I just got a new computer for the first time in 10 years, and noticed some issues when the game is running at super high framerates. Here’s a patch for our beta testers!

Fixed:

• AI minions occasionally tried to attack targets that were already dying.
• Motivator could intimidate spawning units.
• Camera controls work better on faster computers.
• Main menu hex background would spin really fast on fast computers.

For our Kickstarter backers currently enjoying the Hex Gambit: Respawned PC Beta, a big update is out today!

The AI now uses every minion class, and has a spawn pool just like yours. That means you can play a REAL match of Hex Gambit against 1-3 AI opponents, all by your lonesome! The captain you choose for your AI will determine which minions you’ll face, so each battle gets a slightly different flavor.

If 1v1 against the SmarterAI is proving too easy for you, try giving them a handicap on the captain select screen for added challenge. I’ve also had fun playing free for all matches against 3 of them. They’ll gang up on you sometimes and steal your kills!

You can wishlist Hex Gambit: Respawned on Steam today! That would really help me out, as more wishlists increases the game’s visibility on the store.

If you’d like an invite to the Hex Gambit: Respawned PC beta, I’ve got a few spots left! Send an email to contact at onemanleft.com with Hex Gambit Beta Request in the subject to apply.

Coming Next: Captain ults to help struggling players make a comeback.

Remember when I said I’d try rebuilding Hex Gambit from scratch as a couch multiplayer game? Well… it’s called Hex Gambit: Respawned, and you can wishlist it on Steam today, if you like!

It may lack the online features of the original, but it’s going to have a lot of new stuff to offer in the way of AI, single player content, and controller support. Here’s what’s in the beta, going out to Kickstarter backers today:

Version 0.1.0

• Local (couch) multiplayer, 1-4 players
• Full controller support with flexible controller sharing options
• Add 1-3 Easy or Smarter AI opponents to your match (soldiers only for now)
• Free for All & 2v2
• Player handicaps help new players compete against veterans.
• Unique maps for 2, 3, and 4 player games.
• 5 Captains to choose from, each with a unique minion loadout.
• 7 Minion classes
• 7 team color variants
• Nostalgic placeholder music.

Coming next version: the rest of the minion AI will be hooked up. I’ll probably add some captains, and may get to mock up some single player challenges.

The post I really want to write might come a little later than usual, so I thought I’d chime in with this interim update on the Hex Gambit reboot.

I’m fixing things up for a PC Preview Build, coming soon for our old Kickstarter backers!

This isn’t technically the game you backed, that came and went and died an awful death, but you all deserve a copy of whatever I’m making now. I do not have the distribution details figured out yet, but I plan to let all the old backers in on this, regardless of the platform you chose for the original game. Here’s what’s coming:

PC Preview Build Features

• Local (couch) multiplayer, 1-4 players, 0-4 controllers
• Free for All & 2v2
• Player handicaps let noobs play against veterans.
• Unique maps for 2, 3, and 4 player games.
• All 7 original minions are playable by humans, some with new moves!
• The AI uses soldiers only, but is responsive and fun to spar against.
• At least five captains will be ready to choose from, each with a unique minion loadout.
• Share controllers however you like: Everybody shares, or P1 and P3 can share controller 1 while P2 has his own. Crazy stuff like that.
• 7 team colors to pick from: Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple, or Black & White

Here’s the latest on Adam’s reboot of our turn-based strategy game, Hex Gambit:

I added lots and lots of menus last month to flesh the game out: Credits (scrollable, so our original Kickstarter backers can find themselves), How to Play, Options, Spawn Menu, and Pause are all animated and working and nice.

This month: the Runner class is up and… running. And the Motivator should be done by the end of the day. Motivator took a bit longer because of all his damage buff weirdness, but at the rate I’m going it looks like all seven of our old minions could be in the game by the end of the month (but only the Solider will have his AI done).

I’m also trying to feel out a good time to get our old Kickstarter peoples a build. Something to play while we’re all quarantined.

Here’s the latest on Adam’s reboot of our turn-based strategy game, Hex Gambit:

The AI is in, and it’s pretty fun to play against! I’ve got two difficulties atm: one that randomly picks a minion and does the best it can with it (so he misses some opportunities), and one that tries a few things before making a move. I’ve managed to avoid the weird pauses that our original AI used to have, so things go back and forth pretty snappy. I’ve also laid some groundwork to give me a head start when I add more minions.

Next up: try and get a decent-looking build ready. That means replacing a lot of placeholder art, adding some kind of instruction screen, and getting the basic guts working so when people say “can I try a build?” I can say “yeah” instead of “yeah, but first read this pdf…”

And if i get bored in the middle of doing that, I may indulge myself and get the Runner class finished.

