The Quest For The Holy Grail Free DLC was released recently for Renowned Explorers: International Society.

Hey there explorers!

The third and final expansion for Renowned Explorers: Quest For The Holy Grail, the Soundtrack, the Art Book and the Renowned Explorers: Definitive Edition are out... now!

The expansion contains a new expedition in which you follow in the spiritual footsteps of a certain whip-wielding archeologist in search for the ultimate treasure in the Middle-East. Meet mysterious Djinns, alluring belly dancers and even some spoiled cats! And what are those dastardly Anti-Explorers up to this time?

The best part: this new expansion will be completely free for all current and future owners of the Renowned Explorers base game! The DLC should be granted automatically after tonight's update.

Special Community Challenge
To celebrate the release of this new expansion, we will be raffling five copies of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and five copies of The Curious Expedition between the participants of this week's Community Challenge participants!

Soundtrack and Art Book
You can listen to a sample from the Soundtrack here[soundcloud.com], or just go directly to the store page!

The Art Book contains concept art, sketches and fully rendered marketing art, as well as a lot of background information and short pieces of written context, provided by the developers.

Definitive Edition
Are you still missing any of the expansions or the Soundtrack and Art Book? Now is your chance to complete your collection with the Definitive Edition complete-the-set bundle, which includes everything we ever released for Renowned Explorers for an even further discounted price!

Abbey Community
In preparation for the launch of Godhood we have started opening up our new Abbey Community forums[community.abbeygames.com], so come over and say hi!

Have fun playing!

~ the monks from Abbey Games

More to Explore is the expansion to Renowed Explorers that is supposed to add to the replayability of the game by providing new expeditions, more strategic variety, crew relationships and character backstories.

In More To Explore, the first expansion pack for Renowned Explorers, Abbey Games offers even more content and gameplay systems to discover to ensure that the player can keep strategizing and exploring no matter how often they replay Renowned Explorers. The main bulk of content exists of two complete new expeditions, The Andean Adventure and the Lost Island. The former is a 3-star expedition into ancient Incan mountain territory. Here you'll find extremely valuable treasure by helping the different cities rise against the oppressive Emperor. Pay for the Llama Express to jump between areas of the map quickly. The second expedition is The Lost Island. In this new end-game expedition the secrets of the Anti-Explorers will finally be revealed... if your crew is capable enough to make it through. Go above and beyond, and you might just find the prehistoric and dangerous secrets hidden in the mysterious pink mist that covers this island. X--------------------------------------------------------------------------X Following great games like Civilization, Crusader Kings and XCOM, Abbey Games decided to not only add content, but also add gameplay systems to the base game. With characters being the main focus point of Renowned Explorers, the obvious opportunity was to introduce the possibility of crew relationships. With the new Campfire mechanic, you will trigger a campfire once every expedition. Gathered around said campfire, your crew draws on their past and ambitions as they tell Campfire Stories of your choice. These stories play like cards from a deck, where each story has the ability to transform both your strategy and your crew. Compose different crews to create new decks and unlock new stories after every adventure. A second important change in this expansion are Treasure Bonus Choices. These ensure that treasures will be sweet surprises, even after you've found them for the first time and have learned their benefits. Treasures already offered powerful bonusses, but in More To Explore they will instead offer you a choice among 3 to 5 bonusses, drawn randomly from pools themed per expedition and treasure. This allows the player to pick a bonus that fits their strategy so that treasure discovery becomes a chance to enforce the plans you have for your crew.

Features

• The Andean Adventure expedition: a 3-star expedition into ancient Incan mountain territory where you help the local people rise up against the oppressive emperor.
• The Lost Island: a new end-game expedition in which the secrets of the Anti-Explorers will finally be revealed... if your crew is capable enough to make it through.
• The Campfire mechanic: introducing crew relationships, back stories and game-changing upgrades.
• Treasure Bonus Choices, turning treasures into surprises by offering semi-random bonus choices that boost your strategy.

History

In 2012, four computer science students decided to start a game company called Abbey Games. Soon after they moved to their first office they finished their ambitious god game named Reus. Reus was a big success with 800,000+ units sold on Steam and GoG. This allowed Abbey Games to start on their most recent ambition; Renowned Explorers, a turn-based strategy adventure roguelite, built in a self-developed game engine: AbbeyCore.

