What’s Hexgrid Heroes?

Hexgrid Heroes is a four-man project that originated as a prototype in one of my classes. It began development in August 2015, and our team continued to work on it outside of classes through September 2016. It’s a multiplayer arena board game that supports two to four players that each take on the role of a unique hero. Players take turns moving their hero around the board, and then use their abilities to try and knock the other players off the map. As the game progresses characters get knocked back further and further by attacks, until it becomes extremely difficult to avoid getting knocked off. The last player remaining on the board wins the game.

My Role – Team Lead/Lead Designer

For this project I’ve taken on the role of team lead, as well as lead designer. I’ve worked on creating the rules for the game and balancing the characters. I created the initial character concept for Bow Master, and assisted with the creation of Doom Dentist when a prior concept was removed from the game. Balancing all of the characters in our game against each other has been an ongoing struggle, and has been the primary focus for the majority of our development time. Playtests were an important tool to help us make informed decisions about changing the balance of the game, as well as the rules. In addition we used a balance spreadsheet that assigned point values to different abilities and stats, and then compared the point total of each character to a baseline character as well as the other characters.

Current Rulesheet