Review: Hexter
Score:
69%
Hexter is a great little strategy game for your Windows Phone. Based on capturing enemy pieces to either wipe them out or, more likely, end the game with the most territory, Hexter is fast moving, quick to play, and requires a significant amount of concentration while playing. That's probably why I like it.
Version Reviewed: 1.0.0.0
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Built on a small hexagonal gird of hexes (the clue, naturally, being in the name), the turn-based game offers you two types of move. You can either create a new piece in any hex that you occupy, or you can jump one piece to a hex two spaces away. Capturing an opponent's pieces is an automatic process - when you have a piece appear next to them after either of the above moves, adjoining hexes with pieces will all belong to you.
This is a simple touch interface to the game, just tap the piece you want to play with, and then tap either one hex away to create, or two hexes to jump, the app will work out what you want to do.
You have have two ways of playing the game. The first is 'Story' mode, which has a few nice level names to give you a taste of doing something, but will step you through a mix of level design and AI levels taking you from a game setup that is 'hard' through 'impossible' to 'you really need to be a ninja'. Hexter is an easy game to understand, but it's not an easy game to win.
The second mode is the 'Versus' mode, which allows you to set up your own specific game, with six board layouts to choose from, as well as your opponents - Hexter is either a two or three player game, and your opponents can be human (so you can play in a local 'pass it around' mode), or one of three strengths of computer AI.
The AI is pretty horrifically good - I suspect that the skill level determines how many moves ahead the decision tree is drawn - there are a lot of moves if you predict everything three moves ahead (but not as many as chess) so a brute force AI is the easiest to implement. Certainly it slows down as more pieces are on the game board, giving more permutations to work through, and this 'thinking time' does make the AI feel more human... Albeit a human who's really really good at Hexter.
The one upsetting thing about Hexter is not the difficulty level, this is one style of game where I relish the challenge - because I get to play first, perfect play should allow me to win. I just need to work out what perfect play actually means. The upset is over the font of choice. It just feels a really strange stylistic choice to go with the font from the TV series Bewitched...
I like Hexter, and I realise that a lot of people are going to be put off by a small board game where it is really difficult to win against the computer AI once or twice, let alone consistently, so that you can progress through the Story mode. It's clearly an acquired taste, but one you can sample for free (the title is ad-supported) and see if you enjoy it as much as I do.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at