Play game
Hexlite's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall Fun | #81 | 3.364 | 3.364 |
| Controls / UI | #96 | 2.909 | 2.909 |
| Sound/Music | #96 | 2.909 | 2.909 |
| Art / Graphics | #125 | 2.636 | 2.636 |
Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Genre
Strategy
Turn-based | Card Games | RTS | 4X
Rating
Family Friendly
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Here is my gameplay video if needed:
---I played a similar game a few months ago, or probably a year ago, but the game was so intuitive and taught players in a good way how to play the game. But this one... Hm... I don't know. It felt so barebones that it made the experience boring and not really fun. All you have to do is just acquire the enemy's area, and that's all. I don't know, perhaps a lot of polish will bring the fun in this game? Perhaps more SFX, more graphics, and control, or even a background? But at this stage, it felt too barebones to be considered "fun".
Relatively easy to understand the game yet I appreciate if there is a Difficulty Level.
I like the easy to learn roguelike aspects and minimal BGM/SFX. Though as I am more a casual player that would prefer to chill when playing games, even for Strategy types, I appreciate if there is a Difficulty Level (Easy to Extremely Hard). I believe just letting the game run on idle mode (when it is easy to clear the level) would have more appeal to players. The players who yearn more challenges can enjoy the higher Difficulty and might ask for a Leaderboard Score for their runs.
An elegant, exciting strategy game! The perfect amount of complexity. Levels are exciting and tense, and I love that I can adjust the game speed at any time. My only real complaint is that moving units seems to be aggravatingly slow. If I have four hexagons in a line with two units each aiming to conquer an unclaimed hexagon that has two units, why on earth does it take several seconds for it to do anything? I wish each hexagon had a small meter that showed you exactly how long it takes for a single unit to be produced, because right now it feels like the game is lagging when it isn't.
Overall I quite liked this game and cut myself short in my play through as I could feel the "one more game" syndrome setting in.
Great game! I had a lot of fun. Very addictive. Couldn't pass the 3rd round though. Felt like a big step in difficulty.
Well done!
Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!
So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.
So... I'm going to be honest: a lot of this game didn't make sense until I read through the help. Like, I understood the concept and how it worked, but I didn't understand how attacking worked and how I knew if I was doing well. Once I read the help and realized it was basically a 50/50 and thus RNG, a lot of what I felt was frustrating while playing this made sense. It didn't make it less frustrating, it just made it make sense.
However, there's one thing about this game that, as I watched it happening, I realized causes issues for this game. To help me highlight the problem, I'm going to pose a question. You don't need to answer this as I already know the answer: do tiles produce at an even, steady rate? From what I observed, they don't. While there does seem to be a minimum wait time, there's a level of RNG to when a tile produces and thus can do more than just sit there. The reason this is a problem is simple: if tiles don't produce at a consistent rate, it allows the possibility for RNG to screw the player over if they begin getting slightly longer production times compared to the computer.
Let's say that the production rate for the player on a per tile basis is 0.2 seconds slower, and each side is starting with 10 tiles and thus producing 10 units. After the player has done 5 productions, the computer is now ahead 10 units because they've done 6 productions. Thus does the player now become dependent on RNG to favour them when it comes to their attacks and defenses, which is never a good thing for the player to become dependent on in a strategy game (at least not unless there are other, non-RNG methods of making progress. Which there are not in this game).
If there is going to be RNG that affects strategy, it's better if the RNG affects the computer more than the player. After all, the computer is able to react to things much faster than the player can and more often than not has a better idea of how to make progress. Alternatively, there needs to be a way for the player to influence the RNG to benefit them (say, a perk that increases how quickly tiles can complete productions).
Other things that I think could be beneficial for this game...
1. When a player checks on a tile to see what the tile's attack and defense are, list what the percentage chance of an attack or defense succeeding vs. another tile having 100 attack or defense. So for example, when checking a tile and its attack and defense, it would say "50% rate to successfully attack against 100 defense" and "50% rate to successfully defend against 100 defense." That way, if a player then upgrades a tile as an attack or defense node, that rate will be adjusted for the bonus attack/defense. With this information, a player can then extrapolate what the numbers would be when they're not to their advantage.
