HexWind News

Hey VR diehards – we’re back with HexWind Update 27, bringing a new class of elemental magic and a new boss - Lord Akuma. Let’s get into it!


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[h2]Earth Magic[/h2]
We’re finally adding the fourth class of elemental magic to HexWind - Earth Magic. In our magic system, each element is strong against another element and weak against a different element. Earth Magic is strong against Fire Magic, giving you a damage bonus when fighting Fire-based enemies, and weak against Storm Magic, incurring a damage penalty when fighting Storm-based enemies. Let’s look at the Earth Magic abilities in this update:

Earth Spike is an offensive ability in the Spell slot that damages enemies by summoning giant spikes from the ground. Each spike will do enough damage to kill most enemies in a single shot, especially if they’re fire-based. Storm-based enemies will take more spikes before dying.

Here’s Earth Spike scales by Tier:

• Tier 1 - damage one targeted enemy
  
• Tier 2 - damage one targeted enemy and up to two nearby enemies
  
• Tier 3 - damage all enemies nearby

Earth Guard is a dash-modifying ability for the Bracer slot. Using dash with the Earth Guard ability equipped will leave spikes in your wake and give you 10 seconds of invulnerability to attacks from behind.

[h2]Lord Akuma[/h2]
In this update, Lord Akuma joins the ranks of the undead in HexWind. A disgraced samurai, stripped of title, honor, and life, now forced into eternal subservience to Oblivion. Lord Akuma wields his katana with deadly precision and soulless efficiency.You’ll encounter him in the Chaos Citadel at the end of Act 3 in Campaign Mode.
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We hope you enjoy these updates! Come on over to our Discord server at Discord server to let us know what you think!

The Charm Games Team

Hey VR diehards – we’re back with HexWind Update 26 and our biggest chuck of new content yet! We have a new elemental level, a new boss, plus 12 new and revamped gameplay missions. Let’s get into it.

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[h2]Storm World[/h2]
We’ve previously added Fire, Ice, and Earth magic-themed levels to HexWind, and in this update we’re adding a Storm magic-themed level. You may have noticed that Storm magic is a thematically important alignment in HexWind, so having this world in place is a big step. You’ll also see a new Storm Knight enemy in Storm World and scattered through other missions in the game.

[h2]LochMog the Harrowking[/h2]
This update introduces HexWind’s newest boss - LochMog - a lich and necromancer commanding the legions of the House of Dread. You’ll encounter him in the Chaos Citadel at the end of Act 2 in Campaign Mode. Make sure to stop by one of the revamped stores to optimize your loadout or to replenish health before jumping into the fray.



[h2]New Missions[/h2]
This week brings the first of three missions dumps we’re going to do over the coming weeks. There are 8 new missions – 2 each for Fire, Ice, Storm, and Earth magic – and 4 of the existing missions have had significant overhauls for pacing and difficulty. You’re a lot less likely to see repeat missions now in Daily Run or Campaign Mode.

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We love hearing your feedback, so come on over to our Discord server at Discord server to let us know what you think!

The Charm Games Team

Hey VR diehards - we're back with a retro-post to share more about last week's Update #25, featuring Elemental Enemy Damage, new level and enemy types, and map/UI improvements.

[h2]Elemental Enemy Damage[/h2]
Up til now, your Ability Loadout has determined whether your combat ability offer an advantage when damaging elemental enemies – i.e. a Fire-aligned loadout gives you a bonus to damage caused to Ice-aligned enemies. Now, damage done by enemies to you will also be affected by your loadout. Details on this including the bonuses applied are shown on the loadout screen, and in a new section of the Sarcophagus, explaining in more detail how your loadout aligns to elemental missions.

[h2]Level and Enemy Variants[/h2]
We’ve also added new sections for our Fire Magic-themed levels. This is part of our goal to introduce different and interesting types of enemy encounter environments beyond the open arenas most common in the current missions. We also included another round of updates to the list of weapons enemies can use, especially those aligned to a particular element.

