Lately I’ve enjoyed working on Mage Food Truck updates, and I’ve added a ton of value to that game since launch, but it looks like time to pivot. I’d hoped that something similar to Space Food Truck launched on the same platform would produce a similar result, but MFT has pulled in 100x less than its predecessor.

I am working on new stuff, but I can’t keep kidding myself that a new game is likely to produce income. So there will be progress posts and updates, but I’m leaning away from the illusion of “time is money” and “always be shipping” when it comes to games. To treat this with the discipline of a job and get disappointing results over and over is just not a nice way to work.

After about 3 years in development, my fantasy follow-up to Space Food Truck is live on Steam right now! I was shooting for something faster, funnier, and more replayable than SFT, and I feel like this game delivers. I hope you’ll pick it up!

If you already own SFT, check out this bundle to save 15%!

Some early reviews:

“I absolutely was unprepared for how much I actually enjoy it & I cannot wait to play more.”
– Squiiish

“As a huge TTRPG sicko, I find the dialogue/ references hilarious lol I’ll for sure be playing more!”
– FoxxySteve

“Absolute vibe on this game, and a refreshing change from all the samey stuff on steam atm.”
–ZanderDarke

If you like turn-based battles, but could do without all the stat optimizing menus, have I got a game for you! Hex Gambit: Respawned is an easy to pick up battle sport for 1-4 players now available on PC, Mac, and all major consoles! The first to score 10 points wins in dynamic 20 minute matches against friends, online randos, or AI.

Featuring:

• 21 single player challenges with 3 difficulties, concocted by the Mastermind himself
• Local or online friendly matches for 1-4 players with handicaps and house rules
• 1v1 competitive matchmaking with crossplay!

Help Us Succeed!

If you love this game and want to see it succeed, repost and boost our signal on your favorite social media (TwitterX, Instagram, BlueSky, Threads, Facebook). Leave a review to help the algorithms like us on Steam, PS Store, or Xbox! You can also come say hi on our new hexgambit discord channel and join or host a friendly match with other players.

On a Personal Note

If you’ve been following One Man Left over these last few tumultuous years, THANK YOU. It means a lot that you guys are still liking posts or dropping me encouraging messages. It’s mind-blowing that (thanks to my publisher, Blowfish) my first solo project is out on every platform under the sun today, and I hope you guys have a blast with it. You’re awesome!

Strategy fans, mark your calendars, because One Man Left returns March 6th with my latest project, Hex Gambit: Respawned! HGR is a turn-based battle sport coming to Steam and all major consoles. Command a squad of minions, bouncing across their oddly elastic heads to harvest Victory Points from your opponents. Just don’t give up too many points of your own in the process…

HGR is a massive project, chock full of ways to play:

• Cross-platform online multiplayer
• Take on the world and rank up in Competitive 1v1
• Battle 1-4 friends online or on a couch with Free for All, 2v2, AI opponents, Player Handicaps, AND House Rules to mix things up
• 21 single player challenges with Easy to Hard difficulty options, plus a throwaway story with jokes!

If you’ve been following OML the past few years, you know that HGR has been a long time in the making, and I can’t WAIT for you guys to finally get your hands on it. I’m tremendously grateful for the help from my publisher, Blowfish Studios in making this happen (my first console game!), and I honestly feel like it’s the coolest game I’ve ever worked on.

We’ve all been waiting patiently for the full list of platforms that Hex Gambit: Respawned is headed to, and my publisher Blowfish Studios has finally pulled back the curtain!

Grab the Steam Demo here!
Upcoming Streaming event, this Sunday

This is the most platform logos that a One Man Left game has ever had to squish onto a marketing piece. Kickstarter backers will be thrilled to hear that the promise of a Hex Gambit game on Switch, years in the making, is finally happening (and then some).

I’m also excited about this mysterious little blurb on the Steam store page:

To be clear I didn’t put that there, and I don’t exactly know what it means, but I have heard that it’s a thing being worked on. Pretty neat.

These are some changelogs for internal Hex Gambit: Respawned builds. Just dumping them here because it’s where I tend to look.

v0.2.11

• Fixed a bug where the Captain’s Gambit Ready animation was playing when Gambits were set to Stock and opponents had a handicap (only supposed to play if set to Comeback)
• Fixed a bug where Captain’s Gambits were setting two Undo snapshots instead of one, so you had to undo them twice to undo the previous action.

v0.2.10

• Adjusted menus to work better with localized text.
• Improved 4:3 aspect ratio support.

v0.2.9

• Added internal ‘hide UI’ mode for footage capture. Only works in Cheater builds.

v0.2.8

• Hiding language options for the time being.
• Slowed down loading screen for the demo by 0.8 seconds so you can read.

v0.2.7

• Demo: Added wishlist nag to the level select
• Fixed icon on Steam- was the Unreal icon
• Demo: Added full game nags to the multiplayer setup screens
• Demo: Updated style of Custom Rules nag
• Custom Rules: changed Captain’s Gambit options’ display text, changed default to Stock to match Campaign.
• Demo: Added “only in full game” to Captain Select for locked captains
• Added Enter as a more widely-supported Confirm input

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.

Currently working on updates for Mage Food Truck, a roguelike deckbuilder only on Steam! Hex Gambit: Respawned is my tactics game OUT NOW for PC | Mac | Switch | PS4/5 | X Box One/X/S