Inexplicable Games are proud to announce our second game, Showrunner! It's an isometric management game where you create and run your own TV show. Craft scripts, populate your world with characters and cast actors to play them. Hire and manage staff, develop your studio and gain a dedicated following.

It'll be entering Early Access on Steam later this year, head over to the store page to wishlist and keep informed on updates!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2058200/Showrunner/

What feature is most commonly requested for This Merchant Life? You guessed it, a band management system! So we added one.

Become the band's manager, rename them, get them to compose new songs, rename those too... take to road, go on tour, perform in taverns, earn coins, lead them to musical glory all while taking a cool 20% of all their earnings!



There are also a bunch of new road events and we've added visually distinct seasons as well.



Hope you enjoy!



- Added a Band system. Recruit and manage a struggling group of musicians!
- Rather than requiring the player buy or sell a set number of resources during various road events, players can now define how many items they wish to buy/sell up to a set shop limit for each road event, as long as they have enough of the resource (for selling) or space in the cart and gold (for buying). Road events involving buying and selling goods have generally been rebalanced to be a lot more lucrative.
- Seasons added, each lasting two months. The world map and travel backgrounds change depending on the season, and the percentage chances of various scenarios occuring vary depending on the season (for example heatwaves will only occur in summer and occasionally spring, severe cold weather does not occur during summer etc)
- Guard number requirements added for various existing and new road events.
- Combat missions are no longer limited to being set to specific roads and can now be set for any road leading from the current settlement.


- Adjusted the weighting of various combat events as part of introducing some new ones.
- Buying armour from Jack in road event 110 made much cheaper
- Upped the duration of various cart stat bonus effects gained from road events
- Reduced requirements for all 'sell x of a resouce' achievements
- Exotic resource stocks reduced
- Made it slightly easier to get zero wounds from a victory in an autogenerated battle


- 31 new road events
- 9 new band-specific road events
- 5 new Steam achievements


- Fixed text font bug on hero deploy screen during combat

We've added an Auto Resolve to combat for those that don't fancy directing their fighters in every battle!




- Auto Resolve option added to combat. Takes into account your current forces (including perks, deployment time, heroes, cart defences) and gives a battle result with a random element also involved in the final outcome. Can be used for all fights except for a small selection of key story battles.


- Ranged fighters (local hunters and archers) will now only appear in taverns from player level 5 onwards.
- Increased payback extensions from 2 to 3.


- Added much briefer tutorial messages for combat, with the original extended versions available with a 'more' button each the tutorial.


- Actually I Need a Dozen Heroes achievement should now unlock correctly
- Old fighter data should now be properly cleaned out when a fighter leaves due to low morale/death/fired, which was important for the autoresolve calculations. Also runs a check for leftover data from old versions and cleans those.
- Fixed an issue where heroes would fully heal every time they reached a settlement, rather than the intended system where they heal by one some of the time they reach a settlement.

Happy Halloween merchant fans! We'll have some exciting new updates for you in the next few months!

Having monitored feedback on the game there have been some concerns raised about it being a little too grindy, so we've made some balancing tweaks aimed at reducing friction a little!


- Unlock gold costs reduced (tier 1 from 5k to 4k, tier 2 from 10k to 8k, tier 3 from 20k to 15k)
- Tier 3 unlock level requirements moved down from level 14 to level 12
- Reduced the requirement for story chapter 2's goal down from 6000 gold to 4500 gold (and take 3500 gold rather than 5000 gold upon completion)
- Reduced the requirement for story chapter 12's goal down from 50000 gold to 35000 gold
- Reduced the requirement for story chapter 14's goal down from 100000 gold to 75000 gold
- Cart repair cost for normal difficulty reduced down from 4 to 3
- Reduced the chance of getting attacked at all target ratings aside from 1
- Reduced the speed adjustment to chance of getting attacked
- RegularVisitXP increased from 20 to 25
- TrainerXP increased from 200 to 300

This Merchant Life version 1.0 has launched!

A big thank you to everyone who supported the game through it's two years in Early Access and some wonderful content creators who've covered it.

If you've ever wanted to own a trade cart with two not particularly loyal horses then this is the game for you! Make profits, make friends (also enemies) and maybe, just maybe, save the whole kingdom along the way.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/666730/This_Merchant_Life

This Merchant Life leaving Early Access has been delayed a week, will now be happening on Friday the 6th of September!

