A hex board game about mechs you built yourself
Two players, three custom-assembled mechs each, a hex board with hills and walls and ground worth holding. Seven rounds, alternating one mech at a time. Every shot is four dice on the table. Parts break off. Best of three, with a bench swap between games. PC, Steam Deck, iPad later.
Start here
5 minutes
Lite rules
How a game plays, phase by phase, with a worked round and the six things that have to feel good. The page to judge "is this fun?"
Read the lite rules →needs you
Decisions
7 open decisions in priority order with the discussion so far, plus 3 already settled with reasoning.
See the decisions →the whole game
Game design document
Pillars, loops, modes, roster and sprue, runners and pilots, presentation, platform and technical direction, risks, milestones.
Open the GDD →evidence
Simulator
The rules run as code. Thousands of games a second. What the first batches say about heavies, lights, crits and pace.
See the numbers →where we are
Progress
Every work item by phase and epic. Phase 1 is a believable simulator; phase 3 is a game two people can sit down and play.
See progress →
Pillars
Every roll is a die on the table
Hit, location, penetration, damage, initiative, stress. Modifiers are dice too. Nothing is a hidden percentage.
Roster building is a few real decisions
Depth like a Magic deck, setup cost like picking three kits.
Damage lands on parts
Where a shot lands depends on how big the part is. Losing an arm loses a weapon.
Twenty minutes
Alternating activations, a round cap, objectives that force contact.
The sprue is the identity
You build from runners like a model kit. Parts are physical objects with size and weight.
Milestones
| Milestone | Contents | State |
|---|
| M1 Believable sim | Rules decided; terrain, line of sight, zones; hex map panel; better AI; parameter sweeps | 7/14 items done, 0 active |
| M2 Tuned catalog | Tuning pass; catalog to 3–4 parts per slot per runner; roster complexity review; melee system; reactions | 1/10 items done, 0 active |
| M3 Play it | Best-of-three flow with sideboard; hotseat prototype two people can play | 0/4 items done, 0 active |
| M4 Vertical slice | Online match on one map in the production engine | after the engine decision |
| M5 Closed alpha | Hand-crafted maps and pilots, ranked ladder | — |
What decided this week
- proposed rules: lite facing E8, pen thresholds F5, crit/stress tables F8 G2, scoring I4-I6, Fire-once E4 — Decided 2026-09-05: no facing (E8); pen thresholds kept, crit margin Armor+4 (F5); crit/stress tables accepted as v0; scoring/clock accepted for now, other objective types later; 32x20 + 7 rounds preliminary; Fire once per activation. Engine + rulebook updated.
- online scope: ranked, async turns, activation clock — Decided: ranked yes, quick play yes, async and real-time both.
- monetization model (recommendation: cosmetics only, full catalog for all) — Decided: broad always-available base set; DLC considered later, cosmetic preferred.