RANDOM GAME # 1
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How can such a simple game be so hard to rate? Hexxagon 2 feels like
reviewing chess. Not a specific chess-game, mind you, but the broad concept of
"chess". It's too generic to grasp, and too dependent on two-player
entertainment for an honest opinion. To be enjoyable, you and your opponent need to be on the same wavelength. You both need to enjoy the simple strategy of the game. It's like a tool that can unlock
hours of fun-in-competition, and the review score depends upon the resulting situation rather
than the game itself.
Too bad, then, that I only played against the AI-opponent, the light bulb
Craniac, who was kinda nondescript.
This was how games were percieved in the dawn of computer entertainment, before all their possibilities were apparent.
I'm talking the 1970:s - which was before I was born - when advanced games were like Pong and the rest were plain conversions of Backgammon and Tic-Tac-Toe. Simply put, they were just digitized board games. By 1993 such titles were commercially no longer a
thing. The medium had evolved into more sophistication and found its own mechanics, niches and genres, for better or worse. And yet, here came the shareware release Hexxagon 2 - a good board game concept in need of more videogame.
The setup and rules are a little like Chinese Checkers combined with Othello. You and the AI-controlled opponent, or a
friend, compete over the domination of the game board. The board is divided
into a number of hexagonal tiles. One of you controls a spreading virus, the
other controls the medicine that tries to stop it. The game ships with an
editor, allowing you to set up the board to your liking, by adding and removing tiles, or
forcing one player to start with a handicap.
You take turns either cloning one of your game pieces into an adjacent
hexagonal, or moving a piece by jumping two steps away. If you land next to
one or more hexagonals controlled by your opponent, those pieces are converted
to your side. When the entire board is full, the one with the most player
pieces wins the game.
The strategy lies in determining whether to clone or jump. The former is a
solid, slow way to spread your domain, whereas jumping might change the tide completely by converting a maximum of
six opposing pieces in a single move. But by jumping, you also leave a hole behind, which might
cause an opening for the opponent, resulting in an avalanche of unwanted side effects down the line.
I couldn't tell you if this neat idea is based on some pre-existing board game
or if it is the original invention of designers Jason Blochowiak and
Abraham Edlin. I have never seen the game in any physical board game
format. All that I can say for sure is that the infamous
microscope puzzle
from the CD-ROM classic The 7th Guest (1993, which makes it
contemporary with Hexxagon 2) seems inspired by the same concept. But where
the microscope puzzle uses a square-based board, Hexxagon 2 utilizes
mind-bending hexagons.
Let me summarize my experience with the game: The first match I lost against
the easiest AI, but I won the re-match. So for the third one I switched to a
normal AI-opponent - and won. I tried the hardest AI-setting, but abandoned
the match because after about only seven or eight rounds, the Crainiac started
taking as long as 1:45 minutes to calculate its next move (I kid you not - I
actually timed it).
I suppose the hardest AI uses some sort of algorithm to determine the best
possible move out of every situation, which is why it eventually starts taking so long.
Upon returning to the game a little later, I remembered that DosBox (the emulator I used to get
the game running) has a built-in ability to speed up the CPU cycle, which made
even the hard mode bearable. And the AI simply whooped my ass in a game that
still took too long for my liking.
I returned today for a couple of matches against the normal AI. I lost the
first and won the second. I could keep at it, and maybe try out new board
settings, or try to beat the hard mode, but what's the point? This kind of
board game is not meant for solo players. It's meant to be shared. It's made
for jolly competition, laughs and raging fits; of beating an acquaintance you
secretly can't stand or cheering along in the hard-earned victory of someone who's in
dire need of some positivity in their life.
In all its clean simplicity, the concept of Hexxagon 2 is kinda brilliant, but my very brief time with it was not. The sluggishness of the hard AI-setting is disappointing. The easy and normal modes are underwhelming. But worst of all
is the lack of engaging single-player content. The AI might offer some fair
challenge for a few matches, but whatever your reaction to winning or losing,
no one is there to share it. And with no one to interact with, whatever happens is lost in the ether.
[UPDATE 2022-02-05]:
I did some more research and found out about the game's heritage. Apparently, the core idea originated in the Capcom arcade game Ataxx, which first saw the light of day in 1990. You can read more about it on its Wikipedia page.
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