What new players taught us about Clean! color puzzle game
Some time ago, we already wrote a blog post about our Clean! color puzzle game. Since then, we see that a lot of new players started playing the game, and we even received several requests to add more levels to the game. So we wanted to do a more focused post about it.
In case you don’t know the game at all: Clean! is a color puzzle game where you tap a hex tile and it changes its color together with the connected neighbors of the same color. And when three or more matching tiles touch each other they disappear. The full rules and all the special tiles are in our previous post - how to play Clean!, so we will not repeat them here.
People want harder levels
What surprised us is that as soon as players understood the main idea of the game, a lot of them asked for harder levels. It was unexpected because Clean! started as a calm casual game and we didn’t plan to make it harder. So now because of this feedback we are thinking about doing something bigger with the levels, but we don’t have anything concrete yet, so for now we will keep the level progression and the Daily Challenge as they are.
One move that loses the level
We also noticed that quite a lot of people often lose levels for one single reason. Looks like they don’t know the main trick of the game and the main trick is simple: never leave a group of two tiles or one tile alone.
Before every move check - will this tap leave one or two tiles separated from the main group? If yes then don’t make the move, because two tiles can never become three and the level is already lost at that moment, even if it doesn’t look like it yet.
Of course mistakes are not final. The Undo button takes the game back to the last winnable state, and there is always a possibility to restart the whole level. So there is never a need to replay the game from the start. But for me personally it is very satisfying to finish a level without any undo and without a restart.
You can’t lose by being slow
Also, we get a lot of positive comments about the fact that you can never lose Clean! puzzle by being slow. This is a very relaxing sort of game where you can play the logic puzzle and not worry about a timer, lives, ads popping up or anything else distracting you from just relaxing, meditating, and focusing on matching colors.
Clean! And Hex Sense - same hexagons but different players
Also we noticed that there are completely different groups of people who like the Clean! color puzzle and the Hex Sense - hexagon minesweeper puzzle. Even though both games use hexagon fields, it looks like the vibe from the games is completely different. Clean! is much more relaxing. You match colors. If you make a mistake, it just says “Oh no! You lost this time. Try again or undo your last move.” It’s very colorful. It’s very friendly. It has a lot of bonus levels, which are just colorful pops that require no thinking or strategy and help players to relax and enjoy. While Hex Sense is a hexagonal minesweeper adventure, when you die in the game, it means that you uncovered the tile with some dangerous creature in it - a venomous plant or a scorpion, or something like this. Of course, you can always replay the level, but it looks and feels not as relaxing as a Clean! puzzle.
So if you only tried one of our hexagonal games, maybe try the other one and see which one you would like better.
And tell us in our Discord - which one do you prefer and why?
Written by
Ana