[h2]Map and UI Improvements[/h2]
You'll now notice on the Sarcophagus there's a summary showing your loadout, and how your loadout aligns with elements and missions on the campaign board. The idea here is to give more at-a-glance info about which paths on the board your loadout is best suited to. For example, pick a Fire Magic loadout, and you'll be able to tear through Ice Magic themed missions with less danger than other missions. We'll have future improvements to this as we add content to campaign mode, so stay tuned!

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Come on over to our Discord server at discord.gg/charmgames to let us know what you think!

Hey VR die-hards. We’ve got a smaller Update 24 live now with new elemental enemy weapons, trap variants, and a special new enemy type. Let’s dive in.
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[h2]Elemental Traps and Enemy Weapons[/h2]
Most enemies now have elemental variants for their weapons. You can tell the difference based on color and visual effects treatments. For the current update, this is cosmetic, but in Update 25 the elemental alignment of your loadout will determine which elemental weapons cause you to take the most damage. Keeping a close eye on your loadout will help make sure you’re not especially vulnerable to that flashy flaming sword! Some traps now also have elemental variants which will work the same way. We’re making these changes to reinforce the importance of ability loadout selection, as we get closer to finishing the element system.

[h2]New Enemy! Flying Skulls[/h2]
You’ll definitely notice the newest enemy in our menagerie - Flying Skulls are lower tier enemies who still pack a punch. They’ll fly around before dive-bombing you with explosive damage. Make sure to take them out before they get too close!
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Update 24 was a quick one, setting up some significant board design and element loadout alignment changes coming in Update 25. Come on over to our Discord server at Discord server to let us know what you think!

Hey VR die-hards. Update 23 is live with new combat encounters to flesh out our expanded mission environments from Update 22. Let’s dive in.

[h2]New Combat Encounters[/h2]
Supporting the new mission environments from the last update, we’ve added a collection of new combat encounters across most mission types. You’ll now see new traps spawning rolling and bouncing obstacles to dodge or deflect, designed with the new level layouts in mind. We’re having a ton of fun playing around with these in the heat of combat, so get in and tell us what you think.

[h2]Difficulty Balancing[/h2]

We also shipped the first in a big set of changes to difficulty balancing, particularly for campaign mode. We’re going to expand campaign mode to the full 5-act structure and we want to ensure a reasonable difficulty curve across those acts - whereas right now difficulty is pretty chaotic both in individual missions, and in mission sequences. You should see a bit less volatility between two consecutive missions after this update - it’s unlikely you’ll get an incredibly easy mission full of trash mobs followed by an unbeatable mission of elite knights, or vice versa. That said, if you still find yourself running into really big swings in difficulty from mission to mission, please let us know!

[h2]Leaving Early Access - The Final Push[/h2]

We’ve made a ton of progress on HexWind in the last few months, and we’re almost ready to announce a date to leave early access. From our whole team, THANK YOU, to all of you who played HexWind, left us feedback, gave a review, or even liked an update post. At Charm Games, we’ve been around a long time now - approaching 10 years - and we’ve worked with a lot of amazing partners over the years on our other games. But HexWind is as indie as it comes - because we don’t want anyone to get between us and players like you. As an exclusively VR developer from day one, we’ve cast our lot in with all of you who just want to see amazing games that can show you something special in VR.

The reality of doing this right now is we live and die based on whether you like our work enough to buy it, review it, and tell someone about it.

So if you tried HexWind and are having a good time, please leave a review!

If you like what you see but have to be careful with money, try the demo and let us know what you think!

If you’re interested but you’ve been burned by other early access games, add HexWind to your wishlist!

If you’re a VR player but lean toward other genres, tell your friends with a headset about us!

Each of those can make a huge difference for a small developer like us. We're determined to keep the VR fires burning in HexWind. If you want to help as we get close to the 1.0 release, come over to our Discord server!