Hextacy

When it comes to puzzle games, simplicity can be key.

You can tack on bells and whistles, but if the core gameplay isn't fun and easy to understand then you've tacked on bells and whistles that nobody wants to ring or blow.

Hextacy doesn’t bother employing decorations to hide its simple premise because it doesn’t have to - the gameplay speaks for itself.

The basic premise of Hextacy is that hexagons are dropping onto the playing board and you need to drag a line through three or more connected hexagons of the same color.

Once you clear your matches and run out of matching colours, more tiles will drop onto the playing board, greying out the previously dropped pieces.

These grey pieces alternate from turn to turn, meaning that those that were left two drops previously suddenly come back into play. It’s a clever mechanic that feels fresh.

Normal mode adds in power-ups, such as a vertical line-clearing block and the disappearing tile that can pull you out of a tight corner, while Pure removes said crutches altogether, relying solely on colour matching.

Lastly there's a Hardcore mode, where you can only match three blocks at a time, forcing you to plan ahead.

There are a couple of niggles that keep Hextacy from greatness. For one, once you start dragging lines you can't move your finger back and choose a different route.

This is often a score-killer if you suddenly change your mind mid-move, which can happen a lot once the board begins to fill.

And the board itself is also a little too small. Once you have two ‘layers’ of greyed-out hexes, it’s often too hard to properly recover - a little more room would have really allowed the mechanic to shine at its fullest.

A bigger board would have made Hextacy an essential download, but even without it's a solid, addictive puzzler and well worth a download.