HEXSTORM: Tears of Arcadia just hit a big milestone: the steampunk tower defense game has been fully migrated to Phaser v4, making it one of the first games running on the new engine in a real production environment.
If you haven't heard of HEXSTORM before, it's a tower defense game where you command a flying frigate navigating through a hostile world. Your defenses run on an interconnected energy grid — lose one node and multiple systems can go down at once. Roguelike structure, permanent ship upgrades between missions, enemies attacking from all directions. It's a solid concept and it's been in development for a while.
HEXSTORM Is Now Running on Phaser v4
We launched Phaser v4 on April and Anton Chuev, the solo dev behind HEXSTORM, announced on May 7 that the game is already fully migrated and running on it. That makes it a great real-world example of a Phaser v4 game in active development, with a Steam release just around the corner.
Thinking about migrating your own project? Check out our Phaser 3 to Phaser 4 migration guide — most games need less work than you'd expect.
What Changed in This Update
Beyond the engine migration, Anton also shipped three other meaningful improvements:
🖼️ 4K Art Upgrade
All key artwork assets have been upgraded to 4K resolution and refined. The hand-painted celestial aesthetic the game is known for now looks sharper than ever.
🗺️ Terrain Texture Pass
Terrain textures received a dedicated visual overhaul, bringing more cohesion and atmosphere to the battlefield environments.
📖 Mission Comic Builder
Anton built an internal tool to assemble mission comics faster, which means more story content per mission going forward.
Coming to Steam in Q2 2026
HEXSTORM: Tears of Arcadia is targeting a Q2 2026 release on Steam. Keep an eye on the Phaser news feed for updates as launch gets closer.