Hexcells

Hexcells is an abstract logic puzzle game about marking grids of hexagonal tiles according to limited numerical information. Each grid is revealed tile by tile, based on numbers indicating how many tiles should be marked in specific sub-areas. It’s a mix of both Minesweeper and nonogram gameplay, set to a soothing ambient soundtrack.

The early grids function much like Minesweeper, except with hexagonal tiles. They contain orange, unknown tiles, which can either be cleared as black tiles, or marked as blue tiles. Each black tile displays a number indicating how many adjacent tiles need to be marked. Using logical reasoning, the player should deduce the nature of every tile one by one, until they’ve all been identified. The grids are deterministic, meaning that there’s always enough information to move forward without having to make a blind guess.

In later levels, instead of being on a black tile, a number can be displayed on top of a row or column. This tells the player how many tiles should be marked over the full line, as in nonogram puzzles. Finally, some numbers are shown between brackets, and others between hyphens. The brackets indicate that the marked tiles form a single connecting group (either around a black tile, or over a full line), while the hyphens indicate that the marked tiles are partially disjointed. These rules are slowly introduced so the player is not overwhelmed with too many mechanics all at once.

The difficulty ramps up as the grids become larger and more convoluted. Collections of tiles form island-like shapes. Some are separated from each other, some have holes in the middle, and others branch out in intricate designs. At the end of a level, tokens are given out; the less mistakes were made, the more tokens are delivered. These tokens are needed to unlock sets of levels. This encourages replaying the levels and getting better scores, although the game does not require that each and every token be collected.

Several quality-of-life features were implemented to keep the experience as smooth and relaxing as possible. To the side of every grid, there is a counter showing how many tiles remain to be marked, and another counter to keep track of potential mistakes. In the late game, when puzzles become more complicated, the player can toggle a white guide line showing which row or column an outside number refers to. The numbers can also be turned to a washed-out gray to mark them as complete.

This description was written by Cay Macres and edited by Oriane Tury.