Welcome to the HexCrawl Dev Blog
Hi, I’m Paul Siegel — a software engineer and developer with 25 years in the video game industry. While my roots are firmly on the engineering side, I’ve always gravitated toward working closely with design and art teams. Getting to wear multiple hats is one of my favorite parts of the job.
Like a lot of people in games right now, I’m navigating a layoff. It’s not my first rodeo, the industry has always been cyclical, and I’ve learned that the best thing I can do during the in-between time is build something. So that’s what I’m doing with HexCrawl.
Why This Game
I’m an avid TTRPG player and co-host of Wandering DMs, a podcast about D&D and tabletop roleplaying games. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what makes those experiences special — the sense that the world is reacting to you specifically, that your choices matter, that no two stories are alike.
HexCrawl is my attempt to bring those feelings together: a cozy, tactical hex RPG where your character’s personal goals and history actually shape the world around them. Every adventure is procedurally generated, but it’s not random noise — the AI working quietly under the hood is reading your character’s story and using it to make the world feel like it knows you.
Why AI (And Why I’m Trying to Do It Right)
I’ve been chasing this particular problem for a while. On the Wandering DMs channel I ran a series exploring whether AI could serve as a D&D dungeon master — not as a gimmick, but in a way that genuinely replicated the feel of a responsive, creative human at the table. That experiment taught me a lot, and I wanted to take those lessons somewhere more controlled.
HexCrawl is that somewhere. The AI isn’t generating the game — the game is deterministic, handcrafted where it counts. The AI works in the margins, personalizing your adventure so it feels authored rather than assembled. I care about this distinction. I know AI is a loaded topic right now and I don’t take that lightly.
A Bit More About Me
Outside of day-job game development, I’ve shipped a few indie projects over the years. Most recently I created Fearful Ends, a horror pen and paper RPG that I successfully funded on Kickstarter and is still available online. I also created a mobile game called Road of Kings inspired by the solo board game Barbarian Prince about a decade ago. The influences of that game on HexCrawl should be very readily apparent.
This blog will be where I share progress, talk through design decisions, and occasionally vent about the parts that aren’t working yet. If any of this sounds interesting to you, check back — there’s a lot more to come.
— Paul