from the system itself. The actual battlefield is hugely important in terms of what you can and cannot do. We really focused on getting a lot of different layouts in and also different configurations. Sometimes you're flanked when combat begins, sometimes you're only attacked from one side, sometimes you're surrounded, or your dudes are spread out.” Eskildsen adds: “yeah, or you have to reach a certain part of the map.” “Yeah,” Wæver continues, “we also have different victory conditions. All this requires different tactics, obviously. I think that we just focused on having a flexible combat system more than having a super-complex one. So that you will have to kind of analyze the tactical situation more than the system. There are a fair few battlefields where if you just kind of play them on autopilot – simply advance and try to take the enemy out – you will get creamed, because a lot of the time there's more of them than of you. So a lot of the time you have to think “hmm, how do I get these guys to where I want them, how to get them in a position where I can flank them?”” Wæver and Eskildsen add that the preview build contains only 15 battles out of the full game's 75, that these are among the first battles the team actually designed (and therefore have simple, flat terrain for example), and that these battles are at the beginning of the game and are therefore easier than what you can expect in the game's later stages.

PopMatters brings us a review of Expeditions: Conquistador, rating it with an 8.

The complicated and delicate premise of the game deserves its own treatment, but for what it’s worth, the press preview that this review is based on approaches the content in an intelligent and interesting way. Expeditions Conquistador doesn’t romanticize its source material, but it also seems to deliberately make light of it at times. There’s sometimes a low tolerance for ambiguity when it comes to how art approaches social justice, but the caveat is that Imperialism is not a respectful process. The developers appear to know that. It should be said that, according to the Kickstarter page, the finished game will include a campaign from the perspective of an Aztec war band. There was also a stretch goal that would have included a campaign set in the Inca empire that was not reached, though hopefully plans for it have not been totally abandoned. The game boldly walks a thin line, but until a finished product can be evaluated, it can’t be said whether it succeeds or not with regards to its racial dynamics.

Thanks Darklord.

The German site Gamers.de has previewed Expeditions: Conquistador. The preview is in German, but here is the summary in English:

Not everybody will like Expeditions: Conquistador as I mentioned already when the first beta was released a few months ago and my summary is not much different from that preview.
What is offered is a hardcore RPG in a refreshing setting with a high difficulty, mainly caused by it not being balanced well, which might lead to a high frustration level. Because of that the game reminds me a bit of X-Com: Terror from the Deep, the second alien tactics game released in 1995.

Still, the new environment, the low price, the exciting group dynamics and the sense of adventure as the journey on new soil results in a romantic feeling of freedom and danger, make Expeditions: Conquistador especially enjoyable to the more demanding role player and the historically interested player.

Iron Tower's Vince posted screenshot-heavy impressions of Expeditions: Conquistador from a press build they received:

The dialogue system is nicely done. It shows your resources, different options, and what's been said previously. Most options appear to be aimed at role-playing a personality and sometimes you're forced to go along no matter what you say, but the different outcomes are there as well. For example, if you leave one of party members behind to guard your cargo (the game's resources), it will be safe and sound. If you don't, you'll lose some to thieves. Very text-adventurish.

Speaking of the resources, you have:

- Valuables - generic treasure you'll be using to buy things and bribe officials.
- Medicine to heal wounded (more on that later)
- Rations to eat every day to keep morale steady (hungry men start getting all kinda ideas)
- Equipment (upgrades weapon and armor of your troop whatever that means)

We've added 41 brand new high-res screenshots for Logic Artists upcoming RPG Expeditions: Conquistador. You can find them in the gallery.

Gamers.de interviewed the developers of Expeditions: Conquistador, available in both the German and English language, in contrast to the game itself that will not be available in the German language.

Gamers: Are there games, which you consider as a source of inspiration for "Expeditions: Conquistator"? If yes, which games would that be? 

