Whilst we're busy getting everything finalized we want to share some more details about the update. In our previous devlog we already talked about the new abilities, Chinese & Japanese translations and the new content. Today we want to expand on a few more changes that are part of the Adventurers Wanted Update:


With the addition of the new abilities we've also reworked the skill trees of all characters. Each character now begins with an additional ability specific to them. Natalya for example begins with the "Bait" ability, whilst Brunhilda starts out with "Sucker Punch". As they level-up they can unlock two more abilities.

We feel these changes really help in making the character roster feel more varied. Each character now has their own combination of up to 3 special abilities which opens up a range of new tactical options. It gets even more interesting when trying them out in various team configurations.


With 1.1 we're introducing a new type of equippable items: Artifacts. They're unique (and very rare) items that can only be found once per profile. Artifacts can be placed in a character's off-hand equipment slot. Some of them yield stat boosts or open up event options whilst others may even unlock new abilities.

It's worth noting that Artifacts can be used by all characters and don't require a skill to use.


We've completely reworked the difficulty customization options in the game. You are now able to adjust the enemy difficulty and the size of combat groups independently.

Whilst larger combat groups do increase the difficulty slightly, it mostly presents the player with a more involved combat experience. So if you enjoy longer and more involved combat sessions crank this setting up. On the other hand if you like easy and quick combat you can lower this setting.

The difficulty slider really pushes the overall power of enemies up. In practice it means you can play the earlier adventures at the difficulty of later adventures and push the later adventures even higher. If you increase the difficulty of the adventure, you are also going to find better loot. Additionally, each difficulty level presents the adventure in a new daytime setting.

We are really excited to get this update into everyone's hands!

Oh and if you live near London come say hi to us at the EGX. We will be showing the new update between 17th and 19th of October at the Chucklefish stand! (More details and tickets here: https://www.egx.net/egx)

We have some exciting things to share with you today.

As previously mentioned we are working on a fairly substantial free update to Pathway that will be released later this Summer (Version 1.1). This devlog presents a handful of new things we're adding to the game. We'll reveal more details over the coming weeks.


We promised from the start that we'd add support for Japanese/Chinese. The 1.1 update will finally add those localisations. We had to rewrite large portions of our UI code to make this happen and that's is why it took us a bit longer than originally anticipated. The two languages are currently being tested but as you can tell from the above shots, things are nearly there!

With 1.1 we're introducing a host of new combat skills to the game. These skills will introduce many new tactical options and will be used to accentuate characters more. Let's take a look at 3 of them:


Psychic Control: Use your psychic powers to temporarily confuse an enemy causing them to attack one of their allies. It's just mean, really.


Sucker Punch: A powerful blow that will push the enemy back. If used cleverly you can push the enemy into other enemies. Wonder what happens when you push an enemy into an explosive barrel?


Healing Shot: Shoot a healing projectile at one of your allies. Restores health slowly over the next few turns.

There are a lot more skills we're working on, but this little peek should give you an indication of what to expect!


These shots show two of a whole bunch of new combat arenas we've added to the game. These new environments are part of a bigger rework of the events in the game (We'll talk more about this in another post). Our main goal with the work here has been to add more variety to the existing roster of events. In addition to this, we've also tweaked already existing combat arenas to make them more interesting.


This new UI feature adds small indicators at the corner of the screen giving you a way to easily identify where enemies are outside of the current camera view. Just like when in view you can see their hitchance (and more) when pressing tab. This UI addition makes certain tactical decisions a lot easier. For example if you are moving with one of your snipers you can now easily identify whether you'll be able to attack a target even if outside the current view.

Important Note: If you've made it this far, it probably means you're interested in what we're doing with Pathway and we'd love your help: We're actively testing the 1.1 release internally with a handful of testers. If you're ok with bugs, unfinished things and experimental stuff we'd love your help in getting things ready for the update. We're also looking for people who can help us with the Japanese/Chinese localisation testing. The best way to get involved is to join our discord server and get in touch with one of the developers there!

Thanks for all your support!

Respec Skill Tree, Improved Dog Friendly mode and a new No Bloodshed mode make it into the latest build!

