Hexroll has been in development for a few months now, but I'm proud to say that I'm finally confident in the direction it is going, both visually and mechanically.
I have been gathering feedback and doing some gameplay tests and want to continue to work towards a game that you all love as much as I do.
New Visuals
Ok this has been the thing I am most excited about. You've probably noticed that Hexroll looks completely different to it's other event posts. I wanted to take Hexroll in a direction that put more focus on the portal as a centrepiece, and I wanted to make every UI element as diegetic as possible so naturally there's a few more gadgets you can interact with.
The Artefact Shelf
My god do I love the artefact shelf. While the artefacts themselves are pending a visual rework, their place in the scene now feels thematic and awesome. I just love the idea of being a wizard or something and collecting little quirky trinkets on your shelf.
Once the artefacts have been reworked, they should fit into the scene a lot better, and they will look like they're actually sitting on the shelf instead of awkwardly floating on top of it like they do currently.
Reroll Fountain
This huge stone bowl in the corner shows how many rerolls you have remaining in the form of floating d20s. It can be hovered to tell you how many rerolls you have left if you don't want to keep counting them all.
The Dice Bag
Hung up just to the right of the portal, you can now click on it to see what dice you currently have.
This UI has also been reworked to be split into 2 sections so you now explicitly know what is in your bag, hand, or discard pile at all times so you can plan your rolls accordingly.
The Damage Scroll
I love tapestries, they're so cool. I'm not gonna lie I really love the theme of this and it might be one of my favourite UI elements because of how well it fits into the scene. Anyways, it serves a purpose besides being pretty, it tallies up the damage total of your rolled dice so you don't have to do any quick math.
The Collection Log
The UI is pending for this as it's quite a big undertaking, but trust me that it's going to be awesome.
The collection log is basically a central location for tracking just about everything:
Artefacts collected
Enchantments collected
Enemies defeated
Dice bags unlocked
Portals entered
Dice collected
Any hopefully a bunch more!
Gameplay Elements
I haven't just been drawing though, I promise. A big goal for me at the moment is content expansion so I've been laying the foundations for more interesting and tactical combats, and trying to push more towards allowing players to theorycraft builds.
Enemy Abilities
Yeah that's right, enemies now have abilities. I have been trying to design the enemies around the realms that they come from within the portal. For example the swamp realm has a chance to offer an enemy which can drop mud on one of your dice, disabling it for that round.
One thing that I am trying to be mindful of when designing enemies is the inevitable meta that players will come up with. By all means lean heavily into rolling a million D4 dice for death by a thousand cuts, but just be warned that there might be an enemy which gains block or damage each time you roll a D4.
Anyways there's a ton more to cover but I just wanted to update you guys with the main bits as I haven't for a while. The game is very much alive and development is picking up speed now as I work towards a demo.
Don't forget to wishlist if you haven't and follow my socials!
https://x.com/DarkWraithGames
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