Logic Artists: In terms of the overall structure of the game, we’ve taken a lot of inspiration from King’s Bounty – that style of riding around a miniaturized world map in real-time and then loading up a smaller battlefield divided into a hex grid whenever there’s combat, which in turn was taken from the Heroes of Might & Magic series, that’s obviously something we’ve used.

The combat itself is more like a traditional turn-based RPG though, like you’d find in the two original Fallout games for example. We’ve also used certain elements from Dungeons & Dragons, such as the relationship between movement and actions or concepts like attacks of opportunity. Finally, we have the roster of troops that you select from when you go into battle, which can get permanent injuries if they’re knocked out, which is inspired either by the original Rainbow Six or the original X-COM, depending on how you look at it.

Gamers: Back in August 2012, I had the chance to play the first beta-version of your game and I already liked what I saw very much. But there have been many changes to the game since then. Which aspect of the game changed the most in your opinion?

Logic Artists: The world map is probably the aspect that’s changed the most – pretty much immediately after Gamescom, we removed the hex grid from the world map so you now just ride around freely. It makes the game look better because the hexes don’t get in the way, and it feels a lot less restrictive because you have more freedom in where to go and how to get there. It also allowed us to change the way you interact with objects a little – instead of going to a hex that contains an icon, you now just click on an object in the game world to activate it, just like in King’s Bounty, and that feels a lot better, more natural sort of.

The combat has changed in a lot of ways too, though. We’ve replaced all the animations since you played the game, we have more enemy types, every character type has different models now, with visual variation to show the quality of their armour and weapons, we’ve more items, you can decide what type of weapon each follower should use, our GUI has been improved, we have more types of victory condition in the battles, and so on and so forth. Plus, we have a whole second campaign set in Mexico, of course! We’ve done a LOT in those 6 months.

We didn't mention the updated release date explicitly in the last Kickstarter update newsbit. Logic Artists' upcoming RPG Expeditions: Conquistador is nearing completion. Release is on Feb 28th 2013.

Two updates came available on Kickstarter for Expeditions: Conquistador last week. The first update talks about the progress on the Mexico campaign.

 

at's one of the in-doors battles we've put together for the Mexico campaign. Mechanically, there's not much separating the interior battle scenes from the normal exterior battles, but the sort of layouts you'll get inside a building will obviously change the flow of combat significantly.

If you squint, you'll also notice several new features in the screenshot. First off, we got three more Native classes into the game: Champions (two different versions depending on their faction), Amazons, and Civilians. The main purpose of the civilians is to make you feel really bad when you decide to slaughter a whole town of defenceless natives. However, certain battles will have victory conditions where civilians may actually pose a significant threat, such as Prevent Escape where the battle is lost if any enemy spends a full turn in a certain area.

The second update shows a video update showing a handful of new features.

Indiegamemag has taken a look into Expeditions: Conquistador mentioning it would be available in January 2013.

All told, Expeditions: Conquistador is shaping up to be an interesting game, aiming to combine classic RPG decision making, rich storytelling, lively characters, and a deep and rewarding combat system.  With any luck, January 2013 will be another great year for indie games, with Expeditions: Conquistador at the helm.

Gaming Daily share their insights into Expeditions: Conquistador with us based on an early build of the game.

While there are obvious early build issues (many of which have been acknowledged by developer Logic Artists) that need to be resolved, there are more than enough working elements present to get excited about as Expeditions: Conquistador nears release. The combat is tactically deep and allowing character and team development through skill points stays true to the  traditions of ‘choose your own adventure’ without feeling old fashioned. The fact that I was taken in by it surprised me somewhat and it leaves me with no hesitation in recommending it to fans of turn-based RPGs.

The Kickstarter page of Expeditions: Conquistador has been updated with what they have been doing after reaching their goal and the news that the forums are online.

Hello! Here's a quick post just so you know we didn't just take your money and run off to the Caimans.

