You’ll find more numbers outside of columns to show how many marks are contained within, and those get mixed with the brackets and dashes too. You’ll get brackets on numbers that indicate marked hexes are connected, and dashed numbers that mean they’re separated. Then about halfway through the game, it begins introducing even more methods of puzzling out marks. The six-sided configurations also lend themselves to new logical conclusions beyond the grids you might be used to. Not only will you need to keep track of the numbers on hexes, you’ll also need to consider how many marks are left to make in some puzzles. Every single level is designed to flow logically right from the start, and does so using all of the tools presented to the player. That does mean that your time with Hexcells is pretty much limited to its 30 static puzzles, but the trade-off is that there’s absolutely no guesswork to suffer through here. It’s essentially Minesweeper, but without the random generation of our ancient friend. Of course, as you proceed these configurations will only get more complex, and will even sprout some new features you might not be expecting. Using these numbers, you can logic out exactly where every marked hexagon is and proceed until every hex has been left- or right-clicked. Left-clicking marks a hexagon blue, while right-clicking grays out an unmarked hex and reveals its number. From the start a few of them may be grayed out with a number on them, which indicates how many of the hexagons connected to the grayed one need to be marked. Hexcells presents you with a board of orange hexagons, connected in all sorts of patterns. By adding additional dimensions and features to its hand-crafted puzzles, Hexcells essentially perfects the logic puzzles we’ve been burning time on for so many years prior. But that was a flaw that was bound to be corrected eventually in an evolution of the formula, and Hexcells is just that. It wasn’t perfect, of course, since it occasionally required a little guesswork to complete. Minesweeper was a ubiquitous part of Windows for decades because it was such a simple yet engrossing logic puzzler. It pains me to think there might be someone reading this right now who has never played Minesweeper, and not just because the thought makes me feel old.
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