Hexcells

A slick, casual hexagon-based puzzle game, playing something very similar to Minesweeper, although all levels can be solved with pure deduction and no guesswork. A little too easy, but I see it less as a standalone game and more as an introduction to the harder sequels, Hexcells Plus and Hexcells Infinite.

Another small complaint (and this carries over to all games unfortunately) is that the punishment system is too harsh in the sense it doesn't really protect against misclicks, which are easy to do. I get why it exists, but its still annoying, and said game can always be bruteforced and screenshotted if anyone does wish to "cheat" a puzzle.

This is a really neat little cross between nonograms and Minesweeper and I'm all for this sort of stuff as a way to just wind down a bit with some music on in the background. The systems in place are all really lovely and intuitive as well, while undoubtedly adding a lot of depth to make each stage feel more satisfying. It's also pretty interesting to compare this to nonograms in the sense that the dynamic almost feels reversed, as while in those, you tend to celebrate whenever you find where a new square is, in Hexcells, being able to find an empty space ends up feeling way more satisfying.

The whole casual angle that was approached here is one that I both appreciate but also find detracts from the game at the same time. I love the way that every puzzle here is 100% solvable using nothing but pure logic, eliminating the often frustrating element of guesswork in Minesweeper, but also found most of the material here to be a bit too simplistic until the end. It almost feels as if most of the game is attempting to prepare you for the upcoming challenges, only to then give you about 4 levels of more challenging content. This also leads me to the complaint that I feel that this is far too short, taking only an hour or two to get through all the content this game has to offer. As a final issue, I found myself getting extremely annoyed at being punished whenever I made a misclick, which happened extremely often and had me repeating some puzzles numerous times, which got pretty tedious even when I took a screenshot of my progress and just copied it. The issue with this is that I totally understand why it's in place, as it is able to stop people from simply guessing and clicking at random to get through a tricky section, but it just feels so irritating when accidentally clicking in the wrong spot when momentarily distracted is just an instant redo.

In any case, this is still the sort of puzzle game I can get down with, very simple, yet effective mechanics that work well together and make for a nice little deduction game. If there was more content to this and it required a few more moments of much higher order thinking and logic, I think this would be great, but as it stands, it's merely just good, I'll see whether the other games in the series help with this problem.

Hexcells is a pure puzzle game about filling in and crossing out cells on a hexagonal grid. The hook here is that while the rules tend to more closely follow the neighbor-counting Minesweeper, with each crossed space indicating how many cells there are to fill around it, Hexcells requires zero guessing and can be completed with logic alone. The foundation here is quite addicting on a very primitive, tactile level thanks to compelling sound design and a minimalist art direction that keeps you focused, but not rushing on the grid before you. The outstanding ambient soundtrack gives the exercise an almost meditative quality - many taking on the rough shape and tempo of a slow breathing pattern - making it easy to get lost in the experience. Math-ier puzzlers like this tend to be a bit impenetrable visually, but Hexcells has a unique amount of staying power in this regard.

To mirror the comments made by others about this series, it's difficult to separate the original Hexcells from its much more developed sequels. First, they're commonly bundled together for less than 5 dollars in Steam sales, and second, when played in order, the original Hexcells feels a bit more like a tutorial for the later games than a standalone entry. The primary reason for this is difficulty - the grids here are not only smaller, but often thinner in shape than in later entries, allowing for strings of quick and simple cell-popping without much thought. Most of the cells can be worked out using only local clues, so when put together it's hard to say the grids take the whole of itself into much account. In the denser grids, you'll have an over-abundance of clues to work out a given cell or group of cells because of the presence of new information given on every crossed cell - the only exception is when a high number of marked cells create a "wall" that withholds information to the player. The end result is that additional rules and constraints don't really constrain you very much.

The first added wrinkle is hints atop columns of hexes, indicating the number of marked cells in that column, but just like before, it often compounds with the local clues in ways that trivialize the immediate area unless it's filled with marked cells. There are also bracketed and crossed number clues for both cells and columns that indicate if the marked cells in the given area are consecutive or not, respectively. These are interesting because they allow for Picross-style reasoning - for example, a column of four cells with a crossed 3 atop it must have marked cells on both its top an bottom, with the third marked cell left ambiguous until further information is gathered. These rules lead to "partial completion" of certain areas that when worked in tandem with other sets, create mutually shared and mutually exclusive areas that interact in cool ways, especially when the "column" in question is diagonal. This overlap-style logic is compelling enough that it would be made the focus of the level design in future installments.

Hexcells is a short game, a mere 36 levels that can be completed in under a couple of hours, but the concept is interesting, the audiovisual design perfectly matches the purity and simplicity of the task given to you, and it plays around with its core ideas just enough to give you a solid foundation for the later entries in the series. The overall low to medium difficulty keeps progression quick and encourages that "one more stage" style of lingering play. With a $3 price point at the absolute highest, I feel this game is impossible to ignore if you're a fan of the genre.

This is basically if Minesweeper was a good game, with gorgeous minimalist graphics, hexagonal cells, and ambient music. This one is fairly easy but the other games in the series are more challenging. Still, this is the recommended starting point if you're a fan of puzzles games like Sudoku or others.

The difference between this game and Hexcells Plus and especially Hexcells Infinite is staggering. I can't talk about Hexcells Plus too much as I've just started playing it, but even then there is more lateral thinking in the first 10 levels of Hexcells Plus than the entirety of this game. It can be seen almost as an object lesson of the importance of puzzle design, and also proof of the idea that a pretty mediocre game can still contain a good idea.

Hexcells is a pure abstract puzzle game, very similar to Picross, but if you haven't played that, it's a little bit like Microsoft Minesweeper, the major difference being that there is no luck involved - the puzzles are designed so you can always work out where the "mine" has to be. Another, perhaps obvious difference is that this is a grid of hexes instead of a square grid.

The idea is great. And there is quite a bit of enjoyment, in my opinion, in just filling in the grid. That is where this game scores most of it's points for me, though, because really, the puzzles are very lacking. Maybe this is just my fault for playing Hexcells Infinite first, but I don't think entirely. The puzzles are just too easy - there are always too many clues and there are almost no instances of really having to work something out. You just find the hex where one obviously must be (i.e., there is only one hex on the outside of a hex where another one needs to be filled in). When this game really shines is when the logic is taken "one step" beyond that - when you have to say "well, I could have one here, but then there wouldn't be able to be one THERE, and there NEEDS to be one there". This game just feels rote - almost like busywork.

Skip this game, go straight to Hexcells Plus or Hexcells Infinite - they are great.

In Hexcells, much like Minesweeper, you have to put a flag on dangerous cells, while marking the others as safe.

You start with a pattern of hexagons and with a small amount of information that allows you to mark the first hexagons; in turn, the hexagons you mark give you additional information to mark some more, and so on and so forth.

The technical realization is very simple but effective: clean graphics and relaxing music. However, I had some problems with the music because it has a rhytmic structure that sets my pace at marking cells (I know it sounds crazy, but if I try to go off-beat I often make mistakes!).

The game is quite addictive and works brilliantly. The main concern is its shortness: just a handful of levels than can be completed in 1-2 hours at most. Two sequels exists, however.