First off, thank you for your patience. After a rather long and hard but incredibly exciting week, we are all back in the office now and in good health. Today has been spent polishing off the beta build for you all, but we've got a few more fixes and tweaks we want to squeeze in before we send it out. This is mostly about tying together the last few threads that were left hanging loose after we redid the entire fundamental interaction system on the world layer from the bottom up. The upshot is that the beta demo you get to play will be just that much closer to the quality level of the final product.

We've launched our new forums, and you should all feel free to head over there and register if you want. We'll send out your access information for the backer forum tomorrow, and the Paypal account will go up some time this week. I regret that we can't be more specific than that at present, we still have some things to clear up first.

Again, thank you for your patience, not to mention your generosity! More information to follow soon :-)

The Kickstarter campaign for Expeditions: Conquistador wrapped up a few hours back, with a total of $77,247 raised. That means the first stretch mini-goal was raised but we didn't quite make "Choose passive abilities for your followers every time you level up" - perhaps there will be a little flexibility to develop this feature anyway.

RPGCodex has a preview of Expeditions: Conquistador based on their own playing time with a press build.

Expeditions’ plot casts you as a newly embarked explorer in 1518. Pre-empting Cortes' historical overthrow of the Aztec Empire, you arrive in the New World with native civilization still thriving. The interaction between the Aztecs and Spaniards, and the decisions you take over the course of that conflict, appears to form the spine of the plot. All writing is very professionally done, and do a good job of portraying the game setting, being peppered with various references. They are far from spectacular, however. I was never bored or frustrated, but I nevertheless found myself reading through the lines fairly quickly, with no hilarious or memorable gems. My impression from the first few hours was that writing does the job well in the context of the game as a whole, no more and no less.

But what about C&C, Choices and Consequences? It is almost impossible to make a judgment on that at this stage. My conversations with the Spaniards at the starting town did involve several choices, some of which were transparently fake (Do you protest or cooperate? No matter, you have no say anyway), others which appeared to be more cosmetic, and a few which may well have consequences later on. The decisions made in random events and key dialogue events, of course, will have their own gameplay consequences in the loyalty of your followers; a native-loving conquistador will soon find his/her more racist compatriots angry and discontent.

The Kickstarter for Expeditions: Conquistador has been successfully funded, with a mere 60 hours to go ($70,700 / $70,000). The team is naturally interested in finishing on the highest note possible, so the first original stretch goal has been divided in four to encourage pledges. Here's an update from just before they crossed the line:

With $500 left to raise and 3 days still on the clock, our Kickstarter is effectively successful!

Though time is short, we must now turn our attention to the stretch goals. There have been a lot of suggestions in our discussion page about what to do with the stretch goals, and the general consensus seems to be that we'd set our first stretch goal too high.

In response, we've now divided our stretch goals into four. The highest stretch goal (extra campaign) remains the same, and we realise at this point we're unlikely to achieve it, but the other stretch goals now look like this:

Stretch goal 1 - $80,000
Choose passive abilities for your followers every time you level up!

Stretch goal 2 - $90,000
Greater visual variation in the character models

Stretch goal 3 - $100,000
Character ability trees (6-9 active combat abilities per character class)

Of course any excess pledges that fall short of a stretch goal will be put to use on polish and quality assurance. Those of you who believe the game won't be fun without more character customisation, set your eyes on that first stretch goal!

The Plagued Gamer has a 1 hour video showing the gameplay of Expeditions: Conquistador with the voice of Jonas from Logic Artists.

An interview with Jonas from Logic Artists the creators of Expeditions: Conquistador can be found at Pure Sophistry.

What do you think is the most important feature of this game?

I would say our Morale system, that’s something we’re very proud of. Ever follower has certain personality traits which will determine basically when they will loose moral- depending on the loss of that they will chime in with their opinion or perhaps even leave you based on your actions and that morale. We have quite a large amount of followers for a role-playing game- you start off with 10 and you can end up with 30. We keep track of all that based on personality traits which really makes your followers come alive.