It's been a while since our last update, but we've got some goodies going into today's version! As mentioned in our previous devlog, our focus in general has shifted towards a bigger free update that we're releasing at the end of summer. We're making fantastic progress on this and we're putting together a blog post soon (next week) to talk about some of the things we're working on. We're still however adding new things to the game and fixing bugs. Thank you everyone for reporting issues and helping us improve the game!

So... what's new in today's build?


Often requested - We've added the ability respec skill trees. It currently is tied to an increasing cost and each subsequent respec is more expensive than the previous one. The current cost is balanced so that most players in the mid-to-late game won't have a problem respeccing characters a few times, but it does prevent the choices from being completely irrelevant. This behaviour may change again and we welcome feedback on this.

This respec option is only available during the team selection phase before you start on an adventure.


We always wanted to improve on our dog friendly mode and change some of the animations and graphics when fighting dogs. Dogs now also disappear into a parallel universe when they decide they've had enough of human silliness (as depicted above). This new improved mode also removes character prompts that are hurtful towards dogs.

As before, you can activate this in the options menu.


We understand that not everyone appreciates the bloodshed in the game. We ourselves wanted to be able to share this game with our kids and some of the depictions were just a bit too graphic for that. This mode removes all blood and gory parts in the game. Some of them get replaced and some of them are simply removed. You can see the difference in the sample above. The gameplay is in no way impacted by this.

Besides this things, there's a slew of bugfixes and improvements listed below.

We've got some extremely exciting things baking right now and we can't wait to share it with you soon. Stay tuned and thanks for playing! ːsteamhappyː

Full Changelog Version 1.0.13:

• Added option to reset skill tree: It is now possible to reset the skill tree of a character during the setup phase before the adventure begins. There's a cost attached to it and every time you reset a character the cost increases exponentially. We may change/adapt how exactly all this works again in the future.
  
• No Bloodshed option: When active, the game removes or replaces blood and gore. It changes nothing in terms of gameplay, but simply removes some elements of gore.
  
• Improved Dog Friendly option: When active, the dog friendly mode now in addition to removing sfx also makes the dogs disappear rather then die. We've also disabled any character prompts that may be seen as hurtful towards dogs.
  
• Characters can now be leveled-up during the adventure setup phase: You'll now notice a little level-up indicator on characters that haven't had their level up choices picked. You may level them up by accessing the skill tree in the skills tab.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the loading screen in the final encounter in Adventure III to hang.
  
• Improved start-up loading time: Especially on older systems the initial start-up time of the game should be improved now.
  
• Damage calculation has been slightly tweaked. In most situations this won't be noticeable, but in some circumstances it can lead to a slightly increased damage.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the Damage Preview for punching to be wrong
  
• Fixed a bunch of UI issues that caused the journal to not get updated. Amongst other issues, it fixes the problem that level-up selections weren't reflected immediately on the stats and skills.
  
• Fix a bug that allowed the punch to explode barrels at a distance.
  
• Fix a bug that showed the Damage Preview for enemies out of range sometimes
  
• Fixed a crash bug that could occur in rare situations after loading from save game
  
• Ambushes are now also correctly invalidated by Grenade damage.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash due to the No Bloodshed option in some situations.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the XP indicator to still show when characters were at max level.
  
• Fixed a bug in the skill tree of Donut/Fenris.
  
• Fixed a bug in LeFantome's skill tree that caused a glitch in some situations
  
• Fixed a bug that caused infected to die twice when being killed with a bleed and triggering an explosive barrel at the same time.

Preview branch receives Skill Tree respec option and a few words about our future update cycles.

Over the last month and a bit we've worked very hard at adding lots of Quality of Life features to Pathway as well as squishing tons of bugs. It made sense for us to release updates on a weekly basis during this time. The things we're working on now however are a bit more fundamental in their nature and take time. As our focus is now shifting more towards the bigger Summer update, we're not continuing the weekly patch updates and instead we will simply release when there is something significant to show.

Practically speaking this means less frequent updates but bigger ones when they do come around. We will continue to push updates to the preview branch on a regular basis.

