Hex Gambit
Hot Fix for Blitz Royale
Fixes:
* Fixed bug with Reward Screen counting minions incorrectly after a win
* Fixed bug with Main Menu not displaying the correct 'completed' difficulty badge
New:
* More UI Audio cues
Blitz Royale is Live!
For those of you who've wished for a way to play Hex Gambit while waiting for your turns to come back, the Blitz Royale has arrived! This single player survival challenge was devised by Abbacus himself, and consists of 6 battles using one, persistent army.
You'll choose a loadout like usual and receive a certain number of reinforcements per unit, doled out to you randomly before each battle in the blitz. Every minion you lose is gone for good, so tread carefully! In all, you'll get a little more than 2 standard matches' worth of minions to survive. Here's a rundown of our three difficulties:
Easy: You’ll get an extra AP every turn, and start each match with a full Captain charge. You'll benefit from a bonus that helps you recharge your Captain’s Ult faster, and your opponents won't trigger their Ults as often.
Normal: You’ll get the same AP as your opponents, and start each match with an empty Captain’s charge. You'll also receive a bonus charge to help you fill your Captain’s Ult faster.
Hard: Your enemy gets an extra AP each turn, and will trigger their Captain’s Ult more frequently. You gain no special charge bonuses for your Captain.
Please send your bug reports and feedback for the new mode to contact@onemanleft.com.
I've updated our Early Access Manual with all the current minion stats and this Blitz Royale info. Our next feature will be an interactive tutorial, so you won't have to dig through that pdf much longer!
New This Update:
Stat Changes:
Fixes:
Known Issue:
Rechargeable Captain Update
Some fixes for Hex Gambit's multiplayer are coming online today before we dive full time into single player. It'll be a few weeks before our attention returns to the multiplayer side of things, but we'll have some neat bots to fight when we reach the other side!
The biggest change launching today: our cheaper Captain Ultimates will now recharge for a second use! We've also tweaked some costs to balance for this change. As far as the current Captain roster is concerned, this is good news for Bjorgolf and Penny Miser but bad news for Lolli, whose bonus cost went up.
So ults that cost 4VP or less can now be triggered multiple times if your opponent lands on certain scores. But savvy opponents can block those extra uses if they avoid ending their turns with certain VP amounts. It won't turn the metagame on its head, but it provides some flexibility for future Captain additions and gives us a neat tool for the single player mode.
Here's a full rundown of what's new today:
Pacifist Hot Fix
Calm down! The Pacifist is here.
Big day for Hex Gambit Early Access: all seven launch minions are live! With the addition of the Pacifist today, you now have 21 different combinations of minions to use on your team, times six unlockable Captain's Ultimates to choose from. You can carefully customize your tactics to taste, or go nuts and randomize your loadout every match.
Like the Sniper before her, our Pacifist is launching sans sound effects but fully functional. Infectious love and generosity are her specialties! Use her to nullify your threats and to block late game pillar taps.
Another big change this update: a better Motivator! Shout is now free with a 1 turn cooldown, and Intimidate now strips buffs from its targets. That means it removes shields and overwrites Inspire. Inspiration will resume once the Intimidate clears, but those shields are gone for good. Enjoy!
Gameplay
Fixes
Matchmaker Update!
Today we can happily announce that Hex Gambit's Apex Cup now uses the robust style of skill-based matchmaking you all enjoyed in our previous TBS game, Outwitters! That means we've added an under-the-hood skill rating that watches how well you fare against other players. As everyone starts to spread out across the skill range, your matches will become more and more even.
The Apex Cup is all about battling other factions for territory, so affiliation is a factor now, too. Here's how it works:
To clarify: if two players in a similar skill bracket are queued for 1v1 and are on opposing factions, they will match against each other. But in scenarios where the matchmaker has candidates in your skill range and none are from an opposing faction, it will match with one of them rather than waiting for perfection. We're striking this balance to give you a fair match as quickly as possible.
The first question that's bound to be on every Outwitters fans' mind is, of course, what about my skill tier? This update is strictly a server-side, invisible kind of thing. But we are looking into visible ways to showcase your skill rating to the world, and we'll have a solution for that in a future update. Stay tuned!
Sniper Update!
Hex Gambit Early Access gets a new minion today, so let the team customization begin! There are now six different combinations to choose from, or you can let yourself be surprised by setting as many minion slots to Random as you like.
The new Sniper class doesn't have any sound effects just yet, but we thought, why wait to try him out? Add him to your roster to deal some damage at a distance. What he lacks in speed, he makes up for with insane reach. Here's a breakdown of his specials:
Another modest gameplay tweak was included in today's update: we've standardized the special move unlocks into 3 easy-to-remember thresholds: Early Game unlocks all happen at 3VP now, Mid-Game unlocks are at 5VP, and a few rare Late Game unlocks will happen at 7VP.
Next on our agenda is the last minion class for Hex Gambit's launch: the Pacifist. We'll also be trying to squeeze in a few long-talked about character buffs before we shift our focus from minions to other features.
Hot Fix 0.4.0.552
- Fixed displaying incorrect rank badge in profiles.
Profiles Update! v0.4.0.548
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIRP4B1Hsjc
Player profiles are here! The skill tiers we showed you during our Kickstarter are in, but with a twist! As you accumulate wins in the Apex Cup, you'll be promoted to snazzier and shinier titles. The days of being stuck "Forever Fluffy" or sometimes getting weirdly demoted after a win in Outwitters are gone. As far as these badges are concerned, you have nowhere to go but up!
So your level shows opponents how long you've been playing, and your title will tell them how many league matches you've crushed. But what about the really hardcore players that like the more precise, fluctuating win/loss-type skill rating? Well, we do have a stat like that for each of you under the hood of our matchmaking system, we just haven't fully developed and deployed that system yet. If that's the kind of thing you want us to prioritize in a future update, or if there's something else you want to see, let us know! It's your Early Access super power to nudge development in the direction you care about.
With profiles up and running, we'll be jumping right in to our first minion addition: the Sniper! Soon we'll all have to decide which of our six minions we want to boot from the roster, or let fate decide randomly between the six different combinations.
Check back weekly for more progress on our upcoming turn-based strategy game, Hex Gambit. Buy a copy today to save 10% on the launch price, then give us some feedback to help shape the final product! If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for our mailing list to get an email reminder for the official release on PC later this year.
Patch Notes
Official Hex Gambit Steam Avatars!
