Hexius – iPhone App Review

App developer: Phasic Labs
Website: http://www.phasiclabs.com/?p=hexius

If you’re a fan of Puzzle games, particularly Matching puzzle games, you should definitely pick up Hexius. It’s a well designed, interesting and unique game that is suited perfectly to the iPod, and the graphics are great on the iPad.

Before you begin, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you go through the tutorial. I skimmed it, and to be honest, I had to go back and read again. The funny thing is that most people will look at the game board and think “Oh, this is easy, I can do this” thinking it’s a match or swap game, and might get frustrated easily once they keep dying on the first round. OK, so obviously this is what happened to me – but let my failures be a warning – read the tutorial!

Once you’ve done so you’ll realize there are different goals based on the different games. In Level Mode (which is my personal favorite), the goal is to destroy certain targets but combining similar hexagons in a chain series. Once you have the basic concept down, you start to develop some skill when it comes to the order in which you add your hexagons to your chain. Again, all of this information is in the walk-though but since I missed it I felt really smart when I realized that surrounding the targets with your chains also works. But beware, you only have 90 seconds (with extra carried over) for each round.

Strategy Mode lets you practice your scoring by letting you only complete 30 moves. You can try and try again, to beat your score, improve your combos and clear more Hexagons. Finally, Time Attack mode is just that – get the highest score you can within your time limit. There are three different types of “bonus” hexagons which are created under different circumstances, and do three different power, or use. Freeze, Reveal and Bomb.

Online Leaderboards (via OpenFeint) help you keep track of your scores, which is particularly helpful for Time Attack and Strategy Mode. The only issue I had was that once you ‘Game Over’ in Level Mode (say, at Level 6) you have to begin again at Level 1 – there’s no option to save or continue from your level. I suppose this is the challenge, to see how many levels you can beat. But for those of us who like to play our games in short-quick-bursts (say, while waiting in line, or during commercials), I wish I could have a checkpoint to restart from.

This game does have a learning curve, don’t get frustrated in the first few tries, you’ll catch on quick and then it’s much more fun than your everyday run-of-the-mill match-up games. I strongly suggest you try it out! Since it’s a Universal App you can simply buy it once and use on all your iOS Devices, see the links below for iPhone or iPad.

~ChantelleJoy
Tweet Me: @ChantelleJoytwt

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