Hey everyone! Hexborn recently crossed 2,500 wishlists and is now rapidly approaching 3,000 - a huge milestone and a massive motivator for me. Thank you all for the support. I’ve been laser-focused on preparing the first playable prototype, which will be available to try on-site at DreamHack Stockholm next week.

As the game grows, I’ll be using wishlist milestones to gauge interest and guide the next steps. But for now, here’s a look at one of the new systems going into the prototype: Active Perks.

Active Perks are a new perk type that give you explosive, high-impact abilities during combat. They’re powered by a Unified Power Meter that fills as you fight.

The Power Meter appears as a half-circle ring around your crosshair, and once it’s full, it enters a Ready state. Your next specific action automatically triggers the perk.

• No new keys.

• No cooldown timers.

• No extra UI.

Active Perks stay completely woven into the FPS rhythm: you fight, the meter fills, and your next move unleashes something devastating.

Firestorm is one of the first Active Perks available in the prototype.

It’s tied to the melee attack action. When your Power Meter is full, your next melee doesn’t swing, it summons a cursed spellbook that erupts into a spiraling fire vortex, ripping through everything around you.

• Perfect for crowd clearing

• Creates clutch “room wipe” moments

• Rewards aggressive, up-close play

For a bit of backstory: the spellbook itself is a pulp-horror grimoire in the Necronomicon tradition, bound in leathery hide, etched with crude glyphs, and screaming with trapped faces.
Concept art of the cursed spellbook

Active Perks expand Hexborn’s buildcraft in a way that stays true to the boomer-shooter heart of the game:

• Tactical timing without micromanagement

• Synergies between perks, weapons, and player actions

• Distinct build identities (jump-focused, melee-focused, dash-focused, etc.)

• Big, satisfying spikes of power during arena combat

These perks are now part of the core experience and will be available in the first playable prototype.

Thanks for reading! And if you enjoy retro FPS combat mixed with roguelite progression, feel free to wishlist Hexborn, it really helps a lot.

See you in the next update!

Hexborn started with blood and bullets, a tribute to 90s FPS legends like Blood and Doom. Fast weapons. Crunchy feedback. Cultist guts splattered across a cathedral wall.

But that’s only half the story.

Beneath the gothic gore is a roguelite engine, a dynamic system that transforms every run, reshapes every room, and lets you build toward something monstrous.

This devlog is all about the Perk System: how it works, why it matters, and how it turns Hexborn from “just another shooter” into a dungeon-sized engine of chaos and synergy.

In Hexborn, every enemy drops crystal shards, your XP. Level up, and you’ll choose from three randomized perks to evolve your build.

These perks aren’t just flat stat boosts. They reprogram your playstyle. They stack. They interact. They spiral.

Hexborn’s perk system comes in three core types:

• 🩸 Passive – Always-on effects: bonus damage, bleeding attacks, reload chaining.

• ⚡ Auto – Triggers on a timer: fire novas, lightning bursts, skeleton spawns.

• 🔥 Active – Player-triggered abilities: void bombs, blood sacrifices, blink decoys.

Whether you’re summoning flame, warping space, or just reloading faster and stabbing harder, each perk alters how you move, fight, and survive.

🔥 Fire perks in action: Pyro Pulse triggers mid-fight, lighting up the battlefield.

Every perk in Hexborn belongs to a themed archetype, a playstyle framework that nudges you toward a particular kind of madness.

• 🩸 Blood – Risk-reward mastery: sacrifice HP for power, then lifesteal it back.

• 🔥 Fire – Chaos incarnate: ignite enemies, chain explosions, leave flame trails.

• 🌑 Shadow – Stealth and sabotage: blink, vanish, and ambush from the dark.

• ⚙️ Machine – Relentless momentum: reload faster, shoot harder, gain speed as you kill.

You can specialize in one, or blend two to become something horrifying: A flame vampire that burns and feeds. A teleporting gunslinger who reloads mid-blink.

But the real power comes when the perks synergize:

• 🧨 Ignite enemies. Then explode the burning ones. Then leave fire behind when they die.

• 🩸 Take more damage for more power. Then lifesteal on kill. Then explode in a blood nova when you're near death.

These are builds you feel, not just in stats, but in how every fight plays out. Whether you plan them or stumble into them, synergies turn your run from “strong” into apocalyptic.

Survivors type roguelikes typically drop you into a big arena and let the waves come. Hexborn isn’t that.

Each run unfolds in the Bloodstone Labyrinth: a procedurally generated dungeon of interconnected combat and exploration rooms.

📜 That design comes from something I always loved in classic shooters like Blood and Doom: the joy of exploration. You weren’t just fighting, you were uncovering a strange, deadly world. I wanted to bring that feeling back.

🕯️ I’ll go deeper into how exploration and pacing shape Hexborn’s world in a future devlog.

If you're into retro shooters and roguelikes where death can come from a corner shout and a muzzle flash, wishlist Hexborn on Steam to follow the journey.