SH Games

Bounty Hunters

Shoot where they’ll be.

Bounty Hunters is the working title of my mobile MMORPG about mercenaries in space. Combat is turn-based on hexes. Both sides give orders at the same time, and every shot lands on a cell, not a ship, so you have to lead your target.

Play the combat demo Who’s making it
Genre
Space MMORPG
Platforms
iOS and Android (planned)
Combat
Hex grid, simultaneous turns
Stage
Pre-production

What kind of game this is

You’re a lone pilot in a ship you picked from the hangar. You take contracts, hunt bounties, trade and mine. Fights are short and built for a phone screen.

  • Simultaneous turns

    Each turn has a timer. While it runs, both sides pick a course and targets, then everything plays out at once. There’s no waiting for your turn.

  • Leading the target

    Shots hit cells. You only land a hit if you guess where your opponent will end up.

  • Job board

    Any player can post a job: gather resources, craft a module, track down and destroy a specific pilot. Whoever gets it done collects the reward.

  • A world that reacts

    Players and NPC factions both shape the world, depending on what happens in it. For example, if pirates block a sector, ore gets pricier there; if clans go to war, new jobs show up on the board.

This is the plan so far. Details will change after the first playtests.

Fight two pirates

One fight to show how the rules work. The graphics are placeholders: ships are schematic markers, and the final art will look different.

Combat prototype · v0.4

Turn 01
—
Time left 40

Placeholder markers, not final art

Ship roles

  • Tank

    BH-T1

    Slow but tough. Armour takes 1 off every hit.

  • Universal

    BH-U1

    No weak spots. Carries 3 rockets instead of 2.

  • Evader

    BH-E1

    Fragile and fast: moves 3 hexes a turn.

Weapons

  • Laser

    Range 1–5, 2 damage, fires twice a turn.

  • Plasma

    Range 1–3, 5 damage. Needs a turn to cool down after firing.

  • Rockets

    Range 1–4, 3 damage plus 1 to neighbouring hexes. Two per fight, three on the Universal.

How I make the game

I come up with the rules, the world and the balance myself. The code is written with Claude Code: I set the task, check the result in the browser and ask for changes until it works the way I intended. This site, the combat prototype and the balance simulator were made this way.

  • Balance by simulation

    Before a number in the rules changes, it goes through the simulator: thousands of automatic fights in which simulated pilots, from a beginner to an experienced player, take on the pirate AI. If a ship or weapon turns out too strong or too weak, the win rates show it. The prototype above was tuned this way.

  • The same rules everywhere

    The combat rules are written once, separately from the graphics. The same code runs the fight in this prototype and in the balance simulator, so the test numbers match what you actually play. Later it can move to the game server.

  • AI inside the game: an idea for now

    I want to try language models for how NPC factions behave and talk. They won’t decide anything for players: the server rules will still check every action.

Where the project is now

  1. Done

    Combat prototype in the browser

    Three ship roles, three weapons, rams, breakable asteroids and pirate AI.

  2. Now

    World and systems design

    Lore, factions, ship modules, the economy and the full combat rules.

  3. Next

    First mobile build

    On iOS and Android: one sector, contracts against AI and 1v1 duels.

  4. Later

    Closed alpha

    Clans, the player economy and a shared galaxy.

Who’s making it

Serhii

Founder of SH Games, indie developer

  • Game design and worldbuilding
  • Based in Ukraine
  • No outside investment

In the 2000s I played a browser space MMO built in Flash. It opened in 2006 and shut down around 2016. There I led a mercenary clan called Bounty Hunters. We were small and never had much say in the server’s economy or politics, but people knew us.

That game gave me a lot: great fights on the hex grid and a community I still remember. It had its problems too: balance, grind, ideas the developers never got to. For years I wrote down what I would do differently.

Bounty Hunters is my attempt at that: the tactical hex combat, reworked for phones, with a game around it that I’d want to play myself. The name comes from the clan.

It’s a hard time in Ukraine right now, but I keep moving toward this goal.

Get in touch

Write to me if you’d like to playtest, or if you remember that game too.

founder@hrechka.uk