2. Include a timer on each tile for when it will finish a production.
3. When a tile isn't claimed by anyone, it should have lower defense. After all, it's unclaimed and there's nobody to "defend" it. The number shown is just to represent how many units you should need to send in to claim it.
Good game! Very addictive, but not easy. I did a lot of runs but was not able to finish it.
The controls are good. A minor thing you could improve: It makes no sense to have two hexes moving to each other, would be nice if a move command from hex A->B would remove a move command from B->A.
Regarding the Hex upgrades: I mainly used the increased production. The attack and defend upgrades are difficult to use. They are often only useful for a short time...
Overall very well done!
I liked this game, and once I got into the rougelite/run structure of it, the difficulty curve also started to make sense.
The graphics are simple but effective, with a clear color palette. Though more juice (glow, bounce, intros, outros...) would probably make the game feel cooler still, lots one can do within this general minimalistic style.
I agree with previous comments on information communication... it's not always obvious what upgrades will do... the whole concept of "upgrades" being the word for the in-battle hex modification wasn't obvious to me, since it could also refer to the between-game improvements. And also the state of the game... it felt a bit "amorphous" to me... where it was hard to quickly identify what the important features are. I think this is partly a risk with the minimalist style... that's one of the jobs those big black dragon graphics might do in a fantasy themed game, drawing your eye and make it immediately obvious that you need to focus on them. I think your game might need to solve that same problem in some other way.
Is there a way to do upgrades et al without using the keyboard shortcuts? Because I think there should be, even if it's suboptimal for an actions-per-second PoV.
All-in-all though, this is a game with clear potential... might need improvements in the presentation, and more features, to make it feel more like a complete package, but I believe the bones are there and work well! I had fun while playing it, and that's a very good start.
Thank you very much, I'm glad you like it. Now you've pointed it out, I agree that 'upgrade' is suboptimal. Maybe 'build attack tile' would fit better. And yes, I understand the information problem. Initially, I was thinking of a more fantasy-style approach, but then I decided to go with a "keep it clean and simple" approach. It's difficult to deviate from that now.
You can just click a tile and then press the 'Upgrade' button in the bottom right corner.
Yeah, dont get me wrong, I like the simple abstract style! I just think you'll have to work a bit harder to get the feedback going that comes naturally when you have large menacing dragon sprites :-)
I liked the concept and minimalist look/vibes. I had a little bit of trouble with the controls, I think some sort of input mode that doesn't rely on drag/drop could be helpful. I think some of the UI and game rules are a bit unclear, for example, I couldn't exactly tell how I earned upgrades, or what the exact mechanics determining combat outcomes were. I enjoyed the music and SFX, they matched the feel of the game well in my opinion.
Hi, thank you for playing! I know that some of the mechanics are not that clear, especially the combat, which is a bit too complicated. I have already been thinking about improving them, but I have not yet found a good way to do so. This is mostly because so many combat rolls are happening all the time that displaying that information is difficult.
At the core I really like the concept. The streamlined RTS thing works for me. The balance between managing borders and your ""domestic"" production flow is engaging.
My main thought is that it really needs some stronger feedback as to the "state" of the game. Especially once the levels get bigger. There's a ton going on and it felt bad getting surprised by a strong enemy tile because it blended in with everything else. Or not noticing one of my tiles got disconnected until it had a lot of units stored that I could have used earlier. Pausing to make decisions felt good, but pausing just to re-scan the board felt tedious.
Some stuff I was wishing for while playing:
I did not see any rare upgrades but even the commons felt relatively impactful which was great.
Hi Thank you for playing! I understand that you would like to have more feedback for the game. This is something I should focus on.
Nice and clean concept. Simple, yet stylish graphics. Music is fine, sound effects could be better. I also don't understand the upgrades at all. I don't know whether the concept is enough for long gaming fun, or whether it gets boring after a while. Maybe it needs some additional features, but I'm not sure.
I would like to have the option to remove a command by clicking on it.