After being leaked by a disgruntled lieutenant serving aboard the ESS Winter Warrior in 2083, HEXCHOIR — an advanced system designed to spatially model stealthed ships during intergalactic warfare — was adopted by the indie open-source game dev community in the Nation of California.

Ripping out its guts but keeping the advanced rendering engine, they turned it into the ultimate Lo-Fi Graphics Simulation Environment (LFGSE).

HEXCHOIR can generate convincing 3D images with various crunchy dithering patterns, it can convert any image to ASCII with broad configuration, strip the colour palette from any image, import and crunchify any 3D model and most of all… tell a good story.

HEXCHOIR is a real piece of software, with real use. I created it to render models into spinning gifs for Copper Trader. However, after I got carried away with the boot animation, system noises, ambience and self-composed boot chime, I kinda sat back and went “fuck, this would be a sick game”.

And here we are.

HEXCHOIR contains a gripping narrative. Through using the software naturally, you uncover large conspiracies, forge unlikely alliances and reveal huge secrets to alcoholic reporters. All of it takes place in-software, merging tool and game.

From a lowly suffering game dev slummin’ it in 2085 San Diego to an International Terrorist.