HEX Party Board Game

A hex tile game featuring a top-down or isometric view with phased-based turn system. Players compete to explore tiles, harvest resources, survive disasters, and finish with the most loot.

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Inspiration

The classic M&M Heroes Kingdoms MMORPG. I initially started making out a clone, but then pivoted to creating a unique and versatile party board game that can be altered for multiple gameplay scenarios.

What it does

30 players are divided into 10 different houses and compete to win challenges, acquire resources, and advanced on a game board to win the game with the greatest number of coins. Patrons control the game board, players participate in the game and spectators can view the game through overlays. The initial version has test mode turned on which delivers a basic version of the game, allowing the user to control multiple players to test out the basic premise of the game.

How we built it

All done through bolt, with occasional corrections done via JetBrains IDEs and the TabNine AI plugin. Prompts were frequently enhanced within Bolt to increase their effectiveness. I had wireframes, mock-ups and designs from earlier concepts and these were used to guide the AI into building a functioning prototype.

Challenges we ran into

Getting the AI to create a seamless honeycomb hex structure proved to be very difficult. I easily spent the majority of the first week getting this right. Pivoting from top-down to isometric view for hex tiles was another major challenges, as was converting from cartesian to cube coordinates and then translating these into on-screen pixels, taking into account zoom levels and the world camera position. There are still issues which need attention, especially with regards to the circular hex menu positioning as the zoom level changes.

Building the actual game logic was challenging as well, so I had to break down the requirements into small self-contained portions that could be more easily "focused" on by the AI without "imagining" somewhat arbitrary and superfluous tangential features (read: side affects).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm super proud of the way the UX has turned out. It still needs a few rounds of polish but for 2 weeks of on/off work with family commitments and an intensive day job, I couldn't have hoped for better. Here are some the major achievements I'm very happy with:

  • Seamless honeycomb hex structure that spirals out from the centre
  • Cube coordinate to pixel conversion - oof what a nightmare this was to get right
  • Super cool phase overlays keeping spectators informed of chaotic game effects in a user-intuitive and easy to understand manner.

What we learned

  • AI doesn't know what a seamless honeycomb structure is :)
  • Persistence and hard work always pays off, minus a few nights sleep and plus a good chunk of greys
  • It's a good idea to use multiple tools when you seem to be going in circles with one particular tech stack. A "fresh pair of eyes" works in the AI realm too :D

What's next for HEX Party Board Game

Oh, so much. This is just the beginning. I have a more comprehensive setup planned which involves patrons bidding for their slots, house rankings and wars, sponsor plugs (gotta bring in the moneys somehow, right?), and players turning on their cams and adhering to a set of rules to turn this much more than just a "log in and play" setting. Devil's Plan, anyone?

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