With Renowned Explorers outperforming Reus in terms of player feedback (94% positive on Steam) and playtime (9.5 hours on average, SteamSpy), Abbey Games decided to continue support for Renowned Explorers. This started out as a biweekly patch program throughout 2015. When the year was over the community had grown so much that the Abbey decided an expansion pack was justified. Renowned Explorers: More To Explore has been in the works since the start of 2016 and is now almost finished. It aims extend the game's replayability by dozens of hours by increasing strategic options as well as role-playing potential.

A new free DLC Mali Mystery is available for Renowned Explorers: International Society:

Mali Mystery

Since our release in September we have had a very positive response by a community full of Renowned Explorers. For us developers it's great to be in the forums when people are so appreciative of the game we've been working on so hard. And many of you are helpful in making the community a nice place. This response inspired us to expand upon the game with a new expedition, available now as a one-time free DLC, which is automatically downloaded.

You'll find the Mali Mystery is a level 2 expedition. This means it's available as a choice right after completing your random starter expedition.

Except for this large content boost, we'll be updating the game with smaller updates every two weeks for the rest of 2015. These will focus on balance, but might contain new secrets and adventures too :)

You'll meet new characters and discover fresh adventures and treasures in a set of new environments in Mali.

On top of this we've added Leaderboards. You'll find them in the main menu. They'll show a list of all your own campaigns, both successful and failed ones. But what is more interesting to aspiring World Famous Explorers is that you can now also compare your best scores with the best scores of your Steam friends. Time to start thinking about your optimal strategy with Ivan!

Now, it's time to start discovering all the new mysteries in Mali. We hope you'll enjoy it! If so, please consider writing a positive review and leaving a comment in the Community Hub. That always helps and shows us we should do this more often ;)

Go find yourself some treasures, explorer!

There's an interesting background article from creative lead Adriaan Jansen on Gamasutra as well:

Price of innovation

Innovation is one of those things that always seem right, especially in a creative point of view. Why would you not try to find a new and exciting place for games to go? There's a limitless amount of experiences untouched by our beautiful medium, and even more directions you can take with them! A good and unique game will always find an audience, you hear often. It might be hard to make it a good game, but if you believe you can, it's worth it. Right?

In this piece, I want to use a game I was the creative lead for at Abbey Games, namely Renowned Explorers: International Society, to point out some costs attached to innovation. They're all pretty logical, but it's easy to ignore them when you're enthusiastic about your new invention!

Background

Abbey Games created our first game Reus in 2013, which was a huge success. We then went on to create a new project: Renowned Explorers: International Society (RE:IS). The vision of RE:IS was to pick a fun theme (Verne-esque explorers), create an innovative game in a niche (strategy), full of character and with a feeling of global scale. Besides that, we had to keep the technical vision of Abbey Games in mind: using our technological knowledge to create new opportunities.

RE:IS is an strategy adventure game, which you could describe as a mix between Indiana Jones, choose your own adventure, and X-COM:Enemy Unknown. You choose a group of 3 adventurers, all with their unique skills, and go out to find great treasures in order to become the most renowned explorers.

It features three layers of gameplay - tactics, exploration and preparation - which all influence each other. Conflicts are solved through a tactical game, where your abilities can also be verbal actions. We call this Attitude-based gameplay. You can be aggressive by using normal combat, devious by bullying your opponent into submission, or friendly by making friends of them. Your approach will break their will to resist you (spirit) until they are convinced (by feels or force depending on your choice). You can also switch between the approaches with different results and reactions, as they're all tied to the same system (Which Nikhil Murthy picked up and explained better). In short, you can seduce a group of mummies or fight them, all in the same tactical "combat".

[...]

Gamepressure has reviewed Renowned Explorers: International Society:

Renowned Explorers: International Society review – feeling like Indiana Jones

Abbey Games Studios once again wants to challenge all fans of the strategy genre. This time, the Dutch team will put you in the shoes of 19th century treasure hunters to take part in their thrilling adventures, often on par with those of Indiana Jones.

Renowned Explorers: International Society is one of that games that can confuse, when you first see them. Simply because there’s no other title to compare it to and prepare you for what’s for you in store. The brief tutorial doesn’t help much either; it does spare you the details, but at the same time, it doesn’t cover everything it should. It doesn’t take much time, however, to see that under the guise of adventurous undertakings there are a lot of things we’ve seen before.