Here is a 'Director's Cut' of the release trailer, featuring a different release date at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm8pH_wBkF8

This update is primarily concerned with smoothing out a few bumps within the story campaign along with some balance tweaks.




- There is now a small chance of rapport with heroes increasing when you reach a settlement with them as part of your security.


- Itinerant Swordsman security reduced from 5 to 4.
- Hero deployment time maxes out at 3 with leveling rather than 4.
- Adjusted difficulty of story chapter 11 battle.
- Road events set to be 3x as likely to occur during Chapter 18 while travelling in the desert region, making encounters with Grey Bards more regular.
- Stats for Mountain Horrors and Basilisks reduced slightly, the same for faction monster enemies Famed Monsters and Walking Nightmares.
- Reduced the prices of Exotic goods down a fair amount.
- SpeedCombatChanceModifier reduced a little.
- Increased the duration of Limited Combat Avoidance by around 70-80% for each cart speed band.
- Tweaked the chances of combat based on the cart target rating down a little.
- Required the player to have a security of at least 12 when in March to trigger the start of Chapter 16, preventing them getting stuck there without a strong enough force to win the battle and being unable to load to before they arrived there. Updated the story goal text to match.
- Required the player to have a security of at least 12 when in their main guild house location to trigger the start of Chapter 11 so that they can't get stuck there without a strong enough security to win.


- Added a hint related to gaining rapport from heroes travelling with you.


- The story chapter requirement for becoming friendly with another faction now correctly triggers at 60 reputation with the faction, not 61.
- Fixed failsafe so that story chapter 11 battle will immediately begin if using the LOAD button after losing the fight, without needing to save and quit and load via the title screen.
- Fixed issue where the story chapter 11 battle spawned more enemies than it should have.
- Taking out non Grey Bard enemies during standard combat encounters in Chapter 18 won't count towards the Grey Bards defeated count.
- Stopped dialogue scenes from being able to play during combat, which was occurring after taking out enough Grey Bards to complete Chapter 18.
- Losing a battle in any direction now correctly loses you the battle, previously it would count it as a victory if you'd lost in one or more directions but any combat was ongoing in another direction when it reached turn 6.

Some more polish and fixes as we approach leaving Early Access! Also Steam achievements, although going to test them for a little before rolling them out properly.




- Added Steam achievements.
- Now a distinction between events that could potentially injure or kill fighters, and those that should just injure those that won't be killed by it. To prevent half your guard being wiped out by a minor accident with a pothole.


- Added modifier that makes combat events slightly more likely as cart speed increases.
- Adjusted target modifier so combat a bit less likely at higher target ratings, slightly more likely at lowest target ratings.


- 'Next Payment' in Payback mode no longer reads 'Paid off' as the next payment for several payments before it's actually the last payment.
- LOAD option on the Payback screen if payback can't be made removed due to various issues when using it. Player can still quit via this screen and then load the game normally, however.
- Adjusted how the Autopay button on the Security sidebar works - now an on/off toggle that sets all current and future fighters and heroes to autopay on when hired/recruited unless otherwise set, basically a press once and forget about having to pay fighters button. Added mouseovers for this and the autopay off buttons.
- New EXPLORE button.
- Text size reduced over a certain string length for trait names on the Profile sidebar.
- Readability improvements to green/on buttons.
- Added time remaining to mouseovers for market force icons in the market screen itself.
- Added a few additional hints relating to story goals.
- Further improved smoothness of the camera when moving from the extreme top and right edges of the map.


- Fixed the last line getting omitted for the Payback mode opening dialogue if continuing with key presses rather than clicking the buttons.
- Corrected issue where some UI buttons wouldn't work after finishing Payback mode opening dialogue until the player had gone into the town hub screen (due to the game wanting to play the opening screen tutorial instead).
- Quiting the tutorial will no longer skip the Payback opening dialogue sequence.
- If an ExploreEvent triggers time to roll over to the Payback screen, paying the amount or getting an extension should return to the ExploreEvent rather than skipping it. Likewise for Road Events now too. Other time passing actions will go to the Payback screen then back to the post-action screen.
- Fix to a helmet appearing way off to the side in the caravan sidebar view.
- Removed SaveTime from occurring whenever market forces events triggered during travel - was basically causing the time to often get saved during a trip, when loading the game would generally otherwise revert to the game state from the previous town autosave. Caused issues for among other things the Payback mode time remaining vs actual date.
- Number of crafts available in the current settlement now correctly carries over from saves.
- Corrected an issue with a couple of the fighter statuses being set to the wrong fighter ID.
- Fixed issue where camera would be out of bounds when loading game from Southern most settlements.

