''Hexplore'' is a 1998

role-playing video game A role-playing video game (commonly referred to as simply a role-playing game or RPG, as well as a computer role-playing game or CRPG) is a video game genre where the player controls the actions of a character (or several party members) immers ...

developed by Heliovisions Productions and published by

Infogrames Multimedia Atari SA (formerly Infogrames Entertainment SA) is a French video game holding company headquartered in Paris. Its subsidiaries include Atari Interactive and Atari, Inc. It is the current owner of the Atari brand through Atari Interactive. Bec ...

. It was released digitally on December 20, 2019 by

Piko Interactive Piko Interactive LLC is an American video game publisher based in San Antonio, Texas. Founded in early 2013 by Eli Galindo, the company focuses on physical re-releases of games from older video game consoles and digitally released ports to newer ...

on GOG.com.

Premise

Set in 1000 AD, the player explores the world as MacBride, the adventurer. Early in the game you are joined by three party members, an archer (Drulak), a warrior (Vigrad) and a sorcerer (Uraeus). The player must track down Garkham, the black magician, to free the main characters' companions that were taken prisoner. The game continues the story from there, and characters may leave or join the party (of a maximum of four members) in subsequent missions. Most of the characters are optional, which means the user may or may not recruit them for future quests. The game features over 200 levels with puzzle-solving and combat, and allows up to 4 players in cooperative

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system ( couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

mode.

Technical details

The game's

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ...

utilises

voxel In 3D computer graphics, a voxel represents a value on a regular grid in three-dimensional space. As with pixels in a 2D bitmap, voxels themselves do not typically have their position (i.e. coordinates) explicitly encoded with their values. I ...

s for creating 3-D shapes and the level, being then relatively fast at the time it was released. The game world is seen from a top-down, isometric perspective, and the player is allowed to rotate the camera round the centre of view.

Reception

The game received average reviews according to the Review aggregation website

GameRankings GameRankings was a video gaming review aggregator that was founded in 1999 and owned by CBS Interactive. It indexed over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 video games. GameRankings was discontinued in December 2019, with its staff bei ...

. '' Next Generation'' said, "''Hexplore'' is no '' Diablo'', but it offers an excellent introduction to the genre. Newcomers can move up to the heavy-hitters later, once they learn the ropes."

References

External links

* 1998 video games Action role-playing video games Cooperative video games Infogrames games Multiplayer and single-player video games Ocean Software games Piko Interactive games Role-playing video games Video games developed in France Video games with voxel graphics Windows games Windows-only games {{action-adventure-videogame-stub