We built a simpler Hex Sense: Hex Minesweeper

Hex Sense has been live for some time now, and we have been looking at what players ask us to add next. We noticed two very different types of requests.

Some players finish the chapters and immediately ask for more chapters, levels and new mechanics. We are already working on this and hopefully, early next year we will add more interesting levels to Hex Sense.

But there is another group of players who ask for almost the opposite thing.

They want less. They like the Minesweeper part so much that they don’t really need the story, progression or various different mechanics. They just want to open a board, look at the numbers, use their logic and solve a hexagonal minesweeper puzzle.

So we decided to make exactly that.

Meet Hex Minesweeper

We spent much more time choosing the game name than we are willing to admit. We wanted the name to be as simple as the game itself. And in the end, we just called it Hex Minesweeper.

It is basically the Hex Sense logic without the adventure around it. You start a new game and get a hexagonal grid. You can choose an easy, normal or hard level difficulty and start playing immediately.

The rules are simple. Open safe tiles and avoid the hidden hazards. The numbers tell you how many hazards are located in the tiles around them. Read the clues, combine the information and work out which tiles are safe. That is it. There are no chapters, characters or progression. If you don’t like the board, you can restart it or change the difficulty instantly.

No guessing, just logic

One thing we did not remove from Hex Sense is our no-guessing rule.

In many classic Minesweeper games, you can eventually reach a situation where you have to guess. We don’t like that feeling. In both Hex Sense and our new hexagonal minesweeper game, the board is generated so that the hazards can always be worked out from the information available.

You should solve the puzzle because you understood it, not because you guessed correctly.

We also kept the little angry plant hazard from the first chapter of Hex Sense instead of using bombs. It is still a hazard, but we thought it gave the simple game a little bit of character. We will keep our eye on the feedback for this one. If players complain and ask for the bombs we will change it to bombs. It’s up to the players to decide.

There is one extra clue

There is an interesting difference between classic Minesweeper and a Hex Minesweeper board. On a normal square grid the number on a tile gives you enough information to solve the puzzle successfully. On a hexagonal grid, with the same amount of bombs, if we gave you only the number of surrounding hazards, a puzzle would become much harder to solve than a classic minesweeper one.

So we added one more piece of information. Sometimes you will see a small chain-link symbol underneath the number. It tells you that the hazards around this tile are in adjacent tiles. This makes the puzzle closer to the complexity of classic Minesweeper.

How efficient were you?

When you win, Hex Minesweeper shows you some statistics. One of them is the minimum number of clicks needed to solve that board if you play perfectly. Flags count as moves too. We compare the theoretical minimum with your actual number of moves and calculate your efficiency.

Why we made it

Hex Sense will continue to be our more complete fantasy adventure, with Mochi, chapters, progression and new mechanics. But we also learned that sometimes players don’t want all of that. Sometimes you just want a hexagonal Minesweeper. And if you like Minesweeper, we wanted to give you a clean place to play it on a hexagonal board.

So if you were looking for a simple hexagon minesweeper or simply a new way to enjoy puzzle games, this is for you.

Try Hex Minesweeper and let us know what you think. As always, you can send us your ideas and suggestions on Discord. We are listening and we are already thinking about what we should build next.