Torment Hexus Key Art
Image: TMA Games LLC

Torment Hexus is a game about pure catharsis, raging against the machine looming over us 24/7. You're a cool hacker wizard (that is, a wizard that is also a hacker, or vice versa), on a quest to save the magical cyberpunk world (think Shadowrun but 10% sillier) by climbing the corporate mega-towers of the impossibly rich, confronting the CEOs at the top, and punting them out of the nearest plate-glass window. How do you do this? A mixture of grid-based tactical combat, roguelike power-building and match-3 puzzling. It's also rather good, and out now, albeit in early access.

Developed by TMA Games, the solo indie developer behind the very undersold and underrated Waves Of Steel (ever kickflip a fully customizable battleship?), Torment Hexus is as different as you can get from their first game mechanically, but not thematically. For all its military theming, Waves Of Steel had a very progressive, satirical angle on its worldbuilding. So does Torment Hexus, just in a more frustrated, bitter kind of way, at least from the few rounds I've played - thanks for the preview key, by the way.

While the meat and potatoes of the game is snappy grid-based combat, matching elemental tiles to generate mana to cast the spells you've picked up on this run, there's a surprising amount of prose and choices to be made between battles, with new options being opened through character build choices. Encounter a bunch of zombies working on a warehouse floor? If you've got the magic for it, you can return their souls to their corpses, and then help them unionize, giving you a whole squad of undead buddies in hi-vis vests helping you in the next fight. Satisfying, and a fun tactical twist, too. And just one of many.

Despite being in early access, there's some good meat on the game's bones, with multiple kinds of CEO towers to assault, plenty of enemy types (ranging from holographic secretaries to economic mages and gene-spliced dinosaurs) and enough spells and character-building options to have me wanting to dig in more later tonight. There's still plenty to come, with an ongoing story, variant bosses and enemies for each tower type, more music and new spells in the works. But even with that on the horizon, this one's fun to play already.

Torment Hexus is out now for £9.09/$10 with no launch discount or notable bundles. There are no plans for the game to increase in price as it gets closer to being finalized, so that's something!