This version features some more bug fixes, polish and rebalancing! The looting mechanic has also been adjusted a little so that a high cart defence stat doesn't mean you can entirely ignore enemy attacks.

Rebalancing efforts for this update were focused on buildings, explore events and road stats. In particular explore event rewards for one-time events have been greatly increased to make them more meaningful.




- Explore event options that introduce new town locations - taverns/friends/trainers - now become unavailable once that location has been unlocked, but the events themselves will continue to appear.
- If cart defences match or exceed enemy attack scores in a quadrant during the looting phase then looting now does take place in that quadrant, but only one resource type instead of two, whereas before no looting at all took place in that quadrant. Effects on cart damage, merchant injury, morale loss and mission failure are unchanged.


- Stopped Erin's time cost reduction bonus from affecting the time cost for drinking in taverns and healing at apothecaries!
- Career flee boost added to chance of successfully rushing through the fire. Wording for the flee skill also changed from 'combat situation' to 'dangerous situation' to match it's existing use here.
- Reduction in cart condition wear from travel for Merchants with the Stablehand background increased from 15% to 20%
- Longer market events career bonus for Seers increased from 24 to 36 HRS.
- The road between Mandrago and Jarl has had it's region reclassified from Forest to Mountains and stats adjusted accordingly.
- Minimum road stats increased from 0.1 to 0.2 - if they drop below they are reset to this amount.
- Building in Randos changed from Support Town Guard to Well Maintenance.
- Building in Serenity changed from Well Maintenance to Road Repair.
- Building in March changed from Donate to Wedding to Watch Towers.
- Adjusted the thresholds for road ratings for security and speed, so that 'Terrible' is a larger range and 'Excellent' is reduced.
- Rebalanced the security and safety ratings for roads. In particular makes slower roads somewhat less slow, generally compressing the variations across the map. Also generally downgrades road stats a little, making the improvements from buildings more important.
- Having met Muirne no longer turns off Explore Event "Lancer" (64) .
- Explore Events "Influencer" (57). "Knight of Cups" (53), "Parking Problems" (44), Pickpocket (35) set to unique.
- Explore Event "Reckers Vs. Wizards" (54) moved from general unique to Archon specific unique.
- Explore Event Reputation rewards and penalties increased for lots of unique events. Food Fight (50) 1 > 4, 2 > 4. Arrow (18) 3 > 5. Artemis (12) 4 > 5. Beauty contest(3) 1 > 3. Daylight Robbery! (4) 2 > 6. Inferno (32) 3 > 10. Stall for Time (36) 1 > 4. Feline Fine (37) 1 > 5. Shake Down (48) 4 > 10. A Bank Robbery! (56) 3 > 6. The Wild Woods (61) 3 > 6. Parking Problems (44) 1 > 5.
- Explore Event XP rewards increased in many cases, including - Artemis (12) 300 > 500. Burnish (11) 200 > 400. Parking Problems (44) 100 > 250. Pickpocket (35) 100 > 250. Riddle explore event XP rewards doubled from 200 to 400. Many other explore events have had their XP rewards increased as well, asides from those that are repeatable.
- One of the Explore Event option rewards for "Arrow" (18) changed from Reputation to XP.
- Upped the increase in Explore Event XP rewards somewhat as global reputation tiers increase.
- Removed trait rewards from some options in repeating Explore Events - 1,8,9,13,16,33,63,64,67,68,69,72. Generally repeatable options in events no longer give trait rewards unless occasionally when they have a cost attached.
- All rewards for Explore Event Free Half-Day (1) increased.
- Explore Event "Alms for the Poor" (45) option reward changed from reputation increase to losing coins. Event "Atton" (9) changed from reputation to XP.
- A number of other balancing adjustments made for Explore Events.
- Chance of Explore Events being available when reaching a settlement reduced from 33% to 25%.
- Moved from 50/50 chance of getting a General/Local event to 66/33 General/Local.
- Added Elysande, Theodora, Red Bards and TOLA to potential factions that you can make become allies with to complete the story chapter requirement to become allies with a faction, previously these factions weren't counted towards that goal even if your reputation with them reached ally status.


