Hex

I worked on Hex over the course of winter 2022 – a project which started as a straightforward collection of bark lines for use in a portfolio, but which expanded into a broader concept for a survival roguelike. Hex comprises a design document, documentation for the characters and narrative flow, as well as a package of bark lines, item descriptions, and some 3D work exploring the game’s visual style.

Hex follows Celeste, an urban explorer who finds herself trapped in an infinite, sprawling manor, known as Westerly House. The House is possessed by an ancient evil, and in order to escape Celeste must unite the other survivors trapped in its halls and overcome the Hex Bane, an entity trapped for generations in the Heart of the House.

Part of the project involved reflecting on how the narrative would integrate with the roguelike gameplay experience. As the player works to progress through the five main halls of the house, from the Foyer to its dark heart, they will uncover the House’s story at the same time as developing rich friendships with its other survivors – including a private investigator, a servant trapped in the halls for 30 years, and two siblings desperate to find each other. Collectable tchotchkes reflect the history of the house, but the shape of house itself also tells a story as the player closes in on the undead corruption at its core.

This was a fun side project to work on, and taught me a lot about working with the fundamentals of game narrative, as well as how to ground the player experience in character and narrative texture.

Project Type:

Narrative Study

Worked on:

December 2022 - February 2023

Highlights:

  • Worked on characters and world-building for the game world

  • Concepted how the narrative would integrate with the roguelike progression

  • Crafted bark sheets for 5 of the main characters

  • Wrote a number of descriptions for in-game items

Characters

The primary part of Hex was concepting and developing the main characters – the disparate cast who find themselves stranded in Westerly House, and who become a found family in their fight to the house’s heart.

I wanted the characters in Hex to feel larger than life but still textured and believable, and I thought it would be fun to fold in a variety of characters from different genres, built from different tropes both high-fantasy and more down-to-earth, before thrusting them together as a team. Each character, crucially, would have different ways of relating to one another.

I’ve put together the five most richly drawn characters below to give a sense of the way they’re individually constructed, as well as how they would progress over the course of gameplay.

Celeste is the main character who players begin every run with, and the gang pivots around their relationship to her.

Character bios can be found here.

Bark Lines

Another one of the main parts of Hex was creating a series of bark sheets, one for each of the game’s characters. In these bark sheets, a number of affordances have been made, both for the various states of the relationships of the characters and how these interact with the lines themselves, but also in how different lines are delivered depending on the make-up of the party.

The full bark sheets for the characters above can be found here, presented in spreadsheet form with a focus on integration with gameplay.

A more streamlined version of Celeste’s bark sheet can again be found here alongside a richer character bio.

Item Descriptions

The environment of Hex also inspired a collection of item descriptions. Each written in under 20 words (item names included) they comprise both flavourful novelty items which players would transact for player power, as well as more utility-focused items like bandages and film roll.

These item descriptions can be found here.