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HEXES

Game Boy AdvancePuzzleShooterGame jam

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    Overview

    HEXES is a puzzle shoot'em up for the Game Boy Advance. Your ship circles the Evil Hex in the middle of the screen, and the goal of every level is to match the number in the centre, the Center Number, with the Target Number shown on top and later moved to the bottom-left corner. The Center Number is in hexadecimal and can overflow or underflow, so 255 wraps to 0 and back again.

    You are showered with Modifiers: operators (+, -, ×, ÷ and %) and numbers. Shooting one stores it in the Modifier Slots in the bottom-right corner, and once you hold both an operator and a number you can input them to change the Center Number. Enemies come at you too; destroying them gives you extra time, and the more time you have left when you finish a level, the more score you get from it. Your final score is a tally of all of them.

    Programming and art are by Dania Rifki (Kaleidosium), with music and sound effects by Kathryn Hathaway (Kathound). The game was first made for GBA Jam 2022, written in Nim with the Natu library.

    Made by
    Dania Rifki, music and sound by Kathryn Hathaway
    Released
    2022

    Controls guide

    Playing

    Button and keyAction
    Left/RightSteer the ship around the hex
    AXShoot a bullet
    BZApply the stored operator and number to the Center Number
    StartEnterPause or resume

    Title screen

    Button and keyAction
    StartEnterStart the game

    Cheatsheet

    Enemies

    Square (blue)
    2 HP, +15 seconds; flies straight
    Triangle (green)
    3 HP, +15 seconds; reverses course at random
    Lozenge
    2 HP, +30 seconds; slow, shoots bullets
    Circle
    1 HP, +30 seconds; fast
    Pentagon
    2 HP, +30 seconds; spirals outward on a curve

    Time and score

    Starting clock
    5 minutes, reset at the start of each level
    Over 10 minutes
    The timer code drops the clock to 10 seconds
    Hit by an enemy
    Lose the seconds it would have given you
    Hit by a bullet
    Lose 10 seconds
    Clock reaches zero
    Game over
    Level score
    Seconds left divided by 3
    Score cap
    9999

    Levels

    1 to 3
    + and - only; Lozenges join on level 3
    4, 8, 12, 16
    Boss levels: the Center Number drifts by itself in a repeating pattern
    5 and 6
    × and then ÷ join
    9 to 12
    % (modulo) appears
    13 onward
    Pentagons join
    16
    Final level

    Tips

    1. Numbers come out of the hex as 1 to F; there is no zero, so you can always add or subtract at least 1. Hitting a new Modifier simply overwrites the one in its slot, so keep shooting until the pair you hold gets you closest to the target.
    2. Wrap-around works for you: the Center Number is kept between 0 and 255, so subtracting from a small number lands near the top of the range. Sometimes the short way to a target of $F0 from $05 is down, not up.
    3. % is modulo, not percent. Applying % with a number just above the target can drop a big value straight onto it, since the result is the remainder of the division.
    4. Shooting enemies is how you buy time. Lozenges, Circles and Pentagons are worth 30 seconds each, and every second left over turns into score, so clear them when you can do it safely.
    5. Don't bank too much time. The timer caps at 10 minutes, but going past that cap sets the clock to 10 seconds instead, so once you are near 10 minutes stop shooting enemies and go for the target.
    6. On boss levels the Center Number keeps changing on its own every few seconds, so apply your last move right after it shifts rather than waiting.