Our endeavor begins as we assemble a multinational team of three explorers, beginning with its Captain. Every explorer is assigned four characteristics: class (Scientist, Fighter, Scout, or Speaker), perks, stats (defining the number of “lives”, attack power, defenses and so on), and a unique trait that is in effect only when a character is chosen as the team’s Captain. Tough choices from the very beginning, it would seem. Luckily, the creators have prepared descriptions for each explorer that suggest some good companions to complement him/her – you can just follow one of their suggestions, if you’d like.

[...]

When you begin to play Renowned Explorers you may think it’s just another simple indie game. As it turns out, the developers from Abbey Games offers a significant number of creative solutions. Interesting mechanics are complimented by the gorgeous atmosphere of the game with its humoristic approach to a setting we rarely see in video games. All wrapped up in very pleasant visuals. As far as the technical aspects go, only the somewhat repetitive music and some minor interface issues (like overlapping menu elements) could be pointed out as negatives. In the dozen+ of hours I’ve spent playing the game, I haven’t witnessed a single freeze or crash – it’s getting hard finding such performance lately.

A single playthrough on normal difficulty takes roughly 4 hours. If by then, the game doesn’t have you hooked, nothing what happens afterwards will change that. It got me hooked alright, and soon I found myself picking a new team of explorers to try a different strategy. Unfortunately, the subsequent playthroughs weren’t different enough to praise the game for its replay value, which is the crucial aspect for this kind of game, and, as a result, the final score has suffered a bit. Nevertheless, if you like turn-based strategy games, would like to try a fresh approach to old mechanics, and have nothing against a short playthrough time, you can add one point to the score.

Score: 7.5 Good

PROS:

• the atmosphere;
• interesting gameplay mechanics, employing several original solutions;
• many hours of fun;
• diversified difficulty level;
• pleasant visuals;
• requires strategic thinking.

CONS:

• some of the gameplay mechanics are left without proper introduction;
• (for some people) randomness to certain elements of the game;
• repetitive soundtrack;
• some small technical issues.

Freedom CGC reviewed the Strategy RPG Renowned Explorers: International Society:

Renowned Explorers: International Society {Review}

There is treasure somewhere on this island, I am certain of it, and my team of would-be explorers is determined to find it. But getting to it will not be that easy and there are surprises around every turn. As we make our way through the jungle, we encounter a group of monkeys being berated by another, rather mean group of monkeys led by a peculiar blue monkey. We could simply ignore the incident and be on our way, but that is not who we are. We decide to step in and a fight ensues. The blue monkey is relentless in slinging insults towards us, which depletes our spirit and makes us want to run away in tears, but we persevere. We could beat them up or be mean to them in return in order to teach them a lesson, but we decide on a different approach. We are being super nice to them, which catches them off-guard and convinces them that we are pretty cool people. Both groups of monkeys end up being influenced by our friendly approach.

This is the kind of decision-making that permeates throughout Renowned Explorers: International Society, a vibrant and entertaining mash-up of various genres, including adventure, turn-based strategy, and role-playing. You begin by making a party of three explorers, each with their own unique abilities. Some are friendly diplomats, some are aggressive warriors, whereas others are devious scientists. There are a lot more characters to choose from with a nice amount of variety in traits and abilities. Once you choose your party, you set out to explore exotic locations around the world in an effort to become the most renowned international explorer. Each location acts as its own separate expedition on which you can gather gold, status, research, and insight. After a successful expedition, you return to your headquarters in London and spend the accrued resources on equipment that increases your stats, entourage that enables you to collect more resources, and technologies that give you an edge on the following expeditions.

[...]

Renowned Explorers: International Society is an easy recommendation for anyone looking for something a bit different. It successfully manages to combine gameplay elements from several genres into a single, cohesive whole. It is a colorful, lighthearted romp that feels like a mash-up of Monkey Island and XCOM, which is definitely worth playing, in my opinion. However, it does not quite deliver the depth and replay value synonymous with the best rogue-likes out there.

7 OUT OF 10 (VERY GOOD)

Thanks Eye!

Our Eye spotted two more reviews of Renowed Explorers: International Society.

Bagogames, 9

Renowned Explorers is a fast paced game. A session consists of visiting 6 locales in the world to try and get enough renown to become number one. One of these sessions took me 2 -4 hours to complete. This is refreshing, as a lot of games these days take somewhere between 10 – 100 hours to finish, depending on the genre.  This is a great reminder that games do not need to be hours upon hours long to have a great value.

