A 2D scrolling space shooter where the player has to shoot enemy ships and collect pickups. Hexsar features 4 different enemy ships, red, orange, blue, and boss, as well as 3 sizes of asteroid. There are 5 types of the aforementioned pickups including extra life, full heal, increased speed, increased damage, and increased rate of fire.
There are 3 distinct levels in Hexsar, with each level increasing in difficulty. The first level includes the red and orange ships, and the second level includes asteroids and the blue ships. The final level is the boss level where the only enemy is the boss ship, which sits at the top of the screen. Each level has a visually distinct background to communicate the players progression.

During it's development, Hexsar underwent alpha and beta testing which helped significantly improve game features and the feel of the game. These improvements included: making the red ships drift towards the player, player controls were made to feel snappier with less sliding, pickups were slowed down, additional ship statistics were displayed in the HUD with the colour of the corresponding pickup, adjustments to level difficulty, and the diagonal speed of the player was reduced among other changes.
Hexsar is a game I would quite like to revist at some point. Given the additional years of programming and development I have since accumulated Hexsar could see substantial improvements. Preliminary improvement would include additional enemy types, more levels/bosses, and methods for the player to express their preferred play style. For example by allowing the player to select from a number of different starting ships.

The enemy ships behaviour and stats vary between designs. Red ships are weaker, in both health and damage, but spawn in large formations. Orange ships are faster, have more health, deal more damage, and spawn in smaller formations than the red ships. Blue ships are slower, but have more health and spawn alone. However, unlike red and orange ships, the blue ships use a beam weapon which can deal rapid damage to the player.
The boss ship makes use of what the player has learnt in prior levels and has a rotating beam weapons and two turrets which shoot double lasers. The beam is designed to limit the player's manoeuvrability whilst they evade the attacks from the two central turrets.