We also have something exciting to share today: We just pushed a new build to the Preview Version of Pathway that includes an often requested feature: Respeccing Skill Trees.


Below is a full changelog of what's in the latest preview version.

Version 1.0.13p1 (Preview Version):
- Added option to reset skill tree: It is now possible to reset the skill tree of a character during the setup phase before the adventure begins. There's a cost attached to it and every time you reset a character the cost increases exponentially. We may change/adapt how exactly all this works again in the future.
- Characters can now be leveled-up during the adventure setup phase: You'll now notice a little level-up indicator on characters that haven't had their level up choices picked. You may level them up by accessing the skill tree in the skills tab.
- Fixed a bug in LeFantome's skill tree that caused a glitch in some situations
- Fixed a bug that caused infected to die twice when being killed with a bleed and triggering an explosive barrel at the same time.

We just published a smaller update for Pathway. This build mostly addresses bugs and changes the Ambush behaviour slightly. We've also added some additional details to the Knife tooltips!

Stay tuned for more soon & thanks for playing! ːsteamhappyː

Full Changelog Version 1.0.12

• Ambush behaviour is modified slightly. You can now perform any action after setting an ambush except for moving. If you move, your ambush will be canceled. Previously setting an ambush would prevent most successive actions, but not consistently so. The changed behaviour is now more in line with other special abilities and their behaviour.
  
• Added a warning message when a move cancels an Ambush
  
• Added bleed duration and damage to the knife tooltip
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the damage preview to use the wrong knife when two were equipped
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the level up and KO indicators to stay after a character died or was dismissed
  
• Fixed a bug that caused an endless loop when an ambush triggered a zombie retaliate
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed Burst Fire to be used anywhere on the map
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes allowed the AI to do a third move.
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the Necromancer to not take any actions.
  
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause faulty event behaviour when loading from save.
  
• Updated LWJGL version. This may improve video card compatibility, high-DPI handling and scaling on some systems.

Stack Splitting and AI Turn Speed-Up are in!

Before diving into the details of today's update, we'd like to mention our plans for the near future. Our weekly updates will continue with QoL features as well as the usual bug fixes. At the same time we're working on some more significant changes that we will release in a bigger update later in the summer. This update will address deeper issues we see with the game as well as bring in a bunch of new content. The Japanese and Chinese translation of the game will also be released as part of that update. We're pretty excited about the things we've got planned and we will start talking about some of the changes soon. ːsteamhappyː

To clarify: This update will not be a "DLC" but instead a major free update to the base game that will include some new content and improve the existing game in various ways.

In the meantime here's what we've added in today's update:

There's now a new action when clicking on items in your inventory that will allow you to split stacks. Of course you can always combine them back together by dragging them on top of each other.


This is a nice convenience feature for the impatient ;) During the AI turn, you'll find a new button at the bottom of the screen that lets you accelerate the AI's turn by x2 or x4. Clicking on the button will cycle through the various speeds.


Thanks again for playing and may the RNG be with you all.

Full Changelog Version 1.0.11

• Stack Splitting consumables added (see above)
  
• AI Turn Speed-Up button added (see above)
  
• We've changed the way bravery is handled outside of combat. From now on, your bravery is always fully reset after the completion of a battle. This means that you always enter the battle with the same starting point and should help in making successive battle feel less frustrating due to limiting options.
  
• Fix a bug that caused units to be revived by the Necromancer on the wrong tile.
  
• Fixes a bug that caused a crash in some instances after loading from save.
  
• Fixes a bug that sometimes made it impossible to finish Map 2 in Adventure III
  
• Fixes a bug that would sometimes cause achievement rewards to disappear if claimed during combat
  
• Fix a bug that caused evades triggered by a Sporebearer to not count towards the evades achievements
  
• Fixed a bunch of typos
  
• Fixed some UI issues on the Adventure Stats screen when playing in French
  
• Fixed a bug when swapping out a KO character at the recruiter that caused the character to stay in a wrong state on successive adventures.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused character quotes to spill out of the UI in some languages.
  