I was surprised by how solid of a game Renowned Explorers: International Society really is. It feels like a board game made with the PC in mind. It is fast paced, customizable, and gives the player a lot of pure fun in the end. It hits all the right buttons in me with its humor, and it feels rewarding to play. I can see myself go back to it plenty of more times, especially when in need of a less time consuming game.

SteamFirst, 5/5

There are not many games that are perfect, so finding at least one aspect that can be improved in any given title is normally a simple feat. When it came to Renowned Explorers, I had to actively search for a flaw, and had to ponder what could make the game better. Besides adding extra elements to increase the game’s replay value, I feel like this title is close to perfection. It accomplished everything it set out to achieve, and successfully provided me with an enjoyable gaming experience, filled with critical thinking and a bucket full of laughs. This game is worth every penny of the $19 asking price. If you agree, you can find it here. If you are an achievement fiend, the 136 this games provides will surely wet your pallet. If you decide to pick up the game, or already have before reading this review, leave a comment with your favorite team combination below. I would love to see how you guys succeeded or failed with certain team mash-ups.

Some more positive reviews for Renowned Explorers: International Society:

Worldgamehub:

Renowned Explorers: International Society is Abbey Games latest game and was released on September 2, 2015. This review is based on the latest update build that makes the game even more enjoyable and a blast to play. This is a strategy adventure game 19th century exploration with rogue-like elements, risk and reward like gameplay. There are around 20 characters with each their own traits and expertise to help with the adventure. Travel past wolves, smugglers and angry natives and become the most Renowned Explorer of the 19th century while trying to outwit your nemesis Rivaleux that will use his all to stop you.

[...]

Overall Renowned Explorers: International Society is an epic fun-adventure game to be played multiple times to discover new encounters and create your own stories. Abbey Games has done a fantastic job. It has funny moments, decisions, great strategy gameplay, and makes it feel like it is your own adventure. It is like an adventure cartoon series as well with awesome art visuals and great presentations for the beginning and ending of the explorations picture informations. The procedural explorations and options of choosing crew members brings it high replay value to come back to try out different crew combinations. The gameplay is pure fun and tactical greatness as well. There are various options to help and upgrade your crew to success to the explorations to uncover for Renowned treasures. I had a blast playing this and I highly recommend it to be played for all thanks to the great accessibility for the game to be played how you like. I am going to play more now and create new adventures. Thoughts on the review or questions for the game let me know in the comments below. Leaving a comment will get you a chance for a random winner to win a copy of the game for Steam.

Rating: Fantastic

That VideoGame Blog:

Renowned Explorers: International Society is the latest game to come out from developer Abbey Games. This game takes the player on a global search for fame and riches , throwing plenty else at them along the way. If your childhood was filled with dreams of becoming the next Indiana Jones  – the adventurer part, not the professor – then this is the game for you.

[...]

This game is well worth the buy. The playthroughs themselves are short, but there is so much room for variation and experimentation on each playthrough that I really don’t think you can ever have the same experience twice. If you’ve ever wanted to explore the far reaches of the world without having to deal without roughing it, check out Renowned Explorers: International Society on Steam.

• Gameplay - 9/10
• Plot - 7/10
• Design - 9/10

Summary

+ Colorful maps to explore
+ A unique encounter system where insults hurt just as much as swords
+ High replayability factor
- Some combat mechanics make encounters difficult
- Overall plot is familiar

Score: 8/10

Cassie Parks (Pixeldynamo) has reviewed Renowned Explorers: International Society:

Abbey Games’ first venture was Reus, a strategy god game where you control giants and help shape a world populated with people who are constantly trying to murder one another. The developer’s second game, Renowned Explorers: International Society, is another take on the strategy genre, but one that goes in rather a different direction: Renowned Explorers takes itself far less seriously than Reus and most other strategic games.

As I battened down the hatches and jumped into the adventure strategy game set in the 19th century, I found this attitude wholly unexpected and refreshing, a stance that helps Renowned Explorers to stand out among other games in the genre.

