Hexen is the sequel to Heretic. While the Heretic was destroying D'Sparil, the other two Serpent Riders have come to your dimension and slaughtered everyone. Or so they thought. Three humans have managed to escape with their lives and now seek vengeance against the Serpent Rider Korax who remains in their world.

Like Heretic, Hexen is a fantasy game based on an enhanced DOOM engine. All of Heretic's innovations like vertical looking, flying, and the inventory system have been carried over. The new major changes this time around are three characters for the player to choose from and the level hub system. The characters are the Fighter, the Cleric, and the Mage. Each one has four unique weapons and different levels of speed and armor.

The hub system steps away from the traditional "single levels stringed along into episodes" system which had been carried over into the FPS genre from sidescrollers and made popular by Wolfenstein 3D. In Hexen's hub system each episode is still made up of interconnected levels, but most of the levels are connected to a single "hub" level through portals. There are also portals between some of the "spoke" levels. Many of the puzzles in Hexen require travel back and forth between different levels.

Other innovations in Hexen included weather effects, jumping, earth-quakes, and destructible objects such as trees and vases.

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Alternate Titles

"Hexen 95" -- Windows re-release title
"Hexen" -- Console title
"Heretic 2" -- Working title

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Part of the Following Groups

Merchant	Title	Platform	Price
	Hexen	Nintendo 64	$0.01
	Hexen	PlayStation	$1.07
	Hexen: Beyond Heretic	Windows	$0.01
	Hexen: Beyond Heretic
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User Reviews

(Review from 1995) Hexen is more than just a "Doom Clone" and is worth trying.	DOS	Kadath Bird (619)
Hexen is an excellent shooter that's just not for everyone.	DOS	WJAndrews (32)
True to its name in many ways... frustrating, somewhat fun.	DOS	ShadowShrike (311)
Enormous switch hunt in scary castles.	DOS	Sir Gofermajster (481)
Pushing the limits of id Tech 1, one sector at a time.	DOS	Chris Charabaruk (124)
A descent Medieval shooter that just tries to be too many games at once	DOS	Medicine Man (366)
An RPG-Style First-Person Shooter	DOS	Aenn Seidhe Priest (10)

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The Press Says

Joystick (French)	DOS	Nov, 1995	90 out of 100	90
Joystick (French)	Windows	Nov, 1995	90 out of 100	90
SEGA-Mag (Objectif-SEGA)	SEGA Saturn	Dec 05, 2012	9 out of 10	90
PC Gamer	DOS	Feb, 1996	85 out of 100	85
macHOME	Macintosh	Feb, 1997		80
Gamezilla	PlayStation	1997	74 out of 100	74
X64	Nintendo 64	Oct, 1997	69 out of 100	69
GameSpot	Nintendo 64	Jul 03, 1997	5 out of 10	50
Electric Playground	SEGA Saturn	May 23, 1997	4.5 out of 10	45
The Video Game Critic	SEGA Saturn	Nov 20, 2009	D+	33

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Trivia

The Steam download version of the game is listed as Windows 2000/XP/Vista platform because the executables are modified to use a DOSBox variant (v 0.70); additionally the traditional setup.exe is missing.

It is confirmed that neither Valve or id Software contacted the DOSBox project staff and initially the game didn't includes the TXT files that must be present under the GPL license (so they failed to fulfill 2 points of the GPL license).

Two days after the launch, there was an update that includes COPYING, AUTHORS and THANKS.txt of the DOSBox 0.71.

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This entry was contributed by Kalirion (643), Xantheous (1296), Kabushi (105370) and Grant McLellan (546)