Kex is the kind of homebrew that feels like it always should have existed on the PC Engine. It is a brand‑new, totally free marble board game for NEC’s underrated 8‑bit console, from developers Newsdee and VodSound.
The pitch is simple: you and your opponent each control four marbles on a small grid, taking turns sliding them around and trying to line them up in specific patterns to score. You can win a round by doing things like claiming all four corners, forming a 2×2 block anywhere on the board, taking your opponent’s starting diagonal, or lining up four in a row or column. Each round earns you tokens based on how badly you beat the CPU, and building a five‑token advantage closes out the match. It is closer to an abstract board game than a straight-ahead puzzler, and it has a mature art style that suits the system’s low‑resolution, high‑contrast look.
The ROM has been tested on original hardware via Turbo EverDrive, on FPGA devices like Analogue Pocket and Duo, and in emulators like Mesen and MiSTer cores. There is proper local multiplayer, a one‑player mode, and even a CPU‑vs‑CPU “spectator” mode if you just want to watch the AI grind it out. The whole thing is wrapped in a soundtrack written specifically for the hardware by VodSound, with eight marble colors and even a “Kexians” option that swaps in little character pieces.
Most importantly, it is free. You download a tiny 256 KB ROM from itch.io, drop it into whatever setup you already use for PC Engine, and suddenly you have a new reason to boot the system that is neither a shooter nor a platformer.
Source: itch.io
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