Hexagons are the bestagons

I can’t decide if it’s because I’m getting older, or just getting lazier (or even worse if it’s a sign that the Algorithm is starting to get me), but I’ve started to actually pay attention to games that are advertised to me while playing other games. I don’t click through via the ad though - I can’t let them win - I’ll search for it on an app store instead. And that’s how I found Hexa Sort. It looked similar to those coloured-liquid-pouring puzzles that I like - but built around the official best shape - so I thought I’d give it a try.

Sort of sorting

If you know the type of game I mentioned in the first paragraph, you’ll understand some of the basic mechanics of Hexa Sort. You start with a blank hex grid and a pile of coloured hexes that you ned to find space for. When you place the pile next to a matching colour, they’re combined and disappear. If your pile has multiple colours, the top gets moved first and it works it’s way through them.

I like that concept, and at its base level it works pretty well. Later levels have some hexes blocked off and you can unlock them by watching an ad, and to be perfectly fair I think this is a reasonable level of monetisation - although there are ads during all gameplay scenes and mandatory ads between levels. Your tolerance for this might be different from mine.

Another thing I like is the high score table. All it does is unlock some special moves (of course we’ve got a currency for emergency pile clearing, etc), but it’s always nice to see yourself climbing the ranks.

Getting Vexed by the Hex

So the gameplay is as expected, but there’s a couple of things that kind of annoyed me. The main one is that there’s no way to control the order in which multiple hex piles combine. So you place a block down somewhere you think you’re about to get a sweet combo and it’ll chose a pile in the wrong direction and block a space you could’ve used for something else. I wish there was an option to choose which way you wanted it to go, or it used a bit more intelligence to work out what the best combination would be for the player before it started combining them.

The other thing is that apparently every developer has decided that we need a metagame outside of the regular game, so there’s pictures to fill up for some reason. Each level gets you some gems that you then hold a button down to assign to an image. You can’t choose the order that each part is filled up; there’s no option to choose a specific scene that you want to complete. Other than being a complete time-sink, or - since you always have either gems leftover or a couple more percentage points to go - a way to keep those OCDers coming back for more. I don’t see the point in this part of the game at all and really wish it wasn’t there.