• Fixed a whole bunch of battle arena generators that could cause faulty collisions
  
• Removed a faulty tooltip when hovering enemy portraits that would mistakenly indicate "Press Tab for Move Range".

This week's build brings hitchance previews, reworked events and a whole bunch of other improvements.

Newly introduced in this update is the ability to preview hitchances before you move to a new location. If you hold down tab when hovering over a move position you'll be presented with additional information about any visible enemy. You can see their hitchance from that location and other information such as their visibility or whether they are out of weapon range.


This is a first step towards improving events distribution. We've fixed a couple of bugs that caused events to show up more than once in an adventure by mistake. In general events should now never repeat within one adventure. This update also slightly improves the event distribution in general. This is a first step to help reduce the repetitiveness that can occur when playing. We've got lots more planned to help with this.

Thanks for playing and we hope you enjoy these changes!

Full Changelog for Version 1.0.10:

• Added a new hitchance preview when moving (see above)
  
• First step towards event distribution overhaul (see above)
  
• We reworked a number of events that previously had "hidden" perk options. These invisible options were automatically activated if a character on the team had the appropriate skill. Unfortunately this also meant that a lot of players missed out on content due them not being identifiable in any way. We've changed this and the options are now explicit as part of a choice the player can make if the appropriate perk is part of the team. Practically speaking, this means that some events have received new perk options!
  
• We've reworked the structure of some events to be spread out over fewer pages, effectively reducing the amount of clicks needed. Some events had also their texts shortened where it made sense to do so in order to improve the overall flow.
  
• Added a confirmation question if the player tries to leave the loot screen without touching any of the loot. It'll also ask for confirmation if the player leaves behind an epic or legendary item.
  
• New savegame backup system: The game will now automatically create backups at relevant points. This is mainly in place so we can recover saves that may get corrupted when using the preview branch or for some other situations where a bug caused an unfair loss.
  
• Bellamy can now also be unlocked by purchasing a Disintegrator weapon
  
• Codex has been updated to include recent changes.
  
• Time elapsed formatting in adventure stats now shows as hh:mm:ss
  
• Fixed a bug that caused audio settings to not be properly preserved across game sessions.
  
• Fixed a grammar mistake in one of Veduti's character comments.
  
• Fixed a bug that made it impossible to revisit character rescue missions. They can now be revisited even if you didn't recruit the character right away or decided to not engage in combat previously.
  
• Fixed some combat arena generators causing enemies to get trapped.
  
• Fixed a country name on one of he loading screens maps
  
• Fixed a rare crash that occurred when loading the game after updating to a new version
  
• Fixed a bunch of wrong gender pronoun uses in event texts
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the camera to move outside of the map bounds
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the "The Coming War" achievement to not be attainable
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed people to purchase fuel beyond the jeep's capacity at the merchant
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the recruit icon to be invisible when on neighbouring location.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some event texts to overlap
  
• Fixed a bug that would allow you to move items into the valuables bag when recruiting people.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Sporebearers to not automatically die when the last enemy was killed with a bleed attack.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed the player to open the codex during the enemy's turn even though the button was disabled.

Version 1.0.9 is now live!

This update brings the default branch up to date with all the changes we added to the preview branch last week. If you are on the preview branch note that from now on we will post changelogs for what's included there only in the forums and on our Discord server. We will keep these weekly devlogs for changes made to the live branch in order to avoid confusion. If you want to know what's currently cooking on the preview branch head on over here: Preview Branch Changelog

If you missed last week's post, here's the full changelog of what's included in this week's update (you can also read more about some of the changes here).

Full Changelog for Version 1.0.9:

• Added new improved Damage Information when hovering enemies (see above)
  
• Perk Branches in events have been reworked and are now in most situations a success. Some instances of uncertainty remain.
  
• Rebalanced loot drops in first 2 adventures to be more generous.
  
• Added a "Confirm End Turn" option that when enabled forces the player to confirm the end turn when there are characters with unspent action points.
  
• Added more helpful tooltips when an achievement can't be claimed.
  
• Changed the "Watch Collectors" achievement to only require 3 watches to be collected.
  
• Changed the "An Ending and a New Beginning III" achievement to only require 100 failures.
  
