Hexxagon Labs

Video games can be startling things. Most, from Manhunt to Mario, are basically sequences of murders, and those that aren't are like firework displays, filled with colour and noise. They are, in the words of the inexplicable Boris Johnson, "blasted gizmos." What's more, we play them with our "passive faces washed in explosions and gore."

In other words, they're bloody fantastic.

Still, just as people who live in London are inordinately inclined to visit the countryside, one occasionally craves a respite from the bloodshed, and HeroCraft's Symbian title Hexxagon Labs is like a weekend away in a quiet university town, where nobody dies and all is bathed in serenity and cleverness.

Before getting into all that, though, what's this funny new word 'Symbian'? Well, a Symbian game is typically bigger and better-looking than the usual J2ME games that you play on your phone (assuming you're in the UK, that is), but it'll only run on a range of Nokia handsets. So be warned: if you don't have an N-series Nokia, the glowing praise that follows will only serve to enrage you.

Back to the game. The quickest way to explain Hexxagon Labs is with the term 'Othello, but hexagonal.' If you don't know the rules of Othello, please feel free to read the following and then apply the term, 'like Hexxagon Labs, but square'.

The basic principle is to copy or move hexagonal 'cells' on a grid. In each level you have one or two opponents, represented by cells of different colours (first red, then blue) and the aim is for the majority of cells to be painted in your own green hue when the grid fills.

You take turns to move, and if you land in contact with one or more enemy cells, they turn green. Likewise, yours turn red or blue if an enemy lands in a neighbouring space. With each turn, you can either move one or two places. If you move one, you make a copy of yourself, so that the cell you're moving stays green. If you move two, you leave an empty cell behind.

That's it. There are 20 different grids in the single-player Progress mode, 17 of which become available in Arcade mode once you've beaten them, but aside from that there are no other rules or conditions to describe.

And yet, to describe the myriad nuances of gameplay that this fiendishly simply rule-set generates would take pages. Like chess, there's absolutely no chance of any two games turning out the same. You'll fumble through it, changing the colour of the cells around only to have the smile wiped from your face as the computer does the same right back to you, but better. The principles of the game seem oblique.

Then, after a while, you'll learn to see when you're on the back foot, what a good configuration looks like, and so on. You'll learn when to sit back and let AI opponents annihilate one another and when to intervene before one of them emerges as too powerful a victor. You'll start thinking several moves ahead, and each victory will become hugely gratifying.

All of this from a couple of rules and a grid of hexagons. Like John Conway's scientifically valuable Game of Life, Hexxagon Labs throws up surprising complexity from basic ingredients.

It's one hell of a puzzle game, and the presentation does the gameplay justice. There are no explosions, no bell-ringing bonuses, no garish colours. It looks impeccable, but never showy.

It's a puzzler for grown-ups, a haven of quiet cleverness where facts like 'Light would take 13 seconds to travel around the earth' and 'The average iceberg weighs 20,000,000 tonnes' are urbanely imparted between levels, as though by promenading dons in conversation.

You can even share this sanctuary with a friend, playing one-on-one or two against the computer in the Hotseat mode.

There are minor niggles. The 20 levels (17 really, since three are tutorials) don't really feel like enough, and the controls are imprecise, so that you sometimes have to scroll about with the directional keys looking for a way to land on the cell you're aiming for.

But these faults are just as negligible as they sound, and barely worth mentioning. If you're a fan of puzzle games and you own an N-series Nokia phone, download Hexxagon Labs now.