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HexWars : A Game Where You Capture Your Way to Victory

ByMohit Kamat

If you want to skip the backstory and go straight to the game, you can play the current version right here at mohitkamat.com/hexwars/

Vortex Wars

There is a specific kind of heartbreak known only to gamers, and that is the day a niche online game you loved just vanishes. For me, that game was Vortex Wars. Back in my late teens, I spent way too many hours staring at its hexagonal maps and plotting world domination in its turn-based arenas. It was simple, addictive, and perfect.

Then, around 2015, it went dark. When I tried to find it again a few years back, I was genuinely sad to find nothing but dead links. The game was just gone.

That changed recently when I got a marketing email that I would’ve ignored typically and deleted. It had this striking sci-fi game image and a pitch for “vibe coding” that totally worked on me. My first thought wasn’t about the product they were selling but rather that I could actually bring Vortex Wars back myself.

Image from marketing email

The Week Long Sprint

Before diving into the code, I had to reconstruct the game from memory. Vortex Wars was a strategy game where players competed to conquer a map of hexagonal territories. It was about risk, reinforcement, and knowing exactly when to strike.

I spent the last seven days in a high-speed iterative loop, taking the project from a hazy memory to a fully playable game I’m calling HexWars. It has been an absolute blast moving from “I think it worked like this” to actually seeing the mechanics click into place on the screen.

In fact, I was so engrossed in the build that I probably would have finished even sooner if not for the usage limits. I kept hitting the daily usage limits on my AI plan. My natural stopping points weren’t because I was tired or stuck, but because I had literally exhausted my computing allowance for the day. It forced me to step away and let the ideas simmer until the limit reset the next morning.

While the original was a massive multiplayer experience, I focused on a solid single-player foundation for this first version. To make sure it didn’t lose that social spark, I built in a pass-and-play mode so you can still compete with someone sitting right next to you.

The Features of HexWars (v1)

After a week of intensive iterative development, I’ve successfully hosted a functional version on my site.

Current Game Features:
  • Hexagonal Grid Strategy: A classic map layout where every territory choice matters.
  • Single-Player vs. AI: Challenging logic that forces you to think three steps ahead.
  • Pass-and-Play Multiplayer: To keep the spirit of the original alive without the complexity of a backend server, I’ve added a local “couch co-op” mode.
  • Territory Reinforcement: Mechanics for growing your army and securing your borders.
  • Dynamic Conquest: Fast-paced capture mechanics where the tide of the game can turn in a single round.

Lessons from the Vibe

This was my first real deep dive into vibe coding, and because of those daily usage limits, I had to learn (quickly) how to be incredibly efficient. I realized after a few prompts that AI was implementing a full code overhaul every time I would request a change. Computing time became currency. I started requesting for isolated renders of features to test them before committing to the main codebase. I also adapted to batch my requests, combining several UI and logic edits into a single prompt so that every major code overhaul moved the needle as far as possible.

The biggest learning was about balancing the mechanics of the game. A game can look perfect and be technically sound, but if the mechanics aren’t balanced, it isn’t fun. I spent hours playing my own builds, realizing that certain AI moves were too aggressive or that territory growth was too slow. Vibe coding gets the skeleton built quickly, but the soul of the game still requires the human touch of playing, failing, and adjusting.

What is coming next

This is just the first version. It’s functional and fun, but it is still a bit “quiet”. My next focus will be learn and use AI to generate background music and SFX to give the HexWars world some weight. I’m also planning mechanics tuning to make sure the gameplay feels fair and a more UI polishes.

It is an awesome feeling to play something that didn’t exist a week ago, especially something I thought was lost to 2015. Give it a spin and let me know what you think.