| Hexcells | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | Puzzle |
| Developer | Matthew Brown Games |
| Publisher | Matthew Brown Games |
| Creator | Matthew Brown |
| Platforms | |
| First release | Hexcells 20 February 2014 |
| Latest release | Hexcells Infinite 1 September 2014 |
Hexcells is a puzzle video game series developed and published by British designer Matthew Brown. There are three games in the series: Hexcells, Hexcells Plus, and Hexcells Infinite.
The gameplay of each installment in Hexcells is similar to Minesweeper . [1] [2] Each level contains a grid of hexagonal orange tiles. Under each tile hides a shape that is coloured either blue or black. The player left-clicks a tile if they think it is blue and right-clicks if they think it is black. Each black tile and some blue tiles display a number which represents how many blue tiles it is bordering. The objective of each level is to locate all of the blue tiles with the fewest mistakes. [3]
At the top of each row, column and diagonal in each level there is a number which displays how many blue tiles there are in that section. These numbers, as well as the numbers inside the blue or black tiles, may have symbols surrounding them: curly brackets ({}) show that the neighbouring blue shapes are conjoined, and hyphens (-) show that they are not. [2] [3]
Each game contains six "worlds" of 36 levels, and Hexcells Infinite contains an extra "infinite" mode with procedurally generated levels. [1] [3]
The art style is minimalistic and has a contrast between the orange and blue tiles. [2]
Hexcells was in development throughout 2013. [4] Hexcells and Hexcells Plus were released on 20 February 2014, and Hexcells Infinite was released on 1 September 2014.
The games have been commonly compared to Minesweeper. [1] [2] They were praised for their simplistic art style and contrastive colours. [2] One stated negative was that there was no punishment for making mistakes. [4]
Hexcells Infinite was rated 80/100 by New Game Network, who described it as "a unique idea based around the age old concepts of logic". [3] Rock Paper Shotgun described the game as a "ludicrous pleasure to play". [1]
