Hextalia | Shlomi Hanukaev

Tower defense with total board control

Overview

The Project

Hextalia is a hex-based strategic tower defense where you get maximum control over the board.

Build Pillars to reshape enemy paths, experiment with endless build combinations, and discover different levels, each comes with its own unique challenge.

The live Steam demo has already reached 1,800+ wishlists and 1,000+ unique players, with a 37-minute median playtime.

I cofounded the project while also holding the creative vision, leading all Game Design aspects from start to finish, from balancing to refining complex gameplay systems and mechanics.

My Role

My Contributions

Crafted a Path Shaping Mechanic

Defined a unique core gameplay feature to set Hextalia apart from other tower defense games. Path Shaping lets players build their own maze and kill zones.
Puts players in charge of their own board, instead of just placing towers: they build the whole layout themselves.

Engineered Systemic Depth

Created multiple systems designed to synergize together, enabling breakable builds:
8 Tower Archetypes → Each with a distinct role and targeting behavior, forming the foundation every Perk, Rune, and Augment builds on.
35 Perks → Core choices made when leveling up: a new tower, a tower upgrade, a Blessing that buffs all towers, or a weaker but immediately useful Tactical Aid for emergencies.
21 Runes → Every Basic Rune can be combined with another to create a Forged Rune. Runes are tower-specific conditional buffs.
38 Augments → Build-defining choices that reward adapting your board to the situation, such as "Towers gain 5% damage for every adjacent tower of a different type," defining a playstyle rather than just empty upgrades.
6 Artifacts → Each has its own quests and rewards that complement different builds and playstyles.
5 Bounties → Optional challenges players can take on: succeed for a reward, fail and receive a punishment.
Skill Tree → Provides meta progression, letting players lean into their preferred build style.
Balanced every Perk, Rune, Augment, and Artifact using shared spreadsheets tracking costs, stats, and synergies, re-tuned after each playtest.

Prototyped and Designed Unique Enemies

Defined and tested 40 enemies, each designed to counter specific playstyles, and be countered by others.
Elemental Resistances → Enemies carry resistances and vulnerabilities to specific element types.
20 Special Enemies → Enemies with unique abilities that demand further counterplay and adaptation.

Design Process

Problem & Solution

Problem 1

Players were spamming the same tower, upgrading it repeatedly, and never adapting to face different enemy types.

Problem 2

Players avoided picking new towers on later waves, since upgrading them from scratch would take too long: they'd rather keep upgrading a tower they already had than fall behind by starting fresh.

Problem 3

Augments that scaled with tower count were getting out of hand, so they had to be limited by design rather than left to player choice.

Solution

Tower prices now rise each time you place one, making a fresh, cheaper tower type desirable again instead of endlessly stacking upgrades on a favorite. This also naturally caps how many towers of one type a player ends up with, keeping Augments that scale with tower count in check without hardcoding a limit.

Scrapped

An Ammo system, where each tower had a limited placement count that only grew through upgrades or a new copy of that tower. It solved the spam problem, but players felt like the game was dictating how they were allowed to play.

Problem 1

Players would grab a Rune and slot it onto whichever tower was already their "best" pick, since adapting their layout for a single Rune rarely felt worth it.

Problem 2

In a lot of cases, players would get stuck with a Rune they had no use for.

Solution

Runes are now Forgeable: every Basic Rune can be combined with another to create their own Forged Rune, letting players make deliberate choices based on the resources they actually have.

Scrapped

A Rune Reroll, letting players re-roll a Rune they had no use for. It felt bland and purely luck-dependent, giving players a roulette instead of an actual choice.

Problem

Traditional difficulty scaling (raising enemy Stats) felt off in a strategic, semi-automated tower defense, since the game either felt too easy or suddenly unfair.

Solution

Introduced Challenges: enemies don't get extra base stats, but accepting a Challenge raises the difficulty and rewards the player with extra Skill Tree points.

The Project

My Contributions

Crafted a Path Shaping Mechanic

Engineered Systemic Depth

Prototyped and Designed Unique Enemies

Problem & Solution

Project Details