• We're continuing to work on fixing "out of memory" issues some people have encountered. For people who previously had issues, we'd love to hear if there are improvements in this build.
  
• Block keyboard scrolling when menu or journal is open during an encounter.
  
• Fixed some battle arenas where enemies would spawn inside walls
  
• Fixed some localization issues
  
• Fixed some events where the wrong gender was used in texts.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed people to select multiple choices during level-up. This fix will reset people's skill trees that made use of this.
  
• Fixed an exploit that allowed people to produce money using the Valuables bag undo function.
  
• Fixed a bug where in some instances the Valuables bag undo button wouldn't reset properly.
  
• Fixed some Mineshaft battle arena layouts that made battles unplayable.
  
• Fixed a bunch of collisions that allowed enemies to walk into walls.
  
• Fixed some inconsistencies in the attack range display.
  
• 5+ kills in one shot now also count towards the 4 kills in one achievement.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused achievements to show up as claimed event though they weren't.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused lost fuel not to count towards the "Environmental Hazard" achievement.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused a character to show up at the beginning of Adventure V Sector 2 even though they're already in the player's party.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to trigger a double ambush.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the player to continue traveling on foot even though they had received fuel through an achievement.
  
• Added "--aggressive-gc" command line option. Using this option forces a memory garbage-collection after each event. When used, you'll likely experience a short delay each time the event window closes. While this parameter doesn't fix anything per se, it is supposed to help us narrowing down the out-of-memory crashes and performance issues.
  
• Disabled use of separate render thread on MacOS. May be related to performance issues some user reported on MacOS 10.14 Mojave.

Thanks for playing and stay tuned for lots more! ːsteamhappyː

The first preview build is now available on our "preview" branch and we're moving to our own Discord Server!

So far our Discord community has lived under the umbrella of the Chucklefish Discord server. This has been fantastic for us, but as the community has grown we feel like it's time to start our own. This will allow us to really separate out discussions more effectively and keep track of everything. So please come join the party here on our brand new Discord server:

Robotality Discord Server Invite

We won't close down the existing channel on the Chucklefish server, but the new server will become the central community point on Discord.

Todays preview build introduces a whole bunch of new things as well as plenty of fixes. These changes will linger on the preview version for at least a week before making their way onto the default verison.

A word of caution: The preview version will contain some cutting-edge changes and we will sometimes use it to try out radical changes to the gameplay before it appears in the default version. Therefore be ready to encounter some unexpected behaviors and problems. However, if you want to help us shape the future of the game this is really the best place to get involved! Here's how you can activate the preview version:



Navigate to Pathway in your Steam Library and right click on the game's name in the games list. From there select Properties and switch to the Betas tab. From the dropdown you should be able to select the preview version.

The big changes we've hinted at last week. For a full changelog see below.

Improved Damage Information

We've added an overhauled tooltip when hovering over enemies during an attack action. In the compact view you simply see the effective damage potential. This includes all adjustments that may occur from things like the weapon's damage type or if your character has a special bonus/penalty against an enemy type. If you press tab, you will get a more detailed breakdown of how exactly the final damage calculation came together. We hope this will help in making some of the game's more complex damage calculations clearer.

Rebalanced Loot Distribution
We've made the beginning adventures more rewarding in terms of loot drops. We want to keep the legendaries for the mid to end game, but we feel like the first two adventures could use a boost of rewarding items.

Reworked Perk Branches in Events
Generally speaking, perk branches will now give you a success in an otherwise risky situations. There are a few exceptions to this rule still (so don't rely on it). However this change significantly upgrades the value of perk choices in events.

Full Changelog for Preview Version 1.0.9:

• Added new improved Damage Information when hovering enemies (see above)
  
• Perk Branches in events have been reworked and are now in most situations a success. Some instances of uncertainty remain.
  
• Rebalanced loot drops in first 2 adventures to be more generous.
  
• Added a "Confirm End Turn" option that when enabled forces the player to confirm the end turn when there are characters with unspent action points.
  
• Added more helpful tooltips when an achievement can't be claimed.
  
