Hexceed

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Hexceed is a free-to-play Puzzle game released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2021, with gameplay somewhat similar to Minesweeper, but using a hexagonal-based grid and with pre-crafted puzzles instead of randomized ones. Surprisingly, despite this game costing nothing, it doesn’t feature any microtransactions. Rather, this game hopes to entice you to spend money to buy expansions that add additional puzzles once you have worked your way through the over 470 puzzles already included in the game.

I feel like that really needs to be highlighted – that is a lot of puzzles to work through, and even if you never spend a penny on this game, you will likely be playing for hours upon hours before you expend all of this game’s content. I don’t recall the last time I saw so much content being given to Nintendo Switch owners for free without some sort of nasty microtransactions bogging things down, and I’m delighted that there just doesn’t seem to be a catch here.

What’s even more surprising is that the puzzles in this game are genuinely fantastic. The gameplay starts with a simple Minesweeper formula – clicking on a cel reveals how many adjacent cels have “danger” spaces (i.e. Minesweeper’s bombs). Making use of these indicators and using logic to narrow down possibilities, you need to deduce which spaces are unsafe and mark them accordingly, and which spaces are safe and click on them to reveal more of the puzzle.

However, that’s just how things start. Hexceed builds on this simple formula by adding in new elements as you progress. Dividers that act as an exception to the usual indicators on cels, red arrow cels that change the indicator number to apply to cels in the indicated direction instead of adjacent cels, “Area of Effect” cels that give an indication how many unsafe spaces are in a given range… it may seem like a lot to take in, but the game introduces these elements gradually, using superb level design to teach players how these cels are used rather than making them read a wordy tutorial.

All of these various types of cels make for a good variety of puzzles, and really challenge players to think about the possibilities before making a move. Sometimes you’ll need to count how many unsafe spaces are left to narrow down possibilities, other times you’ll need to combine your knowledge from two different types of cels to come to a conclusion. But no matter how you’re meant to find the answer, Hexceed does two things that make it a far superior game to Minesweeper – firstly, there is never a possibility that you’ll be forced to “guess” an answer – there is always an indication of what the correct answer is. And secondly, often this game will provide players with multiple ways to find an answer.

The traditional controls here are mostly pretty decent, although I did notice an issue with the game detecting the cursor in the wrong place after changing the zoom. It’s not a big enough issue that it significantly hampers the game, but it’s worth noting. The touchscreen controls, on the other hand, are fantastic – I’m honestly stunned that this game isn’t on the mobile platform given how natural the touchscreen controls here feel. Suffice it to say, if you’re playing the game in handheld mode, that will be your preferred way to play.

If there’s one major issue with this game, it’ll be the one thing I haven’t touched on yet – the presentation. Visually, Hexceed looks boring. Simple hexagonal tiles with flat coloring. I suppose at the very least it’s a clean look that makes the screen easy to parse at any zoom level, but it’s almost completely devoid of any personality. These visuals are backed by a rhythmic synthesized soundtrack that’s decent enough to not get annoying, but nothing memorable or interesting.

Still, while this Hexceed may look and sound boring, this game is nothing short of a gift to Puzzle game fans on Nintendo Switch. The amount of free content here is massive, the puzzle design is superb, and overall this is a game that will keep you engaged for a very long time without costing you a penny. If you enjoy Puzzle games at all, you absolutely need to add this game to your nintendo Switch library. It costs you nothing, so what do you have to lose?

tl;dr – Hexceed is a free-to-play Puzzle game that plays similarly to Minesweeper, but with more variety, and game design that never requires the player to guess where it is and isn’t safe to click. The amount of content included here for free is mind-boggling, and there are no microtransactions – only paid expansion content once you exhaust the over 470 levels included for free. And while the presentation may look dull, the gameplay here is absolutely superb. If you are a Puzzle game fan on Nintendo Switch, you should absolutely download this game immediately.

Grade: B+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards:

Winner:

The “Wow, this game was way better than I expected!” Award – “Free-To-Play” tends to come with a stigma attached to it, and that stigma is that you’ll end up paying for the game through some other form of monetization, and often something that exploits its players and makes the game worse. What’s more, from the outside, Hexceed looks outright boring, as visually-bland a Puzzle game as you can imagine. Yet, the actual game itself is a brilliant evolution of the Minesweeper formula, it’s an absolute delight of a Puzzle game… and the only kind of monetization here is additional puzzles for players to buy after they’re done with the massive number of puzzles already included in the free game. From the outside, I was dubious that this game would be worthwhile, but after playing it, I feel like every Puzzle game fan with a Nintendo Switch should download this game – after all, it costs you nothing.

Runner-Up: Best New Free-To-Play Game, Most Overlooked, Best Puzzle Game

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