How does Kickstarter affect your development cycle? 

One of the biggest chances was taking on the PR responsibilities, we haven’t hired another agency to do it for us. On the other hand- it’s very exciting to be talking directly to the people who are interested in buying the game. it’s almost like you have this pool of people who preordered the game. Of course- a lot of their requests and expectations are completely unreasonable, but that’s part of the fun as well- engaging with them and explaining why certain things won’t work- or that these elements will appear in the game but in a different capacity.

There's around a week to go on Logic Artists' Kickstarter for Expeditions: Conquistador - currently sitting on $55k of a $70k goal, it looks promising but they certainly need every donor they can get. We had the opportunity to play with an early press build, so read on for our impressions:

I was broadly reminded of Mount & Blade-meets-King's Bounty. There's an abstracted view of the game world coupled with hex movement and turn-based, "arena" combat.

The first event players encounter is a minor interaction at the docks, but you can immediately glimpse the potential depth of the dialogue system. There are choices, Diplomacy impacts your success and, sometimes, there are other actions; that first encounter sees local officials confiscating your equipment and supplies and one of the actions is to leave a man behind to make sure nothing is stolen. It's a small event but you can see the potential for bigger choice-and-consequence down the track. I also really appreciated the descriptive text; beyond the actual dialogue lines, you often get descriptions of NPCs' demeanour and reactions. It seems well-written and adds considerable flavour.

Read it all here.

For those who manage the German langauge the guys from Gamers.de mentioned they have a preview of Expeditions:Conquistador.

Here is the translated summary... I think...

"Expeditions: Conquistador" certainly will not please everyone. There will be a lot of reading with no speech, the fighting will take time to complete and travel and quests require planning and forethought. In keeping with the setting I would therefore like to compare the game with an adventure. Some will discover an invaluable wealth of ideas and gameplay consequences, others will go home empty-handed. I belong to the former group and can hardly wait till the financing of the game is completed successfully.

Currently "Expeditions: Conquistador" is a Kickstarter project. It will therefore be up to us to help the small team from Copenhagen in the realization of their dreams!

XP4T have done a preview of Expeditions: Conquistador which is followed by an interview with Jonas Waever the Creative Director of Logic Artists who are creating the game.

You start out as a Captain for a Spanish exploration crew which just arrived in the New World. Talk about a universe of possibility for a premise. I mean, even before you play the game, with this basic idea you imagine freedom and ability to do anything you want!

Conquistador doesn’t disappoint either. Similar to a choose your own adventure game, each conversation with relevant NPCs gives you an interesting series of answers, each of which might prompt a different response from the interlocutor. You build up relationships, whether in good or bad, from the beginning.

XP4T: How deep will the player’s choices influence the NPCs around the world and the story events?

The player’s choices will influence the game to a huge degree. Entire communities will turn on you or rally to support you, people will live, die, or join your enemies to fight you depending on your decisions. We have loads of systems in place behind the scenes to remember your choices and to remember what happened to whom, and your major decisions will even be able to change things on the world map. The sort of choice-and-consequence you may have seen in Hispaniola is only the tip of the iceberg. In the Aztec campaign, we’ll have many more NPCs that you can recruit into your expedition, we’ll have a whole faction system to keep track of your  interactions with the natives, and we’ll have a lot more optional content like side quests and exploration events.

In addition you can also check out their Kiskstarter site for a video and explanation of the worldmap.

Thanks Daniel!

RPG Codex chats with developer Logic Artists about their indie game Expeditions: Conquistador.

Can you explain combat in more detail? How does movement work, and does the terrain have any effect on it? How do barricades work? Does combat primarily consist of attacking and moving, or do you use special actions on each turn?