Still procrastinating on capturing video, so here’s new captain artwork for Bjorgolf! Hoping to get happy/sad emotes in for each captain, whenever I get around to implementing them.

Been converting things from using a single controller to supporting any number of them or AI, which was completely foreign to me and more complicated than expected. But now it works! You can add up to 4 controllers and share them between players however you want.

On AI turns, my little fetal AI just waits 3 seconds and passes the turn back to you. Next I’ll teach it how to kill. Our old Hex Gambit AI used to get stuck in logical loops or think too hard or something… It had a tendency to just kinda stare at you and time out. I’m aiming for something faster and more responsive this time.

All of this is working towards some kind of PC alpha demo for our Kickstarter backers in the near future. There won’t be a lot of content in this first build, but there will be enough to have some fun, and the foundation should be pretty sturdy bug-wise. It’ll look something like:

• PC only, maybe a Mac version if someone wants to try it, but I can’t test for Mac
• 1-4 players locally, with 0-4 controllers supported
• Add 1-3 AI opponents to the mix
• Free for All or 2v2
• Might be Soldiers-only battles for this first build

That’ll be a nice start for getting feedback on the new controls and the gameplay tweaks I’ve made. Back to work!

2019 is nearly through, and there’s been one man left™ around these parts for about a year now. So how’s that going?

Thanks to YouTube (especially Mathew Wadstein) I learned a skill this year that I’ve been wanting since I was a kid: I pretty much know how to make make my own games now. All that’s left is to finish one, then I can call myself an indie game designer again. It was a lot faster and cheaper than college.

I’ll add some art from my Action RPG training project below. The gameplay was pretty fun and I learned a lot, but the amount of time I would need to do all of the boss fights and levels you need for a game like this is a bit much for my first solo project.

So I landed on resurrecting Hex Gambit as a local multiplayer game. I have a bunch of finished art, I own all the music and SFX, and the game design is already solid. That’s not a bad head start. Two months in, I can play with 2-4 players, free-for-all, using a mouse or a controller.

Now it’s time to put my money where my mouth is and get something onto a store! Happy New Year to you all, and best of luck in whatever crazy idea you’re pursuing in 2020.

My local multiplayer version of Hex Gambit is actually looking good! I have a system for setting up attack targeting by just filling in a little form (hits 2-5 spaces away, only along straight paths, stuff like that), which is super easy to work with. AP is in, everyone can pillar tap, and undos are working! Today I’m working on unit spawning. Won’t be too long before I can actually play Hex Gambit with this thing!

For those of you that got a chance to play the original, here’s some differences I’m experimenting with to make things more “local” friendly.

• Captains will have an assigned minion loadout, so each player just chooses a captain. I may do a “Custom Match” mode that lets you pick all of your minions like the original, but the new way is much faster to set up, especially for four players.
• Custom Match options: you’ll eventually be able to tweak how many Action Points you get per turn, how many Undos are allowed per turn, player handicaps and stuff like that to make your own house rules (the yellow numbers next to the team scores in the screenshot above represent that player’s handicap).
• No locked moves! Cooldowns will be used instead on a per-minion basis. When they spawn, any moves that have a cooldown start in cooldown. You’ll have to keep the minion alive long enough to charge their strongest moves.
• Multiple maps! I’ve set things up so that minions can figure out arbitrary layouts.
• Setup phase is instant: a handful of your units types will be picked at random and placed on specific “start tiles” as invincible, spawning units. On your team’s first turn, they become active and you play like any other turn.
• Action Points carry over! You can store up to five and bank what you don’t spend for later.
• Moving now costs Action Points, and you get less AP each turn. This way, things pass back and forth more quickly to keep everyone engaged.
• UI overhaul from the ground up to make things easier to figure out (work in progress).

My hope is that these changes will make things easier to explain to new players and make your matches even more exciting!

My Action RPG is pretty cool, and very far along. But it would also take a very long time to finish, and I’m needing a game that I could realistically launch next year. So this month I sketched out some possible project schedules and experimented a bit. This one is showing promise:

So far, I’ve got:

• Seven team colors with all seven minions animating
• Crowdsurfing works and looks a bit smoother than before
• Undo(!) is mostly ready
• Support for as many maps as I want
• A simpler camera system, and the board perspective changes on new turns.
• Play with a controller or keyboard or both if you’re crazy.

I definitely can’t make Hex Gambit: the massive online community turf war. But I think I could make Hex Gambit: the couch multiplayer game? Check back for updates, or sign up for our mailer.