One Man Left is proud to announce that Hex Gambit: Respawned was awarded an Epic MegaGrant!

You might remember that for the first eight years or so of my career I was an indie game artist and a game designer, but not a programmer. When my programmer, Alex, had to bow out in 2019, I was desperate for a way to keep making games. I asked whether he thought it was possible to ship an entire game with Unreal’s Blueprint Visual Scripting. He said yeah, pretty much, and that was good enough for me.

So I spent an entire year, full time, watching Youtube, reading docs, and experimenting. Then around November 2019, I started applying what I’d learned to start my first solo project, a complete reimagining of Hex Gambit made entirely in Blueprint called Hex Gambit: Respawned.

All of HGR’s 3D artwork and animation was done for free in Blender. Everything else (aside from sound and music) was done for free in Unreal Engine 4 by one very determined guy in his basement. It has single player, local multiplayer, full controller support, AI, you name it. Blueprint is amazing!

This crazy endeavor was not without risk, and Epic’s grant money is a MUCH needed shot in the arm as HGR approaches the finish line. I’m eternally grateful to Epic for making Unreal Engine freely available for broke game devs like me, and for choosing to support my project. If they hadn’t made Unreal free to use, OML would have been done for a long time ago.

So THANK YOU again to Epic Games. Let’s keep going and ship something awesome.

Today I’m excited to get the “final” version of Hex Gambit: Respawned into the hands of our beta testers! If you have a preview Steam key for HGR, update today for the full campaign experience, with dialogue and jokes and an EXCELLENT new soundtrack by our Outwitters composer, Mike Reagan.

Check back later for news about Hex Gambit: Respawned’s launch date on Steam and some unannounced platforms!

0.2.4 was the build that added all kinds of polish and cinematic stuff to flesh out the campaign, and I’ve done some bug fixes since then. Here’s what’s new:

Big Changes in 0.2.6

• Added all single player cinematics, lots of visual tweaks.
• All new battle soundtrack! No more Outwitters placeholder music.
• New Crown Match arena background.
• Added outlines to make enemies easier to identify.
• New KO standards for team battles. Teammates can be individually KO’d now.
• PC back button prompts use Esc instead of Backspace now.
• Molera AI is more aggressive with her Captain’s Gambit.
• Increased Hard Mode’s turn timer to 45s.
• Reduced Crowned Minion HP to 2.5x for Normal, instead of 3x
• Made Royal’s Revenge level more difficult on Normal
• Made Medic! more difficult on Normal and Hard
• Made Long Live the King less frustrating
• Made Final Gambit level more difficult on Normal

Little Fixes

• Fixed a bug with pausing/unpausing during cinematics.
• Tweaked when the End Turn nag appears and dismisses.
• Made End Turn nag text clickable
• Lolli no longer magically steals unoccupied toggle spaces when using his Gambit.
• Resetting Campaign Progress no longer resets your user preferences.
• Modified cursor snapping when using controllers. Auto-snaps less now.

Having gotten Hex Gambit: Respawned into a launch-worthy state, the project has been passed along to a publishing partner to explore some porting options! This is pretty exciting stuff, but I won’t have details for you until that’s all further along. Check back later for info on platforms, release date, etc.

The porting and certification process will take months, so what’s a One Man Left to do? I’m fixing the odd Hex Gambit bug here and there, but mostly I’m prototyping!

My current experiment: a split screen FPS like the ones I sunk hours into as a kid. Am I serious about making this one? I dunno, but it’s something to play with my nieces and nephews.

I’ll get this prototype into a decent state, and then I’ve got a short list of other project premises to play around with while I wait for Hex Gambit news.

I had planned to release 0.2.4 today for the beta players, and do a little playthrough video of the first few levels of the game for you in their completed state, but development has gotten slightly more complicated this month IN A GOOD WAY.

There are things about Hex Gambit: Respawned that I can’t say yet, and I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say why I can’t say those things, so I’m just not gonna say much of anything. Suffice it to say, I have very good news that I can’t wait to tell you.

What’s the state of the game?

Campaign mode: DONE. It has 21 levels, three difficulties, some story/dialogue/jokes sprinkled in, and a brand new soundtrack by our excellent Outwitters (etc.) composer Mike Reagan.

Local multiplayer: DONE. 2-4 players, free for all and teams, AI players, lots of match customization options, seven maps per number of players.

That was pretty much everything I set out to do, so why no release date yet? Because… I’ll tell you when I can! We need a few more months for exciting, magical stuff to happen. Follow us on Twitter or sign up for our mailer if you want to stay on top of it.

Long time no post! It’s been a pretty intense few weeks. The single player campaign now has 30+ little dialogue cutscenes, some neat cinematic shots of the arenas, and trophies for beating easy, normal, and hard mode! Haven’t been able to push a beta update for 0.2.4 yet, but hope to have something for you guys this month.

I’ve got a few new background elements to finish up, then I’ll be adding achievements and calling single player a wrap by the end of March. The excellent Mike Reagan (our composer for Outwitters, Space Food Truck, and Tilt to Live 2) is working on some new tracks to finally replace the old Outwitters placeholder music.

This thing is huge, and fun, and I can’t wait for you guys to play it. I haven’t even gotten to announce the best part yet.

Big milestone for the beta today: I have the full, 21 mission single player campaign ready for testing! It’s all the gameplay without any of the dialogue stuff yet, but I do have a How to Play resource in the Pause menu that will tell you everything you need to know.

