Hexcrawl

My goal is to develop a turn based strategy video game which resembles a hexcrawl. I like pixel art, and the way a hex map abstract a region’s geography in video games like Battle of Wesnoth and Heroes of Might and Magic. Both games along with Dwarf Fortress are very inspiring for me.

A hex map representing an open world, and the freedom to explore the map the way you want, is the distinguishing feature of the Hexcrawls. The hex map is composed of regular hexagons of identical size. In this kind of game, the players explore a wilderness map navigating hex by hex. Each hexagon can contain a variety of points of interest, hidden locations and events or could trigger a random encounter when you travel to them.

Free exploration of an open world and survival at the wilderness are the basic goals of the hexcrawls, so the hexcrawl concept is closely related to a sandbox. The main difference is that with a hexcrawl, you have a hex structure for exploring the map. Locations, events, random encounters, etc. are not triggered until you explore the hex where they are located.

While I brainstorm my game, I read lots of interesting articles and resources that explain how to design and run a hexcrawl. Map design and world building, size of the hex, rules for movement and supplies consumption, random encounters tables, etc. That’s the reason I’ve created an awesome list on Github where I organize all these resources for later reading and as a reference guide when I want to analyze something: Awesome Hexcrawl

Now I’m working on this list, collecting the information that I have in the browser bookmarks and documents stored on my computer. I have put this on Github because ‘awesome lists’ are a collaborative way to maintain and share interesting information scattered on the Internet. So if someday I stop maintaining the document, someone else can fork and continue, and anyone can do the same for creating their own version for the document.