Hexcells custom3/31/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() To mirror the comments made by others about this series, it's difficult to separate the original Hexcells from its much more developed sequels. Math-ier puzzlers like this tend to be a bit impenetrable visually, but Hexcells has a unique amount of staying power in this regard. 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. 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 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. Hexcells is a pure puzzle game about filling in and crossing out cells on a hexagonal grid. 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. 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. 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. ![]() 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ![]() 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 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. 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. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |