46. Hexceed || Nintendo Switch || 12.20.21
Now, Minesweeper is a game that I'm sure many here have at least played once. Personally, I enjoy Minesweeper a lot, but it has been many years since I've last played it or any other similar logic puzzle game. That is, until I decided to play Hexceed.
By far and large, Hexceed surpasses Minesweeper throughout its gameplay. Like Minesweeper, the end goal is to identify which tiles are safe and unsafe. Requiring some minor critical thinking ability, Hexceed takes the principles from its inspiration and expands upon them foremost by being played with hexagonal tiles as opposed to square tiles while adding several new mechanics required to solve. Various rules and gameplay elements help diversity the traditional formula across stages and even throughout segments of each stages, at times.
As opposed to being fairly straight-forward, Hexceed requires more attention than one would think due to evolving gameplay elements. Early on, the game is simple and much like Minesweeper but with different shapes. Soon, though, new mechanics such as barriers that separate tiles from another and tiles that indicate how any unsafe tiles reside within a free-form zone or even a straight line are introduced. All of these elements exist across a level plane that is also free-form, unlike Minesweeper which takes place across a rectangular playing field. That being said, the rules apply across the entire playing field with indicator tiles even being able to expand across multiple different planes as long as they're within the tile's vicinity.
All this said, Hexceed has an organic progression in the challenge it presents. As new mechanics are slowly introduced, the levels ramp up in difficulty and larger playing fields are seen. Some stages require deeper problem-solving in their final tiles to clear, such as the player needing to understand which scenarios can and cannot be possible after playing out possible scenarios. However, Hexceed is not always as unforgiving as Minesweeper is. By default, clicking in error is a general warning, with subsequent clicks negating the last 7-8 solved tiles each time. While this is the default setting, it can be toggled off so that one error results in failure with the stage needing to be retried in full. My entire experience was of the former, which allowed for a more relaxing and casual experience. On many occasions, I could zone out while instinctively recognizing patterns while the game provided that feeling needing to solve "just one more stage" as lo-fi music provided background sounds.
Of course, Hexceed is not a perfect game, although my faults with it are generally minor. The last section of 36 stages were not as enjoyable to me as they felt much more gimmicky in nature, such as playing fields being purposefully shaped to represent something's likeness. However, the entire 472 stages I played were entirely free, so I cannot fault this aspect very much. Throughout each stage's end animation, there was considerable lag most of the time. While there is an option to turn off such animation entirely, I liked the animation when it transitioned smoothly; but that there was lag to this degree during these parts was surprising, as the game is not information-heavy. My final, and definitely biggest, problem was positioning the pointer from tile to tile. Sometimes, the pointer would move slowly, and other times not be steady enough to make a click. The problem frequently caused me to make errors. I'm sure that this problem was entirely due to Joy-Con drift, but I still do wonder if the game was at fault for it to some degree too.
As a free game, the core experience of 472 free stages is fantastic for those enjoying logic puzzle games. The developers have already set in motion for 12 additional sections being offered over the course of 12 months, which introduced in total over 1,000 stages and four new mechanics such as rotating tiles being added. I am interested in the bundle altogether, but I don't think that I will make that end purchase (at least for now.) If you ever enjoyed playing Minesweeper or are a fan of logic puzzle games, I highly recommend playing Hexceed as so much of the game's content is outright free.
