It’s that time of year where family events and other distractions abound, but work continues in the One Man Left basement laboratory!

First, on the topic of Hex Gambit: Respawned, I’m sad to report that our release window has been pushed to next year. Adding cross-platform multiplayer on top of all these ports is no simple thing, but the game is in capable hands and I know it’ll be worth the wait! Sign up for the mailer or check back here for the latest.

While my publishing partner hammers away at HGR, I’ve been cooking up a single player successor for our old roguelike deckbuilder, Space Food Truck. This month I squeezed in one last goofy feature: Vegetarian Mode!

The new Food Trucker has illustrations of the meals you make, and the recipes themselves have been designed to make sense (it’s not a random selection of ingredients like SFT). So if you don’t find dishes like Meatcakes™ very appetizing, you can tick this on for alternate menus that remove all the Meat cards from the game. It was a weird idea I had while watching Avatar, so you can thank Aang for this one.

Feeling like there will be some movement on the Hex Gambit: Respawned front soon. I say that a lot, so take it for what it’s worth. Last year’s July post was when my side of HGR’s development wrapped, so happy anniversary! Porting to every platform and adding crossplay multiplayer takes time, but the publisher is doing a great job from everything I’ve seen, and it will be very cool when it’s ready.

It’s been a long limbo, but the new Food Truck game is keeping me occupied! Hard to believe it’s a year into development now.

Early in the month I ran some in-person playtests, took note of the times I had to verbally nudge players in the right direction, and am in the process of converting those into in-game nudges. Space Food Truck is a neat game design, but I want this Trucker to be more self-explanatory and approachable. A lot of awesome art is also starting to materialize, which I’ll show off sometime after HGR launches.

Hex Gambit: Respawned‘s console certification continues. Nothing but steady progress to report at the moment. Release date/trailer will be posted here and on twitter @onemanleft. Getting a summer release window vibe, if that helps you hang on!

Still filling my pre-launch time getting a head start on the new Food Truck game, which is getting into solid playtesting shape. I broke a lot of stuff a while back, but was able to play through all five of the game’s map scenarios this month.

I’ve got the highscore goals for 1-3 stars honed to a sweet spot challenge-wise, and am working on getting dialogue and a help menu in. Next month, the game should be able to teach testers how to play without me being there.

Hex Gambit: Respawned is in the process of being certified by PlayStation, X Box, and Nintendo right now. I think I’m supposed to be staying all mysterious about it until the big announcement. Did I make a game?! Or was it all a dream?!

The new Food Truck project gives me something controllable to focus on while we wait. I recently started plugging some shippable art and animations in, so I can envision how cool the finished product will be. It’s great motivation.

I’m focused right now on making cooking more satisfying than it was in Space Food Truck. No more randomized recipes that don’t really make sense. I’ve got lots of real recipes, and they’re all illustrated so you can see what the meal you just cooked actually looks like.

Normally I’d announce a title and start posting art and videos for the Food Truck game. But HGR hasn’t launched yet, so it’s not time for that. Things are kind of wishy washy at the moment. But at the end of this weird stretch, I’ll have a game out this year and be positioned to follow it up with something equally cool next year.

I’ve seen lists of marketing activities and even a proposed release date for Hex Gambit: Respawned! But I’m not allowed to talk about any of it yet, so we’ll have to be patient a bit longer. Stay tuned.

A little family vacation time made my February even shorter than usual, but I’ve just about got all of the Food Truck prototype’s card animation sorted out. Adding animation broke basically everything, but it’s almost stable enough to play again, and it’s much prettier.

I also did a bunch of playtesting for the release candidate for Hex Gambit: Respawned! Found a pretty amazing bug, too. Crowned, golden minions are like the boss fights in HGR’s campaign, and Lolli’s ult is to steal enemy minions. He could totally trade a Runner for a boss character. We fixed it.

I get genuinely nervous when I know it’s been worked on for months by the publishing team and I crack it open for the first time in a while. But HGR is working great! And it has online multiplayer now! And I’m talking to marketing people about launching later this year.

This iteration of Hex Gambit started production in 2020. The original started in 2017. It’s about freakin’ time guys. This is the year.

Call it the holiday funk, but time got away from me this month! Apologies for the late post, and for the late post’s very lazy title.

First, a quick Hex Gambit: Respawned update. I’ve gotten word from my publisher that the project will be pushed into early 2023, which is not totally unexpected. Progress is steadily marching toward submission, so it looks like OML will finally launch a new game Q1 of next year. It’s probably our biggest game with lots to do though, so worth the wait!

And a Food Truck Redux update: The game now has 4 scenarios that steadily introduce the new crew, with the final scenario being this game’s version of Space Food Truck. It’s super fun, with better replay value thanks to a new scoring system. It’s also easy for me to add more scenarios later, which I plan to.

I’m switching gears a bit this month from implementing mechanics and features to getting things looking pretty, so I have something decent to show.

It’s been a somewhat momentous month in the lengthy saga of Hex Gambit: Respawned.

If you don’t recall, last April I turned in the original “final version” of HGR to my publisher. They spent the last year or so reshaping that into an online game, and in the process a whole lot of stuff broke (because the game wasn’t built with online in mind).

Since May I’ve been cataloging and fixing everything that wasn’t working like it used to, adding some menus, and now finally the game is back in that shipping candidate state, but with online multiplayer!

Pencils are now up, and we’re starting the certification processes for all the consoles. I imagine it will be months before we have a release date, and I’d guess the game will launch sometime in the first half of next year.

That puts me back into “kinda sorta finished, but the game isn’t out” limbo. I’ll be getting reacquainted with the food truck prototype next.

Been picking away at my remaining to do’s for Hex Gambit: Respawned this month. Progress report time!

There are some minor crossplay-related menus to polish up and bugs to look into on my end. It’s nice to have a short to-do list for a change. We’re starting the process of localizing all the text into different languages, and QA testing is ramping up.

This is sort of a tidying up phase of development, not a lot of cool new stuff to show off. The launch window feels like it’s shifted back a bit, I’d guess late this year or early 2023. You can bet I’ll be shouting from the mountaintops when a release date is locked in!

Check back here for monthly updates.

My Food Truck prototype was thiiiis close to playable when, wouldn’t you know it, Hex Gambit: Respawned came back knocking. Also I took a little vacation time and got COVID.

I’d been on standby for a long while, waiting for my publisher’s programming crew to get the online multiplayer ready. This month I’ve finally got the green light to add our missing online multiplayer menus and wrap my side of things up.

Unfortunately some of the features I mentioned previously had to be cut for the sake of time, so no online tournaments or skill-based matchmaking at launch. I have added some neat stat tracking to keep things interesting, though. Here’s the state of things:

• EXP is granted for wins only. As you level up, your title and badge will gain prestige. Win streaks add bonus EXP, so skilled players level up more quickly.
• Best win streak, most wins in a month, and lifetime wins are recorded.
• The captain you’ve used most frequently in the past 11 matches is recorded as your favorite captain.
• Playing local multiplayer or online now grants medallion rewards, which unlock captains and multiplayer levels. So you can unlock all of the game’s content playing whatever mode you like!

I’ve got a few more animations and polish items to take care of, then my work on HGR should be wrapped up next month. No solid release date for the game yet, but late this year or early next seems likely. Keep an eye on this blog for updates!