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hexlife's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Cleverness | #423 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Artistic Style | #469 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Playability | #487 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Theme | #1153 | 1.000 | 1.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- GDD: Seems good, but wish there were more images of the game and the concepts of what the game is about. Nice to see a development timeline with checkboxes! I noticed that some of the checkboxes are blank? Game: I like the use of the message log to breaking the 4 wall. The controls is very confusing. I dont see the theme personally.
Did you include your Game Design Document in your downloadable files?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
An experimental story-driven Rimworld-like, but with Hexagons. The brief for this game was to be able to dig down and build up, creating a "3D in 2D" world. However, jams being what they are, I ran out of time and had to just hint at the capability. To be continued.
2k or 4k recommended. The game will run in 1080p, but has no real scaling so you might need to pan the camera (WASD) to view some dialogue. I'd also suggest headphones.
INSTALLATION
Should be just point and click on Windows or Linux. A web (WASM) build exists, but failed at the very last minute with an out of memory error which I didn't have time to troubleshoot, so I've disabled it for now.
CONTROLS
- WASD - move camera. You can do this at any time to view other areas of the screen, or if text spawns partially off the side of the screen.
- Left click - select character to move.
- Left click again - select destination. This can be an empty tile, a mining node, or a crafting station.
- Left click and hold - when over a crafting station, brings up the recipe menu.
- Left click and drag - when designating an area e.g. storage area, will highlight the hexagons to be included in the area.
- E - open area submenu (currently no visual indicator that this is active): T - designate storage area
- Q - open build submenu (currently no visual indicator): M - Mason Table
A solo project using Rust with Bevy Engine, Arch Linux, Gimp, Bitwig Studio, and really bad pixel art.
Did you remember to include your Game Design Document?
Yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Extra Notes
I love this community! Thanks so much for giving an old man a new sense of purpose.
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Comments
This is really fun to play. I love the story and the gameplay combined with the story quickly drew me in, though it took a while to get there. The game lacks a bit in UX department, because many times it left me so confused :d Don't get me wrong, the explanations were very good and overall the gameplay feels intuitive but it's a bit hard to fully grasp at first. Didn't stop me from having fun with this though. Good job on the entry!
Thanks so much for taking the time to try this weird experiment! The UX needs a re-work from the ground up. But I'm really happy to hear you weren't turned off by the idea of having story embedded in there, the second iteration is starting now.
I would definitelly love to play the full version of this game! Good work!
Thanks so much for taking the time to download my oddball experiment! I really appreciate you making the effort.
I'm no big brain dev and haven't played Rimworld, but I followed some hexagons and ended up here!
The intro for the game was nice! I also enjoyed how there's a message log that can be withdrawn and also scrolled through, so that the player doesn't need to worry about missing the messages appearing around the map! I also found the chat sort of aesthetic to it kind of interesting!
It was also cool that when I created the storage area, STONE had been sent to go mine stone but couldn't due to storage, so after I built a storage area, STONE went there automatically, placed the materials in it, and then went back to mine (which had been their original command). Essentially, I like that it keeps track of what it's supposed to do. Nice pathfinding too!
A veeeery small thing to point out is that once I used the M button to place the Mason's table, I couldn't back out and had to place it. In the context of this prototype, it has zero bad impact, so it's just something to remember when expanding upon it!
I can see this game having a lot of potential and realized how much can be built on this foundation once the branch was introduced. Then I thought of many ways the game could walk from there. With some nice music and introduction to other "branches", this could be quite a comfortable and nice game to play with a story to keep track of (which the game did make me curious about, especially after the stuff in the end!).
After having played it, I see a lot of potential that this game can have in terms of where it can go, and it's an interesting position to be in! Curious concept, an intriguing story and relaxing gameplay. Very nice game!
Thank you so much for taking the time to persevere with your virus false-positives and check out the prototype! And for your very detailed feedback.
There is actually an undocumented "cancel" control (right-click) but I don't think I really tested it or mentioned it!
Really cool potential ! Would love to see more of it <3
Thanks so much for taking the time to try it!
Interesting game! Would like to see more of it. The gathering is very satisfying. And the story is intriguing as well.
Thanks so much for taking the time to download and play it!
woah, i love the aesthetics and sounds. awesome intro.
may be good to clamp camera movement so you dont get too far away from the grid
I accidentally filled the entire grid up with storages... i dont know if that is intended, bc i think the storages overwrote some of the stone i had collected. maybe if there was a way to clear storages you dont want? the storage area was confusing to me at first, that i was marking a location that he would return to. it makes sense in hindsight but not up front blind. maybe just a small explanation or demonstration, showing what happens when a storage is used
the character can get stuck in the working animation even when he is not working if he doesnt have the right amount of stone to create the bricks
okay when the second area opened up the game clicked for me. that is a risky but cool effect, making the intro room so symmetric like that. i like it a lot and it REALLY made me want to keep playing. I restarted to see if I did something wrong so that I could walk out to the trees haha.
I played three times total. Once when I accidentally filled the screen with storages. Once normal. And once to try to go further. Great job, no jank, runs well. Also love to see rust.
Heh. Yeah, I think it's way too easy to overwrite tiles with other textures. I need to go back to first principles to remove some of the bugs. The logic around what a tile is, and how it appears on screen, is way more complex than I'd first thought. I have a newfound respect for developers of crafting and survival games!
Thanks so much for taking the time to download and play it. I really appreciate you persevering with the bugs and oddball concept!
I really liked the meta narrative in this! Almost seemed like Stone and Branch were gaining sentience and realizing they're a part of the game. At first I thought text was getting cutoff until I realized you can move the camera around and it's a part of the game world. It'd be neat to see this expanded on.
Thanks so much for taking the time to play it! I'm thinking of ways to always ensure the text is visible... what happens when the screen is full of map, for example? I guess I'd need to display the text with some kind of background. Anyway, I really appreciate your time.
Hm! I'm a little sad it ended when it did.
A couple notes: At some point my character became completely invisible and I had to restart to get that fixed. Not sure what happened there. the area sub menu never seemed to appear, so I just had to listen to the prompts. Everything being on a hex grid made me quite happy, I love hex grids. It definitely captured my attention, I hope you do more with this and build out mechanics. The dialogue had me intrigued.
Thanks so much for taking the time to play hexlife! There are quite a few bugs for sure, I need to get to grips with the underlying tilemap library and figure 'em out. The area submenu doesn't actually exist as a UI concept, so no wonder you were confused :) one of the many casualties to lack of time remaining. I love hex games too, so hopefully we're not alone in the world!
Intriguing game! Left me wanting to explore more for sure! Really great seeing a Bevy submission here. I want to go back to that engine for sure. Cheers!
Bevy's a lot of fun to work with. I hope I'm not the only entrant... have to keep an eye out for other crabby bretheren.
Fun game, I liked the vibe. One thing for others trying it, the default size it launched in was cutting off a lot of the text that was popping up on screen. I had to make the window a bit larger to see it. IDK, its probably a side effect of my having a extra wide 5440x2560 monitor.
Yeah there are so many scaling issues. I need some kind of cohesive solution to screen size and ensuring text is visible, although the camera scrolling does mitigate it somewhat... but it's not obvious that it exists! Thanks so much for taking the time to play it, I really appreciate it.