Colourful Crews

You begin your adventure by selecting your Captain and his/her crew. You can select from a pretty diverse cast of characters in each of four categories: Scientists, Fighters, Scouts and Speakers. The character portraits are drawn in a simple, clean style, which I presume have been somewhat inspired by manga. This clean, bold, Japanese-influenced art style can be seen throughout the game’s backgrounds and animation models and works well when combined with the game’s over-the-top, anime-styled sense of humour–something I’ll discuss in more detail later on.

Each character has a unique set of traits and skills to help you decide which play style you want to use in combat encounters. These attributes will help you both in combat and the game’s more chance-based encounters that occur throughout the maps, where percentages are used to determine how high a chance your character has at, say, climbing a rope or building a raft. [...]

Verdict

Renowned Explorers: International Society takes itself less seriously than I expected it to, which really worked in the game’s favour. Its elements of chance and selection of bosses make it a game that I want to replay. I can see myself sinking a good few hours into Renowned Explorers each day, replaying and experimenting with different crew combinations in order to defeat tricky bosses and discover new treasures.

If you’re someone who likes to think long and hard about your combat strategies and crew combinations to ensure a winning game every time, Renowned Explorers may not be for you, though. The game encourages spontaneity, and a “Let’s just try this out and see what happens” attitude not seen in many other strategy RPGs. However, if you have a thirst for adventure or you enjoy combat encounters that aren’t all about mindless killing, Renowned Explorers: International Society could be a treasure just waiting to be unearthed.

Score: 7.5/10

Summary:

A fun take on the strategy genre which favours being played over and over again.

The Escapist, couldn't esape Eye's watchfull eye, when they checked out Renowed Explorers - International Society.

However, true to form, exploration should never feel easy. It should fight back, clawing tooth and nail against every success. The victorious won should be hard fought and well-earned, and that's something that Renowned Explorers neither hold back on nor apologizes for. The bosses especially, those that guard the expedition's ultimate treasures, come with an infinite sea of enemies, and are themselves tanks on the battlefield. Every exploration that succeeds comes with the renown of a fantastic discovery, and comes at the end of a grueling trail, bathed in the sweat and blood of the explorers that faced it.

Reid Gacke (OnlySP) has reviewed the recently released strategy RPG Renowned Explorers: International Society:

[...]

Each of the 20 potential party members has unique and varied skills and abilities. You could choose the more-than-slightly-mad scientist Anna Proskuriakova who is well-versed in electromagnetics and engineering…and able to electrocute anyone who stands in her way if they’re not terrified into fleeing by her insane cackle first. Or the adorable Austrian stage magician Hildegard Haas, who can charm even the coldest (or most violent heart) with her honeyed words or a well-timed magic trick. Or the aggrivating Kiwi Paakariki, whose cutting jabs can cause enemies to go into a frothing frenzy.

And the best part is, each of these strengths manifest just as you would expect them to. Anna is an exceptional attacker who can also intimidate her enemies into a terrified state. Hildegard is very good at making her enemies rethink their desire to attack her team through her charm and stage tricks. And Kiwi can distract an opponent by sending them into a mad, frothing rage…making them more vulnerable for one of your beefier explorers to take out.

This is where Renowned Explorers shines and may even be revolutionary. It makes debates and rhetorical approaches to conflict fun…all by simply turning them all into a combat scenario where you use words as attacks as much as your fists. Sure, in a lot of fights you are exchanging physical blows with people you disagree with. But you may just as often be debating with a bunch of loud-mouthed hick villagers about the merits of science and the study of ancient artifacts. Or trying to trick some simple rube out of their treasures. And Renowned Explorers treats all of these as combat scenarios, with your words – either friendly or devious – being used as rhetorical “attacks.”

[...]

Renowned Explorers: International Society has been reviewed by John Paul Jones (Game Watcher):

A surprising discovery

Much like the assorted treasure that players uncover in Renowned Explorers: International Society, so too is the game itself both a surprising and welcome discovery. A turn-based tactical adventure that really wouldn’t look out of place as a tabletop board game, Renowned Explorers is a title which is supremely easy to like with its deft and entertainingly light-hearted take on exploration all the while packing a metric ton of replay value into the bargain.

Before anything, the very first thing that you’ll notice about Renowned Explorers is just how wonderfully colourful and charming everything looks. With richly vibrant cartoon style characters and brightly designed menus, backgrounds and maps that are easy to navigate, Renowned Explorers is incredibly easy on the eyes and does a commendable job of appealing to both older and younger audiences alike. [...]