In combat, there are two things each character can do every turn: they can perform an action, and they can move a certain amount of spaces. The action can be an attack, it can be the use of an ability, or it can be converted into another move. Your movement and your action can be performed in any order, so you can move forward, shoot, and move back if you want (which is in fact a trick the AI uses a lot). Because you get to move all your people before you end your turn, it's fairly straight-forward to set up advanced maneuvres such as flanking or combination-attacks. The terrain has no effect on movement.

In addition to what your followers can do, you also get to bring up to 3 of your inventory items into a battle with you. Just like with character abilities, every one of the items you get are active rather than passive. Two examples of such items are barricades and traps, which you typically get to place before the battle begins. Of course this is only allowed if it makes sense in the context of the event that triggered the battle - if you're attacked in an ambush while travelling, the AI gets to take its turn first, and you will not be able to put down traps or barricades. There will be other items that aren't restricted to the first turn, however.

Don't forget to check out their Kickstarter ($33 / $70k, 18 days to go).

The interesting Kickstarter project Expeditions: Conquistador has posted a Let's Play video that shows off around 10 minutes of combat gameplay. In addition, this latest update also talks about their work to get a press build together and their presence at Gamescom in Germany.

In the meantime, people have been requesting more footage of the game and more information about the play experience. Our game designer Jonas Wæver has recorded Let's Play style videos of two of the battles from the game - one of the early fights as well as a fight about half-way through the Hispaniola campaign. Please watch the first video above, and the next battle video will be up tomorrow. Let us know what you think in the comments here on Kickstarter or on YouTube! If you like it, we'll be sure to produce more of this sort of thing in the future.

Thanks to both Nova and Capt. Huggy Face.

Here's another Kickstarter project, this time sent in by Nova. Expeditions: Conquistador "takes place in central america around 1518, and is a party-based, exploration-fueled RPG with tactical, turn-based combat and tons of choice and consequence." The goal is $70k over the next 38 days.

A story-driven tactical roleplaying game with a touch of strategic resource management and a pinch of choose-your-own-adventure.

Conquistador is set in a rarely visited part of history which is rife with mystery, political intrigue, and good old-fashioned violence. 

You will take on the role of a Spanish Conquistador in South America in 1518-1520. Select the members of your expedition and explore campaign maps based on the actual topological maps of Hispaniola and Mexico. Through intricately branching dialogue, you will engage with the characters and situations that you encounter across these uncharted areas, and when it’s time to spill blood, a tactical combat system of great depth and brutality will let you control your individual troops in battle. 

Combat is intimate and detailed, and failure has great consequences. Every expedition member has a face, a past, a set of personality traits, and of course a combat role - their morale will change depending on your decisions, they will chime in when you're weighing your options, and if they fall in battle, their injuries will carry over to the world map, where they must be treated by your doctors until they're back on their feet. Should you fail to treat your expedition members, they will die and be gone for good.  

Choice and consequence is central to the play experience of Conquistador. As the leader of the expedition, you will face difficult decisions about the use of your troops and your resources, as well as how to engage with the factions of the savage New World. Will you defy history and be a diplomatic envoy of peace? Or will you be a ruthless conqueror determined to lay all of the Aztec Empire at your feet?

 Engaging and intricately branching storyline with difficult decisions and long-term consequences.
• A gallery of unique expedition members who chime in during events & conversations and react to your decisions - pay attention to their morale or you may have to deal with mutiny!
• Random events that throw you into danger, present unexpected opportunities, and build relationships with the members of your expedition.
• High replayability - dynamic endings reflect decisions you've made throughout the story, how much gold you bring with you back to Spain, and how many expedition members you've lost (or gained!) along the way.
• Detailed and tactical combat - make use of flanking, traps & barricades, attacks of opportunity, interrupts, cover & concealment, character abilities, and more.
• Character management - unlock special abilities by promoting your expedition members, assign equipment to your troops, and treat injured or sick characters with a triage system.
• Dynamic trading system - barter with different merchants and buy & sell resources based on local market conditions.
• Campaign maps based on actual topological maps of the Dominican Republic and Mexico.