HEXSTORM: Tears of Arcadia

HEXSTORM: Tears of Arcadia is a tactical tower defense roguelite where you command Arcadia, a damaged flying fortress carrying the mystery of its fallen captain. Each mission revolves around expanding the ship’s defensive network, collecting resources, and making difficult choices between strengthening your economy and dealing with the threat already tearing through your perimeter. The battlefield develops alongside your build, with new structures and upgrades changing how Arcadia survives each encounter.

Keeping Arcadia in the air takes more than surrounding it with as many guns as you can afford. Every collector, turret, and support module forms part of the same living network, and one poorly planned connection can leave an entire side of your fortress without the power it needs. When enemies begin closing in from every direction, there is rarely enough time or resources to fix every weakness at once.

What Makes It Different?

• Build an interconnected network of collectors, turrets, and support modules around Arcadia
• Expand your territory to gather resources and supply power to your defensive structures
• Defend the fortress against enemies approaching from every direction rather than along fixed lanes
• Tackle separate ground and air missions with different battlefield layouts and tactical demands
• Choose depot bonuses that can strengthen shields, repairs, turret speed, drones, and other parts of your build
• Prioritise threats including suicide attackers, ranged enemies, armoured units, saboteurs, and missile batteries
• Permanently upgrade Arcadia’s hull, generators, starting resources, turrets, and drone systems
• Follow a story campaign or test completed builds against endless waves in Challenge Mode

Your Defences Are Only as Strong as Their Connections

Collectors sit at the heart of every successful defense. They extend your territory, gather resources, and keep the wider network supplied with power, but spending heavily on expansion can leave Arcadia dangerously exposed. Turrets must cover vulnerable approaches, while support modules reinforce the structures around them and open new tactical options. There is always another useful upgrade competing for limited resources, and the correct choice can change quickly once a breach appears.

Ground missions give you a static battlefield where Arcadia lands among crystal deposits and prepares for incoming waves. Air missions keep the fortress moving as the world scrolls beneath it, with resources drifting past, hostile batteries attacking from the background, and valuable depot containers offering new upgrades during the fight. The change in pace forces you to rethink how quickly you expand and where your attention is needed most.

Arcadia Remembers Every Battle

The bonuses collected during a mission allow each defence network to take on a different identity. You might lean into shields and repairs, accelerate turret fire until the perimeter becomes a wall of ammunition, or rely on aggressive drones to hunt down priority targets. These upgrades stack throughout the mission, giving familiar encounters a different rhythm depending on the systems supporting your fortress.

Progress continues after the battle through permanent upgrades to Arcadia itself. Improvements to its hull, generators, starting economy, weaponry, and drones gradually turn the damaged ship into a much more capable fortress. The campaign introduces new structures and mechanics as you advance, while Challenge Mode provides an endless test for builds designed to survive long after an ordinary mission would have finished.

Good If You Like…

Players who enjoy The Last Spell, Rogue Tower, Emberward, or Against the Storm should appreciate HEXSTORM: Tears of Arcadia’s mix of roguelite progression, territorial expansion, and tower defence built around constant tactical pressure.