Hexic HD (Xbox 360)
I recently purchased an Xbox 360 for a pretty good price, and while it wouldn’t be my first time playing the system, it did have the interesting honor of being the first game console purchased since starting The Game Hoard. As such, the first game I would play on it became a bigger question than usual, and while there were plenty of candidates, I noticed there was already a game installed to the system when I turned it on. Hexic HD is a game available for free to owners of Xbox 360 and Xbox One systems, and while it’s not the most important game in the history of the console or anything, it did seem somewhat appropriate that the first game I would play on my new Xbox 360 would be a game that anyone with the system could download and play.
Hexic HD is a match-3 puzzle game but not one where the matching is as straightforward as it is in things like Puyo Puyo or Bejeweled. The game board in Hexic HD is made up of an assembly of colored hexagons, the player needing to match them not just by putting them together, but by making little clusters where each hexagon is touching another of the same color (or pattern if the color-blind friendly option is enabled) with at least two of its sides. Once a cluster of hexagons is cleared, the board will be repopulated with new pieces that fall in from above, new matches sometimes happening as the play area is filled up with new hexagons. To swap pieces around in Hexic HD involves moving around a three piece wide cursor that is able to rotate them clockwise or counterclockwise, the pieces spinning either until a match is made or until the hexagons return to their original position. This choice means you can’t rearrange the board for bigger matches, the goal instead being to identify where a match can currently be made and trying to set things up for potentially larger matches down the road by changing the board’s layout. While it can take a bit to dispense with the natural notion that you only need to have similarly colored pieces touching at all to get a match, Hexic HD’s matching style will quickly become second nature, providing a twist to the genre formula that helps it be more than another game following more popular titles’ leads.
The matching doesn’t come down to just making clusters either. There are special matches in Hexic HD it refers to as flowers, where a single hexagon is surrounded on all sides by hexagons that match each other in color without matching the central piece. When this more difficult match is made, all pieces are absorbed into the central piece to make a silver star, the star now serving as an axle where all the surrounding pieces can be rotated at once even if no match is found during the rotation. Going even further, a flower of silver stars will combine into a black pearl, this having its own unique rotation rules as well where adjacent hexagons in a Y shape are rotated freely around the pearl. The objective of two of the main modes of the game is to make enough black pearls to match them in a cluster or flower, a task much easier said than done. However, the game can be a bit helpful, because even on the different difficulty ratings, if you’re taking time to make a match, pieces will glow to try and indicate where one can be found. It’s not always the best match, but the game seems to always provide matches somewhere on the board so the game can continue.
The three main modes in Hexic HD are Marathon Mode, Timed Mode, and Survival Mode, with Marathon definitely being the intended main mode. In Marathon, there is actually very little pressure, the player having the time to pick their next move as carefully as they’d like. To progress through the levels of Marathon Mode requires making a certain amount of matches, newer levels introducing more colors to the mix so making matches becomes harder and harder. On your quest to make a black pearl cluster though, there is one way for you to fail, and that comes in the form of bombs. Bombs come in with a countdown to when they’ll detonate, the number representing how many hexagon swaps it will take before it explodes. The player needs to match the bomb to similarly colored pieces to eliminate it safely or else the current run will come to an immediate end. This isn’t too bad a concept for a failure state, but the bomb can drop in to an area where seemingly no match is possible, the player having to hope that by matching other hexagons in the area the right pieces will drop in nearby to make clearing it possible. This issue with the bomb is present in both Marathon and Timed modes even if it rarely feels entirely unfair, but for a mostly relaxing and casual puzzle game, the appearance of one in an odd spot can be crushing. Luckily, the bomb can benefit the player as well. The Hexic board will sometimes have pieces with bonus stars on them, these mostly just contributing to a high score when matched with other pieces but also able to provide clearing bonuses if matched with other special pieces. Even if they’re not the same color, a cluster of bonus star pieces will match with each other and clear away other adjacent pieces as well, and if matched with a bomb, it will clear the board of all pieces of the bomb’s color.
