INTRO:
The first Hexcells game may have impressed people about how it offered an experience that Minesweeper could not, namely taking the factor of luck out of the gameplay. Plus increased the complexity further, though the player also increasingly has to do much, much more thinking than just resorting to easier trial and error.
Infinite simply does more than what Plus has done already, which would have turned off all but the most ardent fan of the series. Fortunately, it would appear to be also the last entry, and it concludes with a feature that would satisfy fans who just want more of the same.
… STILL THE SAME GAMEPLAY:
Plus is the last entry in the Hexcells series to introduce new gameplay elements. Infinite does not do this. Like in the previous game, the player will be clearing boards by cross-referencing hex and column labels, as well as going through permutations of hex patterns and eliminating them where they are impossible.
However, the player would be doing this analytical work far more in Infinite, because the official puzzles are much more difficult. In fact, some of the official puzzles are easier and quicker to solve with trial and error and rote memory than a more methodical approach.
… STILL THE SAME LOOKS & SOUNDS:
Infinite reuses all of the visual and audio assets from Plus. There are no new things to be heard or seen, with the exception of a certain improvement in a visual indicator that will be described later.
IMPROVEMENTS IN USER FRIENDLINESS:
Fortunately, there have been some changes, and these include better user friendliness. In particular, the tutorial lessons have been expanded. Chief of these is a statement which mentions that vertical or diagonal strings of consecutive hexes happen to ignore the presence of gaps.
In Plus, a feature to highlight a zone around the label for a blue hex had been implemented, but there was inadequate contrast for overlapping zones. This has been addressed in Infinite: overlapping zones have more opacity, and the zones also flash periodically in order to provide further contrast.
The menu has also been worked on, making it resemble the menus of other games.
The greatest change in user-friendliness is that when the player quits a puzzle part-way through, the player’s progress is saved. The player can return to the puzzle afterwards, even after the player has been working on another puzzle.
PUZZLE GENERATOR:
The main feature of Infinite is the implementation of a puzzle generator, which is called the titular “Infinite” mode in-game. The generator has an algorithm which creates a puzzle using a code of several digits. It appears to be based on dates, specifically an 8-digit number, though the player can introduce his/her own number to generate puzzles.
However, without knowing the algorithm, it is not clear how the player might control the challenge which is provided by a generated puzzle. There is no clear trend to the changes wrought to the puzzles by any trend which is introduced to the numbers that are used.
From the half a dozen or so puzzles which this reviewer has done thus far using random numbers, most of them are much more manageable than the last few official puzzles in Infinite. This suggests that the official puzzles were not made using the generator.
SUMMARY:
In Infinite, the official puzzles are so great in complexity such that trial-and-error is sometimes a more efficient way to solve them than more sophisticated ways. Furthermore, in terms of its presentation, it reuses a lot of the assets from the previous entry. However, Infinite has also benefited from considerable improvement in its user-friendliness.
It is perhaps just as well that the creators of Hexcells have stopped right here, before the series outlived its welcome. For any fan who just could not get enough of Hexcells, there is the puzzle generator to keep them occupied.
