An absolute gem of a puzzle game, and its FREE!
The premise of Hexic Hd is very simple; there is loads of hexagon shaped jewels all staked upon each other, similar to Tetris. The idea of the game is to match 3 of the same jewels in a row, doing so will clear all three of the jewels giving you points and after you have cleared a select number of these jewels you will advance on to the next stage. It sounds simple in theory, but there are a few nice little touches that keep the gameplay fresh and interesting that come along as you get further and further into the game.
Upon a first play of Hexic Hd the gameplay is easy to use and is very original, it is fast paced to start of with and it leads you to believe that the game will not thrown anything more at you than to get rid of more Hexagons to advance to the next stage, but that’s where the game really catches you out completely by throwing a variety of interesting gameplay mechanics at your disposal and sometimes to your annoyance.
The main change in gameplay comes in the variety of several special pieces. One of the first special pieces that you will encounter is the bomb, and as the name suggests this piece is not good, when a bomb is deployed into the field of hexagons you must get rid of it within a select number of turns, otherwise its game over. This again seems like a simple concept, but most of the time there wont be a combo anywhere near the bomb and it will leave you having to find combos around the bomb to allow for space for possible combos within the next turn.
The way in which a single bomb piece can turn the way that you play the game is dramatic and it really makes you think a lot harder about what you will move instead of just clicking on every piece endlessly until one goes. But though this is a great gameplay concept it is incredibly punishing if you don’t manage to stop the bomb from going off within its time.
The other special pieces come in a way in which you interact with the jewels to create them of them are the clams. To create a clam you simply arrange 6 pieces of the same colour around one piece of any colour, doing so will create a starflower. A starflower is basically a 6 pieced hexagon that can be moved as one, the good thing about these is that if you position them in the right places you can get a chain reaction of pieces going off at the same time resulting in high scoring combos that are very rewarding.
Once you have created six starflower pieces, if you were to then surround one coloured piece with the six starflowers it would turn into a black pearl, the final piece of the special pieces. Black pearls unlike the starflower clusters are incredibly hard to get and you will rarely see them in the game unless you are either a very dedicated player or are just very good at the game. The object of the Black pearls is to form a cluster of six of them, in the event of doing so you would win the game, though getting one black pearl at first seems difficult but the more you play the game the more easier it is to get the more trickier pieces.
The game has also a decent variety of game modes, along with the standard mode you have survival mode, the object is to clear the screen of all the pieces but in some cases you may not be able to clear all the pieces at the time. As the stage advances the pieces that you didn’t clear get locked and are unable to move, the only way to get rid of them is through a combo, if you don’t clear enough pieces eventually there will be no room to perform a combo resulting in game over. The other game mode that are available is time attack, and the function to upload your scores to Xbox live and compare them with players around the world, another reason for you to keep on playing.
Though the game has very simplistic graphics they really stand out and are very attractive. The pieces themselves look great and are brightly coloured, the interface is clean and fresh and on a high definition television the sharpness of the graphics really comes to life. The sound in the game like the graphics is very simplistic and is some cases you wont hear it due to the fact that it blends in so effortlessly with the whole tone of the game, along with the soundtrack the sound effects have a very mechanical serial vibe to them which fits perfectly with the mood of the game, though if you don’t like the music there is always the choice to use your own custom soundtracks.
Hexic Hd also acts as a introduction into the Xbox 360 achievement points system, but if you think that this games achievements are easy to get then you can think again, this is another of the many reasons of why you will keep on re visiting this game time and time again and spending hours upon hours of your life on such a simple format of gaming. Though there isnt anything that is simple about this game, from the great soundtrack, the sharp graphics, and the addictive gameplay Hexic Hd is a blast to play and is a great introduction into arcade games of the future.