Tessara
Sit back and watch your drones do the work in Tessara, a chill hex-grid strategy game where you plan the upgrades and your automated army handles the rest. Your base spawns drones that spread across the map, capture hexes, and fight for territory control. You just decide what to unlock next. Dive into a satisfying tech tree with multiple upgrades, boost your drone production, unlock powerful abilities, and watch your strategy unfold run after run. Perfect for fans of incremental games who want a bit more tactical flavor. Plan smart, upgrade often, conquer everything.
Key Features
◆ Strategic Auto-Battler Gameplay
- Automated drones follow your strategic directives
- Real-time territory capture on minimalist hex grids
- Face up to 3 intelligent AI opponents
- Multiple win conditions: Territory control, elimination, point capture, and survival modes
◆ Deep Meta-Progression
- 38 Upgrades across Combat, Production, Utility, Strategic, and Special branches
- 7 Scenarios with increasing difficulty and unique map layouts
- Multi-Currency System: Research Points (◆), Advanced Fragments (◇), and Faction Essence (◈)
- 6 Prestige Levels with reward multipliers up to 3×
- 50+ Achievements with milestone bonuses
◆ Tactical Depth
- Choose from Multiple Strategic Doctrines
- Build Sentry Towers and Barricade Walls to defend key positions
- Specialize in one of Multiple Factions for unique playstyle bonuses
How to Play
- Start at the Hub: Review upgrades, select a scenario, choose your strategy
- Command Your Drones: Your base spawns drones that capture territory automatically
- Make Tactical Decisions: Build structures, adjust strategies, activate special abilities
- Achieve Victory: Meet the scenario's win condition before time expires
- Earn & Upgrade: Spend Research Points on permanent upgrades between runs
- Progress & Master: Unlock new scenarios, strategies, and late-game systems
Perfect For
- Fans of Territorial.io, hex strategy games, and auto-battlers
- Players who love deep progression systems and meaningful choices
- Casual strategy fans who appreciate both active decision-making and automation
Technical Details
- Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux (runs in browser via HTML5)
- Built with: React 19 + TypeScript
- Play Time: 2-10 minutes per run, hours of meta-progression
- Controls: Mouse-driven (click, drag, zoom)
- Status: v1.0.07
Patch 1.0.07
- Spawn point build option now visible — the purchase panel correctly appears when spawn points are the only unlocked structure
- Structures built stat fixed — towers, walls, and spawn points now correctly count toward lifetime stats and related achievements
- Drones created stat fixed — player drone production now correctly accumulates in lifetime stats and drone-count achievements
- Shadow Syndicate spawn radius bonus now active — the faction's +1 Spawn Radius was not being applied; it is now included correctly
- Spawn radius feature implemented — drones now actually spawn on nearby owned tiles when spawn radius is unlocked, instead of always stacking at the base
- Shadow faction description corrected — bonus now reads "+1 Spawn Radius" to accurately reflect what it does
Patch 1.0.06
- Drone pathfinding completely reworked — drones now navigate around walls, corners, bridges, and gaps reliably
- Negative percentage glitch fixed — resolved 4 bugs causing territory values to go negative or backwards
- Combat deadlock fixed — drones no longer get stuck in zero-damage standoffs
- Timed achievements now working — fastest win tracking and fast-clear checks fully wired up
- Hidden achievements revealed — now properly show names and descriptions after unlocking
- Tile color glitches fixed — tiles no longer display wrong owner color when captures are interrupted
- Survival mode fixed — enemies now spawn on valid map tiles and aggressively target the player
- Survival wave balance — early waves start gentler, scaling up gradually over 6 waves
- Stage select info fixed — survival stages now show correct survive time and AI count
- Version indicator added — current version now displayed on the main menu
Development log
- V1.0.07 - Few Things That Were Quietly Broken19 days ago
- Feedback and Bug Fixes45 days ago
- Tessara Is Live!49 days ago
Comments
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I'm loving this game, but I'm super confused, how do you build? The tutorial says something about clicking a tile but that just shows info about the tile, I don't see anything I can click on to build a tower or spawn or whatever
also the achievement screen says I've not only built no structures but also created no drones?
Hmm. that's a new one. I'll check that out. Thanks! :)
ah. will need to clarify that in the tutorial, Thanks.
You need to first unlock towers, walls, spawn points and tile upgrades, from the tech tree, to build them.
Hmm but I'm pretty sure I did unlock the thing in the tech tree called "spawn points", is there something I needed to unlock first for that one to be able to work? (like, towers is required for spawn points?)
shouldn't be. only requirement, after unlocking spawn points, towers or walls, is that you own the tile you are right clicking on.
it worked after unlocking walls
2x multiple prestige is huge, blowing through the tree at this rate.
...i think i'll reset my data, the struggle to eke by somehow was half the fun.
Oh No! lol
Maybe we should do a re-balance pass
Shadow unit's 2 capture radius doesn't seem to trigger?
I'll take a look and see if we can fix, thanks!
love the music, where is it from?
no, really, i've been playing this game non-stop and absolutely adore the music
Thanks! Made it myself using LogicPro
The reworked Survival is a lot better! Aggressive vs Aggressive strategy is. Pain (they keep swapping spots and you have to bring another drone in to fix it)
I noticed that too. Trying to get that figured out. Appreciate the feedback. Thanks for playing!
Not bad, for what it is, its pretty good <3
Thanks! :D
I'm happy with were we got it. it's not much but, it's something :)
How do you get drones to go around corners? On Elimination 5, it seems impossible to get to the enemy base.
I definitely need to work on drone pathfinding a little more. seems like they're trying to navigate to tiles that don't exist.
Hopefully have that fixed soon.
I appreciate the feedback. Thanks for playing!
Use Rally points to first move all the drones to the center then one more to move the to the enemy base
This is fun! I have no idea how I unlocked the hidden achievements, also the timed achievements Do Not work.
Also: Drone pathfinding breaks due to walls for some reason? This isn't a problem after unlocking rally points but it's really weird.
Also: At certain attack values, when fighting, drones sometimes just. Stop working
Also: Renderer does not update tiles properly when a party attempts to take a tile which is already being worked on. These tiles should be labeled as contested due to their otherwise somewhat janky behavior (highly often miscolored)
Awesome feedback, Thank you!
Noting all of these points. hopefully have fixes soon
Tiles not rendering properly was a bug that we knew about before launch but, crossed our fingers that it wouldn't happen that often. Hopefully have that fixed in the next update.
Thanks again for taking the time to post and play the game :)
Hi, glitch % negative :-(
Thanks for playing!
Haven't seen this before but, seems like quite a few people getting the issues. We'll try to have this worked out.
Thanks again ;)
can confirm i just got it to. Prestige level 2 if it helps pinpoint
Hidden achivements remain ??? after unlocking... so i have no idea what i did.
as far as i can tell the "optimal" strategy is just to swarm from the start the enemy base, no real tactics are involved even with additional rallies. the prestige system seems superflous.
Achievement system is something that we got working and then moved away from. Seems like it needs to be revisited.
Thanks for the feed back!
Theres a glitch where % start going negative and other things go backwards for a few moments
Hmm. seems to be a few people reporting that bug.
We'll try to get this worked out in next update.
Thank you for playing and letting us know!
Needs a bit more polish but is interesting, bit to slow especially needs to remember speed setting.
Thanks for playing. I'll try to see if we can balance things out a bit more. Appreciate the feed back :)