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Your game engine is going to be unusable and buggy as hell if you're relying entirely on AI for it. And your game is not going to be unique if it's being created by a chatbot. AI is not capable of creativity.

Fantastic demo, can't wait to play the full game!

What is this lovecraftian nightmare

Recent Updates

The most recent update of the game added the following:

• Spawn/hit/death animations for enemies
• Scores and high scores
• Bug fix for out of bounds glitch
• Mouse/touch support
• Smaller file size

Read this post for more detail:

https://masterofgiraffe.itch.io/hexlock/devlog/1589755/hexlock-v011-updates

About

I'm the developer/designer of HEXLOCK, a witch-themed action roguelike with a grid battle system inspired by Mega Man Battle Network. The game is being developed with raylib and written in pure C.

Its primary gimmick is that there are 12 different astral signs, each associated with a Zodiac, that must be matched in twos or threes in order to add a spell to your move set. This is in contrast to MMBN, which simply had a timer before allowing you to select chips. I got the idea for this from the game Elfazar's Hat, which is part of the UFO 50 collection and has a similar "collect cards to use abilities" mechanic.

Currently there is only one spell associated with each sign, but I plan to give each one a unique deck associated with it from which you can draw and choose spells. The spells in a given deck will be themed after the Zodiac, for example Aries would allow you to select from offensive fire spells, while Pisces would give healing spells.

I also plan to expand the game to include 100 waves instead of its current 20, which would involve adding more enemies, designing bosses, and implementing deckbuilding features.

You can find the game here: https://masterofgiraffe.itch.io/hexlock

Or follow its open source development here: https://github.com/giraffekey/hexlock

Also feel free to follow updates on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/giraffekey.bsky.social

Current version: v0.1.1

I'm the developer/designer of HEXLOCK, a witch-themed action game with a grid battle system inspired by Mega Man Battle Network. The game is being developed with raylib and written in pure C.

Its primary gimmick is that there are 12 different astral signs, each associated with a Zodiac, that must be matched in twos or threes in order to add a spell to your move set. This is in contrast to MMBN, which simply had a timer before allowing you to select chips. I got the idea for this from the game Elfazar's Hat, which is part of the UFO 50 collection and has a similar "collect cards to use abilities" mechanic.

It's in active development and will receive continuous updates that expand the game's systems, add new enemies, add bosses, etc. I plan to completely revamp the spell casting system to have deckbuilder elements so that new spells can be added seamlessly.

https://masterofgiraffe.itch.io/hexlock

Very fun! Just wishlisted on Steam.

Fun game!

Fun game! Really creative to have it toggle the colors on/off. I was confused by a couple levels at first but when I figured out it worked that way it wasn't much trouble.

Pretty cool game, though overly confusing and the controls could use some work.

Cute game, I like the atmosphere. I made the Ancient Banyan Tree.

Very pretty game with a great atmosphere, albeit slow paced.

Looks like a good template/implementation to build something out of. Would be interested to see where it went if you had more time.

I wonder if this would be better turn-based rather than in real-time as it barely gives you time to think. It also seems unbalanced, the first time I played I won within ten seconds. Otherwise, nice work!

This gets you hooked quite quickly. Great game!

Cool game! I thought I was winning at first but then new enemies started spawning and I realized I wasn't. Managed to win in the end. Quite a bit of strategy to the game.

Really nice art style but found it confusing. I guess I earn corn by placing things and that let's me merge upgrades? I couldn't figure much of it out.

Bit confusing because I didn't really know what "diagonal" meant. But once I figured it out it was pretty neat!

The soundtrack is really good, game play is fun. I think it could use a bit more visual polish within the realm of animations, movement, explosions, etc. The instant movement made the puzzles slightly more difficult to solve at first.

The visuals look really cool and the theme is on point. It took me a while to figure out how to play, the main thing I kept getting confused by was why I kept taking damage. I didn't manage to beat it because tbh the goal sounds a bit tedious, but I did last 30 turns.

Very cool. I think with some more polish it could be visually easier to understand what's going on.

Feedback for feedback? I created a witch-themed action game inspired by the grid combat system of Mega Man Battle Network.

https://masterofgiraffe.itch.io/hexlock

HEXLOCK

We should probably ban it entirely, it doesn't add anything constructive but it does take something away from real artists. It also hurts my eyes to look at and I see it more frequently lately.

What a normal and reasonable post, I sure hope no one is weird about it-

There's no need to spread AI-generated material all over the internet because anything you "make" with it is something anyone else can do. There's nothing special about being a "prompt engineer" or whatever.

Hello, I recently made a witch-themed game inspired by the grid combat system of Mega Man Battle Network.

https://masterofgiraffe.itch.io/hexlock

Hey, I mean, you applied and got someone to reach out, so that means it at least kind of works. It's just unfortunate that the person who reached out happened to be the wrong type of person. I doubt that's very common. You may have just gotten unlucky.

Hi, my game was made fairly recently for a game jam and is a WIP but if you could check it out I'd appreciate it. https://masterofgiraffe.itch.io/hexlock

The graphics and physics in this game are very impressive and the core game loop is fun. Unfortunately I did have to refresh the page because I flipped over and got stuck in the ground (pressing R didn't help).

Really cool mechanics, definitely would have wanted more levels!

My only complaint is that I wasn't able to tell where I could and could not move on the last level. Maybe some color coding or outlines could help?

Cool game, I like the art, way too difficult though.

I have been pet by twenty hands while repeatedly baaing and shooting lasers. My life is now complete.

Nice work, pretty simple but I like the art.

I managed to survive 7 rounds. It's a cool idea but a bit confusing at times and maybe a bit buggy? For example if I backtrack to stand on a hex it places a hex under me and it will only activate if press space and then hit a move key. I can also activate it by running into a wall.

That poor red enemy never stood a chance...

Pretty good for a first game, core game loop is fun! With some more work and polish there's some potential.

This is a pretty cool and unique combat system, though I think it has some rough patches. The puzzles you have to solve to deal/avoid damage are very deterministic and every enemy attacks you in the exact same way, the only difference seems to be how much health they have.

I generally categorized each attack into four different categories, two you can guarantee 3 damage and the other two you can guarantee 1 damage.

1. The enemy is attacking with three in a row, e.g. water/fire/plant. You can counter this by combining the last element in the chain with the two elements before the chain, e.g. plant/light/air because plant is last and light/air are the two before water/fire. This always deals 3 damage.
2. The enemy is attacking with an isolated element, skip two, a pair of elements, e.g. water/dark/light where water is isolated, fire/plant are skipped, dark/light are a pair. You can counter this with the isolated and skipped elements, e.g. water/fire/plant. This always deals 3 damage.
3. The enemy is attacking with an isolated element, skip one, a pair of elements, e.g. water/plant/dark where water is isolated, fire is skipped, plant/dark are a pair. You can counter this combining the pair with the element before the isolated e.g. air/plant/dark. This always deals 1 damage.
4. The enemy is attacking with a disconnected triangle, e.g. water/plant/light or fire/dark/air. You can counter this by combining two of the elements with an element before the other one, e.g. air/plant/light or water/dark/air. This always deals 1 damage.

I didn't manage to escape because once I figured out this pattern I played for another 30 minutes and got bored. I have some other complaints such as encounters can happen multiple moves in a row and in general fights feel too frequent. There isn't enough variety in the visuals of the dungeon so I often got lost, the only landmarks being chests I haven't opened yet.

Interesting game, I was pretty confused for a bit and I think some animations could have helped me make sense of what was happening. I beat one of the levels and the screen went blank so I assume I won unless that's a bug.

Can't wait for the official raylib assembly bindings.