- Looping songs do now loop most of the time rather than just playing through the once. Added the launch trailer song into the music player mix.


- Adjusted text for Delacroix's hero bonus to state the correct mission types that it provides a reputation bonus to, and removed reference to it providing a reputation bonus to explore events (and stopped it doing so).
- Joanna's boost to the chance of gaining Intel from explore events now shown in the mouseover for EXPLORE.
- Added Time Cost icon and cost amount to button for meeting friends and crafting. Ensured these take Erin's time cost reduction bonus into account, and also that the time cost for training does too.
- Rounding added to display of coin costs affected by reward or bribe scale to avoid decimals.
- Detail text describing background bonuses now more specific about the bonus amounts.
- Career bonus details added as a mousover to career icon on the profile side panel.
- Added colour change for cart condition being below 20%, as it does further reduce cart stats.
- Tweaked calendar scenario mouseover to always keep text on screen.
- Camera zoom out made smoother.
- Added a few building specific hints.
- Flipped security and speed on the road travel UI overlay to match which side they appear on when clicking on a settlement and getting travel details.
- Panel frames for the cart categories on the cart parts screen now highlighted when panel selected rather than on mouse over.
- Made adjustments to the looting screen during combat. Now only shows negative consequences of being looted if they took place (morale loss if you have any fighters currently, cart damage if condition was previously above 0), takes into account losing less condition than the current penalty to reach 0 condition, highlights that all cart defences holding if you lost the battle prevents cart damage. Also updated to show looting taking place at a reduced level when cart defences hold, unless there are no goods to loot.
- Added a couple of new hints relating to the updated looting system and updated a few existing ones.
- Looted events message in main UI now auto adjusts in size depending on how many good types were looted, and should fit maximum 8 all in if necessary.
- Adjusted how gaining/losing resources is depicted in the caravan sidebar - a small up/down arrow rather than a recolour of the icon. Also resets whenever reaching a settlement now, rather than only after going to a market within a settlement. Gaining/losing resource status should also occur for various events that didn't seem to be triggering it before.
- Added autopay all on/off buttons to the security sidebar.
- Rumours now appear immediately on the map after found in a tavern, rather than requiring the player to begin travelling first.
- Adjustments to the camera system. Reduced the distance the camera can move towards the bottom of the map to prevent the view going slightly beyond the edge of the map when zoomed out, and adjusted the position that the camera moves to when clicking on Mandrake and Hallbright, the two settlements that sit below this camera movement limit. Adjusted the boundaries of camera movement in general to prevent being able to move the camera beyond them after clicking various other settlements. Added a camera warp when moving from the right and top boundaries of the map to make for much smoother camera movement from these positions.


- Hero bonuses now end as soon as a hero leaves the caravan rather than after you complete your next journey.
- Adjustment to the number of hours in a day. Let us never speak of this again.
- Fixed issue where the Explore time could become 0 through Erin's bonus stacking after going to locations in the town hub.
- Fixed crash caused by selecting Alternate hero portraits for Payback mode.
- Using the random option in a tailors can no longer change a merchant's actual physical appearance!
- Fixed issue where horse helms would visually remain on cart after being removed.
- Krallen explore event options should correctly become available once he has been met in his initial explore event introduction.
- Ensured all coin requirements for explore event options are correct.
- Removed Temp_FixFactionRatings from load game code, it was causing the Changers faction reputation to go from 0 to 30 after you loaded a campaign mode save.
- Can no longer get the riddle lady reward explore events multiple times for the same one.
- Lancer background colour now correct on the security sidebar.
- Building improvements to road stats now immediate rather than only kicking in after a scenario change in that region.
- Time doesn't slip forward an extra hour after road events have already been triggered and begun...
- Orion images fixed for story cutscenes when portraits set to 'Alternate' mode.