side project · 3 collaborator slots open

AxonRush

A hex-based RTS where you don't micromanage soldiers — you design the flow.

Risk · factory-logistics · auto-battler · light MOBA. All on one board.

Want in? →

Important up front

This project is completely separate from the company. No company computers, no company time, no company licenses. Personal hardware, personal time, personal accounts on every tool we use. Treat this the same way you'd treat any other off-the-books side project a coworker invited you onto.

The pitch

A 1–12 player hex-based RTS

AxonRush blends Risk (territory control on a hex board), factory / logistics games (designing unit-flow networks across owned tiles), auto-battler (stat-based combat resolves automatically), and light MOBA (a single hero per player with abilities and a buff aura). Win by destroying every other player's home base.

You don't micromanage soldiers. You design the flow: what each tile spawns, where its units march, what happens when they arrive, how your network of tiles transforms raw spawns into elite units, currency, or walls. Your hero roams the map, buffs nearby allies, swings key fights with abilities, and hunts enemy heroes. Fog of war hides the rest.

Sample AxonRush map showing tile biomes — snow, volcanic, grassland, swamp, desert, and void regions on a hex grid
Sample map render assets/map.jpg
15 biomes · ~15 tile types each · 232 unique tile concepts

The experiment

Ship a polished game off-hours.
At regular quality standards.

We're building this off-hours as a test of how fast a small team can ship a polished game with heavy AI assistance — at regular quality standards. No "AI slop" excuses. The goal is a launchable title that holds up to a normal review, just produced more quickly than a traditional pipeline of our size could manage.

Where we are right now

The current team

Founder

James Conrad

Gameplay Systems · Mechanics · Design · Balance

GDD locked at v0.3. 24 development milestones mapped. Design pass on biomes + tile catalog (15 biomes × ~15 tiles = 232 tile concepts) done.

Founder

Vlad Golovan

Networking · Cross-Play · UI · Tooling

Build pipeline live on a dedicated bot host. Designer Sync GUI ships incremental updates. Daemons poll Perforce every 45s. Build / package / cook / sync / status all automated.

Engine
Unreal Engine 5.7 · C++
Source control
Perforce over Tailscale
Status
Past plumbing. Into content.

What we're missing isn't more code. It's content production. Three roles, each suited to a single person who can drive a discipline end-to-end with AI assistance.

The hard cap

Why exactly three slots

Our Perforce server runs on a 5-seat Tailscale plan. James and Vlad take two of those seats. That leaves exactly three open. As much as we'd love to welcome more, we're trying to build this on a non-existant budget.

The open slots

Three disciplines.
Three owners.

Environment & Worldbuilding Art

Own the visual language of the map. ~15 biomes, each with 8–15 distinctive tile types, plus hex materials, environmental props, structures, lighting, skybox treatments, and eventual VFX for tile effects (lava, blizzard, glowshroom pulse, etc.).

Bonus points if you have any of these

  • Midjourney / Stable Diffusion for concepts
  • Tripo / Meshy / Rodin for 3D-from-concept
  • Blender for retopo + UVs + cleanup
  • Substance for materials
  • Unreal for in-engine assembly

Looking for

Strong art-direction sense — you know when an AI generation is "almost there" vs. "fundamentally wrong." Basic 3D pipeline fluency. Willingness to do the unsexy cleanup work that turns a good generation into a shippable asset.

Character Art & Animation

Own leaders and armies — the parts of the game with personality. 3 leaders + 3 armies for MVP, scaling to 12 + 12 for launch. Rigging, skinning, animation (idle / walk / attack / ability cast / death), plus the VFX timing on hero abilities.

Bonus points if you have any of these

  • Mixamo / Cascadeur for animation assist
  • Move.ai for video-to-mocap
  • Unreal's animation framework
  • AI concept generation for character design

Looking for

Character art chops (the harder visual problem). Animation eye. Comfort with AI-assisted rigging pipelines. Willingness to push back hard on anything that reads "uncanny."

Audio & Narrative

Own the world's tone: music, SFX, voice, plus the writing that ties them together. Per-army music themes, leader voice barks, biome ambient beds, ability SFX, and the prose that makes them all coherent — leader bios, army identities, biome lore, ability flavor text, in-game UI strings.

These are paired on purpose: when one person sets the tone for both audio and writing, the army's music sounds like its lore reads, and the leader who speaks the bark feels like the leader the bio describes. Splitting them creates seams.

Bonus points if you have any of these

  • Suno / Udio for music
  • ElevenLabs for SFX + voice
  • Reaper / FL / Ableton — your call
  • Prose drafting with your favorite LLM, driven by your own voice

Looking for

Writing that has voice (not generic). Audio sensibility — you can tell when a track is "cinematic but generic" vs. "specifically ours." Willingness to own both halves.

Not interested in a build slot, but want to play?

Join the playtest list

When we hit playtestable milestones we'll keep a list of folks across the company who want builds. Anyone is welcome on the playtest list, especially if you're a fan of any of the genres mixed into AxonRush — RTS, Risk-likes, factory / logistics games, auto-battlers, or MOBAs. Coverage of those tastes early is more valuable than feedback from people politely playing because they were asked.

Time commitment

Off-hours. Steady. Yours to scale.

Off-hours, evenings and weekends. We don't expect 40h/week — this is a side project for everyone, including the founders.

Steady weekly contribution even if small but consistent beats sporadic bursts. AI should speed everything up so this shouldn't be a massive time sink (unless you want it to be).

Three slots. First-come.

Want to join?

Message @James Conrad to get set up as a team member.