• Changed the "Watch Collectors" achievement to only require 3 watches to be collected.
  
• Changed the "An Ending and a New Beginning III" achievement to only require 100 failures.
  
• We're continuing to work on fixing "out of memory" issues some people have encountered. For people who previously had issues, we'd love to hear if there are improvements in this build.
  
• Block keyboard scrolling when menu or journal is open during an encounter.
  
• Fixed some battle arenas where enemies would spawn inside walls
  
• Fixed some localization issues
  
• Fixed some events where the wrong gender was used in texts.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed people to select multiple choices during level-up. This fix will reset people's skill trees that made use of this.
  
• Fixed an exploit that allowed people to produce money using the Valuables bag undo function.
  
• Fixed a bug where in some instances the Valuables bag undo button wouldn't reset properly.
  
• Fixed some Mineshaft battle arena layouts that made battles unplayable.
  
• Fixed some inconsistencies in the attack range display.
  
• 5+ kills in one shot now also count towards the 4 kills in one achievement.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused achievements to show up as claimed event though they weren't.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused lost fuel not to count towards the "Environmental Hazard" achievement.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused a character to show up at the beginning of Adventure V Sector 2 even though they're already in the player's party.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to trigger a double ambush.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the player to continue traveling on foot even though they had received fuel through an achievement.
  
• Added "--aggressive-gc" command line option. Using this option forces a memory garbage-collection after each event. When used, you'll likely experience a short delay each time the event window closes. While this parameter doesn't fix anything per se, it is supposed to help us narrowing down the out-of-memory crashes and performance issues.
  
• Disabled use of separate render thread on MacOS. May be related to performance issues some user reported on MacOS 10.14 Mojave.

Wow, Pathway has been out for only a little over a week!

Up to now we've been in overdrive-mode fixing bugs. Additionally, we've also started introducing a handful of quality of life updates such as the undo button when recycling items as well as improved tooltip comparisons. Updates have been almost daily during this period to make sure critical issues are addressed promptly.

With today's post we want to explain what the next few months are going to look like.

From now on, we're switching to a more predictable update cycle: Every Wednesday we will release a new update. However, new features and changes will always first go to our public Preview branch. Once those changes had a bit of time to go through a testing and feedback phase we will then push them to the main branch. So in practice this means changes will generally linger in the preview branch for a week before appearing on the main branch. Sometimes we may decide to keep some things in the incubation stage for a bit longer before they make it to the live branch.

The preview branch will serve as an experimental area, where we can try out some changes and gather feedback from the community before making them available to everyone. So if you want to be a part of shaping the game's future, we'd love to have your help there!

The first preview build will go live next Wednesday. We will post instructions on how you can join the preview testing then.

Here's a little taste of what's coming to the first preview build:


An area we see confusion about frequently is how damage is calculated in Pathway. In the upcoming preview, we're adding an overhauled tooltip when hovering over enemies during an attack action. In the compact view you simply see the effective damage potential. This includes all adjustmens that may occur from things like the weapon's damage type or if your character has a special bonus/penalty against an enemy type. If you press tab, you will get a more detailed breakdown of how exactly the final damage calculation came together. We hope this will help in making some of the game's more complex damage calculations clearer.

We're making the beginning adventures more rewarding in terms of loot drops. We want to keep the legendaries for the mid to end game, but we feel like the first two adventures could use a boost of rewarding items.

Another feedback we've seen popping up often is that the perk branches in events don't feel weighty enough. We are starting to address this issue by taking a lot of luck out of the perk branches. So far, you'd always have a significantly improved chance at success, but in practice it often felt like you're gambling just as much as when using one of the other standard branches. Starting with this build, perk branches will now give you a success in an otherwise risky situation. There are a few exceptions to this rule still. We think this change will make character perks a lot more rewarding to use and provide a more tangible benefit.

There will be a full changelog with the release of the build on Wednesday that will of course also include a bunch of general bug fixes and improvements!

THANK YOU again for playing our little game and sending us your feedback. We truly do appreciate every constructive comment coming our way - We're constantly reviewing your ideas and and we are looking to address a lot of the concerns in the next little while.