Illustration by Kenjaducana
Project Summary
Hex Battle is a turn based card MOBA where at the start of the game player’s take turns drafting 4 characters each for their team. Each character is represented in game with various stats and abilities for combat and capturing control points. Additionally, each character has a 10 card mini deck where at the start of the game the players chosen characters fuse their cards into one to create the players deck. Some cards have specific user while other cards can be used by any character as long as they have enough mana to play it.
I started this project because I felt there haven’t been any big named turn based e-sports games, there are a few moderate ones out there but they haven’t been able to get branding as large as things like League of Legends and Overwatch. I believe some of it is because those games are flashier, but I also believe that same flashiness also put a barrier to players that are mid 20’s and above, where their reaction time is no longer at their peak. There are also players who are just not blessed with the quick motor skills to play these games. I wanted to shoot for a game where players can take some time, plan out strategies and feel like a battle master. The card game functionality was added as a means to increase the meta diversity and because with the slowed game play you need to look for the micro synergies among the cards - but I know some players get stuck in the deck building phase of TCG’s and just want a preconstructed deck. This is where the idea of character mini decks spawned from, a player can obsess over the characters they enjoy and look for other characters that compliment their strategy keeping the deckbuilding itself light weight but maintaining depth. There is the added benefit that the players will focus on the character roster as a whole which has the potential to create brand awareness similar to the big e-sports mentioned earlier (and the thing the current turn based e-sports do not seem to have going for them).
In The Game
Current iteration of the main PvP map, includes added feature fog of war represented by desaturated darker tiles.
Old iteration with noting to below. Characters in this image are not mine and were for representation purposes only - they have since been replaced by the character roster farther down.
The current active character’s name. A player can click on a different character to make them the active character instead.
The current active character’s portrait image.
The current active character’s stats. Hovering over them expands the stat to fully show its name (Attack, Movement, Range)
The current active character’s passive ability. Each character has an ability that triggers by something happening.
The player’s hand. Card the active character can play are highlighted in green. Cards with a blue frame any character can play. Red cards are specific to the character that put the cards in the deck. Yellow cards are the characters ultimate card, very powerful but also only a single copy in the deck - use it wisely to turn the tide in your favor.
The characters health bar. This bar also shows any current status effects on that character.
Turn count.
Player point total. The first player to reach 50 points wins the match. Players score a point by killing a character on the opposing team or at the end of each turn you score points for each zone you control.
Visual Aid - Movement. Current active characters show how far they have for movement and what is in their attack range.
Terrain Tile. Certain terrain tiles have different effects, as an example this number is showing a water tile. Characters with Swim can move across without difficulty but for all other characters these tiles take extra movement to wade through greatly slowing them down.
Zone Control. This is technically off screen but needed to be mentioned - the map is in the shape of a hexagon and in each corner there is a zone control tile. If a character ends its turn adjacent to one of these tiles and there is nobody from the opposing team to contest it they capture the zone then score the end of turn points.
The Characters & Art
I created the character lore and world building, collecting examples and rough sketches to the artists for their final illustrations above. Each were to have a very stylized 2D look to them influenced from Japanese animation/manga that will translate to the game by using similar cell shading methods used in Guilty Gear (view the Artwork tab for previous characters I’ve modeled in this style). Each character will also have the following in game:
Character portrait. This is used when selecting characters to show the player what the character looks like. The pose should represent the characters motives and personality to give the player the best representation of them. The background will be transparent. If the character is currently selected in game this portrait will also appear when the player hovers over cards, a small dialogue will appear as though the character is deciding what to do with the player.
5 character card arts featuring the character using attacks, interacting with the environment or other similar concepts shown on trading card games. When a player selects the character these cards are added to the player’s deck.
Character model. Each character will be represented in game by a 3d model that will move, attack, etc visually for players to enjoy. There is a list of in game animations that each character will have but each animation will be specific to their character. Yuri (pictured to the side) would have a different attack animation compared to another character but they will both have an attack animation.
For general representation, the gears in red are the zones the player starts control with. The gears in black are additional zones to capture. The animal face are wild spawns that are dangerous to fragile characters but by killing it the player gets a reward in points and new cards to play.
The Map
The game map has gone through several iterations since the start, starting large and slowly working its way down to where I have it now. One of my favorite moments in playtesting was seeing players really enjoy when they got into team fight situations. They really enjoy the back and forth of planning the turn and slinging cards at each other. But the map at that point had lanes along the outer ring as well so the smart strategy then was to play musical chairs along the outer rim as you take control points. Seeing this problem and wanting to encourage more fights I removed the outer lanes and have them all returning to a centralized point. There is a jungle area between points designed with rough terrain and potential dangers, certain characters can traverse these areas easier but for most they will return to the center after taking a point creating this swelling area of fighting. This central area is still large and open enough to skirt around the edge but small enough where the enemy team can attempt to steal a kill or a zone if you aren’t careful with who and where your characters are.
Work
This project is currently being solo developed by me though I have had network playtests and discussions with other playtesters for feedback. The game was created in Unreal Engine using almost exclusively blueprints. It utilizes a grid movement system from the Unreal Marketplace to cut down on development time and was heavily modified since to meet the game’s needs. Additionally the project was to originally use the CCG system from the Marketplace as well but after purchasing was found to not meet the needs of the project and all of it was scrapped with the exception of the current card image frame - though that will soon be replaced by something more functional for the game itself. I implemented Amazons fleet web services as the server host and added the rest of the multiplayer functionality to the game myself - again, this was all done in Unreal blueprints. The characters are currently represented as the generic Unreal character but behind the scenes systems are already in place for new character models and animations. There are currently 8 different characters and their complete mini-deck programmed in the game just needing art assets, each team requires 4 unique characters so ideally the roster will grow from there.
Current Results & Future Goals
This project is still currently in development, in fact I likely stayed up until 1AM working on it last night. The main gameplay is for the most part there, my main goal now is to improve it’s visuals and get the current 8 characters done to a degree to have something more visually appealing to players and investors. After that I intend to create a Kickstarter to try and fund additional characters as the game will really hinge on a variety of these similar to how a TCG needs sets to increase their card pool. Ideally hitting a 20-30 character roster upon release. I would like to make this a free to play game in the same vein as League of Legends, where you purchasing these characters with real or in game currency but can customize the character with different skins and card art. The reason I want to make it free to play is to capture a larger audience since it is a competitive game and will need a larger player base to sustain itself.