The game now has four Crowned minion missions, which are this game’s equivalent boss fights. Crowned minions have bonus health, can’t be targeted by your Captain’s abilities, and are immune to statuses like Intimidation.

I’d REALLY like to hear some feedback from the beta testers on this one, so if that’s you, check your steam library for the update today. Once you’ve spent some time with it, I want to know:

1. Was it fun?
2. How far did you get, on which difficulty?
3. What captain did you use most?
4. Favorite mission?
5. What was your least favorite mission and why?
6. Would you say the game feels too easy, too hard, or about right?
7. How often did you die? Was there a particular level you got stuck on?

Send your feedback to contact@onemanleft.com.

What’s new this update:

• Completed a balance pass for 21 campaign levels and 3 difficulties.
• Improved existing level balance and changed order.
• Changed some level backgrounds for added variety.
• Added Crowned minions and adjusted AI for them.
• Fixed bug where KO’d players froze multiplayer matches.
• Fixed a bug that locked the game if you flipped a hex mover switch indirectly and finished moving after the hex mover animation finished.
• Fixed a bug with Molera KO’ing herself.
• Fixed a bug with Hexpert’s glitch, ironically.
• Improved AI for the Defender and Runner.
• AI will no longer try to cover your spawn if your spawn pool is empty.
• Tweaked the logic for starting spawns and minion selection.
• Fixed an issue with lasers firing after Game Over in certain circumstances.
• Fixed bug where Pause could trigger during KO, and you’d control both Pause and Game Over.
• Fixed visual glitches for the cursor Highlight Ring
• Fixed an issue with the campaign map camera getting misaligned.
• Improved consistency when the punk rolls through a minion on a switch – if he kills them it flips to his color.

If you tried that last Campaign update, you may have noticed that it didn’t work at all! Fix is uploaded and should be live for you soon.

I tried a little experiment with the first level and didn’t quite set things back where I found them, which froze the AI. Thanks to everyone for reporting that bug! If you hit anything else, let me know at contact@onemanleft.com.

What’s new this update:

• Fixed major issue with the campaign AI locking up.
• Fixed major issue with Toggle Spaces on the Summit map breaking the game.
• Amended when icons show/hide for the player cursor.

Last New Year I decided it was time to try to get something on to a store, so I could feel like a real game designer again. Now at the start of 2021, I do technically have something on a store!

After Alex left, I took a bit of gamble sticking with game development instead of reverting back to freelance art. Anything I did would’ve been a gamble, really. So I went with the thing I liked the most, and so far things are holding together slightly better than expected. I’m optimistic about where Hex Gambit: Respawned is headed, and I regret nothing.

I’m really proud of how HGR is coming along. You can poke through a whole playlist of its development progress on Youtube. It began the year as a small, local multiplayer-only project. I’ve added new tile types, a new minion class, pretty solid AI, and soon it’ll have a whole flippin’ campaign mode. Content-wise, it’s going to be the biggest thing OML has ever put out.

Being alone is tough, but I get to experiment and indulge my weird ideas and nitpicks. It’s all super daunting if I let myself think too hard, but I’m enjoying it.

It’s looking like I’m on track to get my first solo game out the door in 2021. With a little luck, I’ll get to be a game developer a while longer. Thanks for keeping up with me this year! I wish you luck with whatever adventure you tackle in 2021!

I’m getting ready to run some in-person testing, so I figured I’d throw out a build for our beta testers with some new levels today. I’ve got sort of a “Minion 101” challenge for each of the eight classes, then some toggle space missions at the end.

A warning: if you played 0.2, some of the medallions you earned may appear on the wrong levels, and some levels you’ve played won’t be unlocked yet (they moved to the end). This will keep happening as I inject new content. You won’t lose medallions, but they may jump to different levels. You can start over by resetting your progress in the Options menu, or just shrug it off and keep playing.

You may also find some Captains and multiplayer levels that weren’t locked now require medallions to unlock. That’s gonna be in flux until the levels are finalized, too. Your medallions will carry over between updates, but the amounts required for unlocks will change.

The total mission number is still up in the air, but will probably land in the 15-20 range. I’ll be switching up the backgrounds for variety and adding some dialogue once I have all the level content filled in.

What’s new this update:

• 6 more campaign challenges, level order tweaked
• Unlock pass: new medallion goals and progression, more representative of the final version.
• Edited the Crossfire mission balance
• Improved Punk and Sniper AI
• Fixed a bug with Hex Movers

Very excited to announce the arrival of Hex Gambit: Respawned 0.2 today! All the 0.1 builds got our local multiplayer up and running, and 0.2 introduces a single player campaign for those that prefer to play alone.

With today’s update, our beta testers have 6 levels to try with three difficulties to choose from (1-2 hours of play), and I’ve also given our demo players access to the first three challenges to help you learn the ropes.

The game will tell you there are 84 medallions to earn in total, but honestly I have no idea what that number will be.

Next up: I’m experimenting with some different level types and ideas, thinking about dialogue, and generating more single player challenges!

What’s new this update:

• Campaign with 6 Sample Levels and a “World Map”
• Captain’s Gambits can be switched to Stock for the multiplayer, giving you a number of uses that are always ready.
• Earn medallions to unlock Captains and Multiplayer maps
• Added a Language placeholder to the options screen and a button to reset your progress.
• Added minion count to the score mount
• Modified when the ‘Out of AP’ or ‘on Cooldown’ nags will show.
• Updated Help Menu with more info on Captain’s Gambits and Medallions.
• Reworked the way AI is paused/unpaused
• Fixed some Turn Timer bugs