Working towards the black pearls and managing incoming bombs at a leisurely pace makes for a fairly strategic puzzle game that can be enjoyed both casually or seriously, but Timed Mode throws a clock into the mix, removing that time to sit back and find the optimal move as you have to focus on making matches quickly enough to earn bonus time. The Hexic clock can be boosted so long as you keep finding new matches, but even clearing a level in this mode won’t refresh the clock entirely, making the process more fast-paced without losing the basic enjoyment of trying to find regular matches or working towards the flowers needed to win the mode. The bombs can bug you a bit more in this less methodical mode, but even though victory is far less likely in this mode where strategy has to be done on the fly, it’s still pretty satisfying to get a match chain or set up those flower matches despite the pressure to be quick about it.
Survival Mode is a true break away from the formula though. While all the modes technically have the element where you start from scratch and continue on as long as you can to earn high scores, Survival actually introduces entirely new mechanics and tosses out bombs entirely. You’ll still be matching colored hexagons with the same rules in how they combine, but each level of Survival Mode only has as many pieces as initially appear on the board. Your goal is to wipe the board as clear as you can each round, for once you are out of potential matches, the lingering hexagons will be locked in place and carried over to the next round. You can’t rotate a locked in hexagon, but you can still match movable pieces to them and even unlock them with adjacent matches. Survival Mode’s ending is more achievable than the other two since you only need to last to the fiftieth round or clear the entire play area of pieces, and with no external pressures like timers or bombs, this mode can be tackled with expert precision even though a casual playthrough can still be successful if the player spots good matches well enough. All three modes are pretty good fits for a quick pick-up-and-play session, but Survival Mode has the best chance of a pick up and win without it being so easy it’s guaranteed, and having a few difficulty options for every mode even ensures that you can toughen it up if victory seems to come too easily once you’ve acquired a knack for spotting the best matches.
THE VERDICT: Hexic HD brings a simple to pick up twist on the match-3 style due to its cluster based hexagonal matching and the three mostly low pressure modes make for a game that’s enjoyable both for leisurely play and more strategic approaches. Victory might be hard to reach thanks to limited piece movement and the way bombs work, but modes like Survival make it more achievable with its unique mechanics and the regular matching remains satisfying in every mode, especially when you can spot and work towards the more complex flower matches.
And so, I give Hexic HD for Xbox 360…
A GOOD rating. The complexity of making a cluster of multiple pearls is certainly meant to bring the player back for repeat playthroughs rather than relying solely on high score chasing, but it is what makes Hexic HD unable to stand shoulder to shoulder with the titans of its genre. Making flowers and working towards it can satisfy a strategic urge that is sometimes very basic in other puzzle games, and having a true incentive for searching out big matches outside of point rewards is a good angle, but the process doesn’t lend too well to things like Timed Mode. On a fundamental level though the hexagonal matching system is still enjoyable and remains so even on a loss, but the bombs can sometimes end a run since little hope for matching them seemed in sight. Survival Mode alone could make up a pretty good puzzle game though, the locking a proper limiter for not just matching mindlessly and the possibility of success greater in a mode where you are pretty much in full control of whether or not you’ll continue.
A win may be a lofty goal in most of Hexic HD’s modes, but the accessible but distinct gameplay make it a match-3 puzzler that is enjoyable to come to even for a losing run. A unique enough identity means it won’t have its thunder stolen by other puzzlers and it provides a different enough experience from the major names in the genre, but definitely the biggest factor it has going for it would be that it’s completely free. While that won’t impact its quality in any way, the fact an Xbox 360 owner can just give it a try without spending a dime certainly broadened its audience. Rather than getting some generic match-3 game that followed the leader, these players would find an enjoyable and replayable game with a new twist on the idea, although perhaps it’s not too surprising it turned out pretty good since Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov was behind the game’s concept, that ancestry no doubt why it’s so solidly constructed despite not achieving the legendary status of other puzzle games.