What's Next?

Hey there,

Over the past few builds of Hexagod, I’ve been experimenting with different ways to present the core mechanics of tile placement, village building, and how you're tested as a candidate to become the next Hexagod.

I'll admit, some things have worked well (like the addition of Villages), and some not so much (like the MULT mechanic). I’ve also tried removing a few systems like hunger, resource costs, and even the tech tree to see how the game feels without those systems.

All of this has taught me a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

So with Build 7, I want to take a step back and think about what worked across the last 6 early access builds. Specifically trying to identify the systems that will work well together. So if there’s anything you miss or want to see return, let me know! I’m always open to feedback, and please note these are just plans, so everything’s subject to change.

I’m taking a short vacation this weekend, but I’ll be back on July 7th. If all goes well, you can expect these updates to go live sometime between July 10–17.

My development philosophy is one of taking risks, making big changes, and learning along the way. So I really appreciate your patience and all the feedback you’ve shared as I’ve been working through the early access journey of Hexagod.

Cheers,

Aarimous

Plan for Build 7

• Turns and Resource Costs

  • Problem: In past builds with resource costs, you fairly easily create a village that produces so many resources that the cost of building a improvement/building became trivial. Since there was no limit to the number of actions you do on each turn you could then scale faster and faster very quickly out pacing my intended difficulty curve. Then all of a sudden you're decisions were meaningly. In my head this is a very similar to how I feel in the end game of Civilization games. If I reach the end game I’ve typically build such a large and powerful empire that scaled up to the point that I’m already winning by so much that each turn feels like a chore of doing a bunch of meaningless decision to simply try and run out the clock on what I already know is a win.

  • Solution: Limit 1 Action Per Turn

    • My idea is to limit you to one action per turn. This way the natural tradeoff of doing one action is that you did not do another action. I will experiment with this and it’s possible that I instead of simply 1 action, I give you 3 action points, and then the various actions are balanced by increasing their action point cost. I’m pretty excited about this idea since it seems that it could solve a lot of the run-a-way builds that seem far to easy to create.

    • 5-6 Types of Actions:

      1. Place Tiles: choice of 3 tile groups to place (free)

      2. Grow: +Villager (cost Food based on total population) or place Village (cost Wood/Stone increase based on # Villages

      3. Build: place a building or tile improvement (cost resources based on what you are placing)

      4. Use Power: use a Hexagod power to move thing, remove thing, terraform tile, etc.. (cost resources based on what you are placing)

      5. Unlock Tech Tree

      6. ??? Probably need something to stick to the hex theme

    • Things will once again cost resources to play and you’ll no longer sacrifice all your resources at the end of the day

    • Doing an action ends the turn

• Return of the Tech Tree

  • I think the old version of the tech tree (back in build 1-3) was interesting in the early game, but I thought became meaningless as you would get the unlocks you needed. But now that it will cost an action there will be a natural tradeoff to spending a turn unlocking something in the tech tree. Plus this tradeoff will reward careful pathing though the tree.

  • You can use an action to unlock improvements, buildings, and Heaxgod powers

  • Unlocks will cost resources based on what you’re unlocking with the cost increasing deeper into the tree

• Game Structure

  • Survive for 10 days to win a run

  • 10 turns per day (all turns are played)

  • Each day you must collect enough resources to reach the Quota, missing the quota and you lose

  • Bonus Goal

    • Each day Theseus will give you a bonus goal (ex: collect 10 Food)

    • If you reach it you get to select one out of 3 relics at the end of the day

    • Goal here is to give you some direction to build in and a powerful incentive to try and get the bonus each day