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!

Weird month! Two rough colds, a lot of bonus child care, some life changes to add anxiety. I was more than a little distractible. Most of that situational weirdness is behind me now, and I’m aiming to make up for lost time in February.

Hex Gambit: Respawned news! At last, I’ve seen a match with a server and a client connecting to play. A lot of the undercode™ is being reorganized by my publisher for online play, so that’s still a very cool strategy game coming later this year. Can’t wait for you guys to play it!

Prototyping! …This damned pirate hex RPG. I’ve pumped a LOT of time into this one. I think it could be very cool, but it’s also a huge project. There’s a few more enemy encounters to put together, and then I’ll have a playable thing that I can show to people. My next prototype will likely be much simpler, for my sanity.

I did get to play with some of my nephew’s sketches for pirate monsters, which was fun!

And hey, here’s some DnD characters I drew this month when I was feeling extra distractible. That’s my bard, Ziggy McJagger, plus a fire druid lady for a teammate.

In 2019 I wrote:

“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.”

If the meaning of the word “finished” is “to complete a shippable game”, then I’m an indie game designer again! Unfortunately… I think the meaning of the word “finished” is to get that game onto a store for you guys to play. So, still not really a game designer… and that’s honestly starting to get to me a little bit.

Patience!

This year I completed the Hex Gambit: Respawned offline experience, including a 5 hour campaign mode, local multiplayer, customizable house rules, with full controller support! I also got an Epic Megagrant to keep my head above water! A lot of that is stuff we’ve never accomplished in the history of One Man Left. I did all of that on my own, I pushed those changes on git, and… crickets.

Patience.

HGR is being ported to every major console by my publisher. Online multiplayer is in the works. Super exciting stuff is coming Summer-ish 2022.

That’s a very long time for me to sit and wonder what launch day will look like. So I’ve been prototyping for half of this year. Should I make prototypes until HGR launches, or go ahead and commit to something so I can launch a follow-up more quickly? Should I leverage our popular legacy franchises, or make my own mark with something you guys don’t know you want yet? Should I commit to strategy as a genre, or is it time try something new?

These are the questions I’m grappling with as we head into 2022. The important thing is: I’m still here somehow.

We haven’t had a decent game launch since Space Food Truck in 2016 (currently 50% off!), so THANK YOU to anybody that’s still following this feed, or our Twitter account, or checking in with our discord. It’s taking time to turn this thing around, but I’ll have something awesome for you guys to play soon.

My resolution: I’d like 2022 to be the year I can finally call myself an indie game developer again. I want to be selling a finished game for the next New Years post.