Hexoshi

About the game

You are Anneroy, a small robot dropped on a hostile alien world to recover the Hexoshi artifacts, stolen by a group of mantis-like invaders. The world is one connected map of 39 rooms: some doors are shut at first, some ledges are too high, and every upgrade you find changes what you can reach. That is the loop of the genre, and this demo has a first stretch of it, with 11 powerups and 2 artifacts hidden in the rooms.

Anneroy runs, jumps and shoots, and the upgrades add the rest. The Monkey Boots let you jump again off a wall, the Atomic Compressor folds the robot into a ball that fits through narrow gaps, and the Hedgehog Hormone lets the ball grow spikes. Warp pads are the save points, and from a pad you can warp to any other pad you have touched. A handheld map, once you find it, shows the rooms you have visited and fills in as you explore.

This is a demo of a game that was never finished: it ends at a placeholder room with a note from the author. What is there is a small, complete world with its own music, and it is free software.

Playing it here

The first time you click Play the page downloads the Python runtime and the pygame library (about 23 MB) and the game (about 10 MB), which takes a few seconds; after that a "click to start" message appears, and one more click opens the title screen. The download is kept by your browser, so every other pygame game on the site opens faster. Nothing is loaded from other sites. Your saves and options are kept in this browser only, in ten save slots.

Pick "New Game" and a slot. The first screen is a mission briefing: press Enter to read it and Enter again to start. The menus are in English. The Options menu has "Configure keyboard" if you want other keys, plus the sound and music volume. There is no fullscreen entry: use the page's own full-screen button.

Controls

The menus use the arrow keys, Enter and Escape.

Tips

Save often. The game saves when you touch a warp pad, and the pause menu warns you before you leave with unsaved progress.

Remember what you can not reach yet. A ledge that is too high or a gap that is too narrow is a promise: you will be back with a new ability.

Aim with E and Q. Shots go straight by default, so use E and Q (and A for diagonals) against enemies above or below you.

Frequently asked questions

Does it save my progress? Yes, in the browser, in ten slots. Clearing the site data erases them.

How long is it? It is a short demo: 39 rooms and 13 pickups, so a first run is a matter of a short evening.

Does it work on a phone? It needs a keyboard, so it is meant for a computer.

Is it free? Yes. The game is free software: the code is under the GNU GPL, and the art, sound and music under Creative Commons and other free licences.

Credits and licence

Hexoshi was made by The Diligent Circle (onpon4). The code is released under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later. The images are by Luke Bunday, Trevor McAleese and others (CC BY-SA 3.0 and 4.0, CC BY 3.0, CC0), the sounds and music by many authors named in the credits screen of the game and in the licence file (CC0, CC BY, GPL), and the font is DejaVu Sans Bold (Bitstream Vera licence). The game runs on the Pygame SGE and its xSGE extensions (LGPL-3.0-or-later). The version served here has some changes so it can run in a browser (the main loop and the menus can no longer wait inside loops, the Quit and Fullscreen entries are gone and the saves live in the browser); the changes, the full source and every licence text are linked from the Licenses page. The game also runs on pygame-ce (LGPL-2.1) and CPython, whose licences and source are linked there too.