Hex: Shards of Fate's First Singleplayer Trailer
Down with people, up with AI.
Hex: Shards of Fate [official site] has been out and playable in multiplayer for some time, but its singleplayer mode - planned since its 2013 Kickstarter - is only now beginning to see the light of day. The first in-game footage of the trading card game's PvE mode is below.
The video shows combat through the dungeons of Fort Romor, at the end of which you battle against Lord Adam. This is a lot like what happens at the end of each day in the RPS chatroom. Adam's deck "represents the forces of the three kingdoms fusing together to create an overwhelming force," and his cards allow him "to summon Lord Ben and Lord Alex." John and Pip can take them all, I bet.
Anyway. We recently sent Lord Paul Dean to visit Hex's developers and learn more about the singleplayer mode, including the AI that underpins it:
Designing the fundamentals of a card game is one challenge, devising an ever-growing roster of cards to play with is yet another, but what Jones’ team now have to do is create an artificial intelligence that presents a credible and capable challenge to players. It has to know how to play, understand every card in the game and, like any of Hex’s human opponents, be able to anticipate, to adapt and even to surprise. “And,” insists Jones, “it doesn’t cheat.”
We also previously sent Lord Ben into the game itself (probably Adam did it), where he found much promise among its multiplayer modes. Singleplayer is more likely to tempt me to give it a try however, given that Ben, with his years of Magic and other card game experience, found it difficult when playing online. I hope its AI has a setting for incompetent folks like me.