iPhone Hexcells (by Matthew Brown)

I'm really enjoying this puzzle app, but I wish it saved partially-played games!

Pinch-to-zoom would also be nice. The hexes are pretty small targets on an iPad Mini.

 

If you make more than one mistake you won't earn all the hexes for a puzzle. Every puzzle is meant to be solved without any guessing so I guess this is kind of a precaution against that.

 

The difference is subtle, but I think the levels with mistakes are the ones that are coloured flat blue rather than having gloss on them.

 

As someone who loves both Minesweeper and Picross, I found this one a lot of fun. My main complaint is that it is so short. It took me about an hour and a half to complete all of the puzzles. I know there are others in the series but I expected more out of this.

My other complaint is that the column numbers cross gaps. Even with the guideline it is hard to follow, 6-3 was particularly bad.

Overall though, highly recommended if you like these kinds of puzzles.

 

A previous mentioned that Hexcells Infinite has a lot of levels, are they procedurally generated?

 

Hey y2kmp3, Hexcells Infinite has a campaign and an 'infinite' mode. The campaign has 36 hand designed tricky levels. The infinite mode has procedurally generated levels.
So it's just like any other game in the Hexcells series, PLUS the procedural generation.

 

Thanks, TheGreatEscaper. Another great recommendation from you!

In Hexcells Plus and Hexcells Infinite but not the original Hexcells, there is a little toggle at the bottom left corner of the screen. What does it do? The icon looks as if it enables or disables the gridlines or some other graphics effect, but I can't see any difference at all between on & off. Just curious.

 

It doesn't affect the guidelines on the column/diagonal headers. It only affects the presentation when you expand a blue hexagon with a number inside.


When the borders of this icon is off, the surrounding 2 hex radius will glow between a more translucent white to a less translucent white. At the edge of the large glowing white hexagon, there is no border (as the icon suggests).


When the borders of this icon is on, then the surrounding 2 hex radius stays a constant low translucent white. There are borders at the edge of this large white hexagon though, as the icon suggests.


Now that I tested this, I think I would prefer no borders.

 

For those who are newer to the Hexcells trilogy, here's a few advanced tatics to help you solve harder puzzles. Imo, the main tatic can be summarized into:

Assumption Theory
Here you try to assume that a hex is blue or black. Then working fron that assumption, there should ideally be a chain of "solvable" hexes using that only assumption. Bear in mind you have to assume any cleared hexes you make in your chain of assumptions give no clue (I.e. give you a ? instead of a number). The purpose of this method is to usually DISPROVE the assumption. If the chain stops and you find it that it seems to be a viable solution, DO NOT assume it's the solution. It's just a possibility. What if there's an alternative? If you prove the assumption is wrong, then it is wrong, it can't be correct, so do the opposite of the assumption (e.g you assumed a hex was blue and proved it wrong, so clear it away).

The extension of this method would be:
Scenario Commonality
In this method, you try to find all the cases that are possible. It's like making multiple assumptions. However, in each case, you would find for common states of the hexes involved in the chain of assumptions. Sometimes you would find some hexes that are common in all possible scenarios laid out. Mark or clear them as such.

This leads to:
Grouping of hexes
Within a certain group of hexes, you can identify how many of the hexes must be cleared away and marked. For example, in a group of 3 hexes, you identified 2 hexes to be marked, and 1 to be cleared away. This is useful for checking column/diagonal headers or blue expandable hexes.

Surprisingly, many of the rather basic tatics turn their roots back to these advanced tatics. For example,

You know that in a consecutive partial ring or column/diagonal that has given you the clue that the hexes are continuous (e.g. {4} ), you can count the number of hexes from the first hex in consecutive order and when you counted the last hex, mark that one and some others behind it until there is an equal amount of orange hexes left on both sides. This actually uses the tatic Scenario Commonality.


Also, given the clue that not all hexes are consecutive (e.g. -3-), and there is only one more hex than the given number clue and all these orange hexes are consecutive (e.g. 4 orange consecutive hexes), you can mark the first and last hexes. Also, if there is only one hex that is alone (given the same scenario of just one more orange hexes than the number given), separated by cleared hex(es), you can mark that lonely hex. This uses Assumption Theory, as if you attempt to assume the first or last hex (or the lonely hex) is black, then the other hexes are consecutive and this would violate the rule of the clue given.

Even the most basic playing sort of uses Assumption Theory. When marking/clearing the remaining hexes in a column/diagonal or in a partial ring, if you attempted to assume any of the remaining hexes are the opposite, this would violate the rule of the column/diagonal headers or the partial ring number as this would be too little or too many marked hexes in it respectively.

Also, when finding the next spot to solve when getting stuck (or just starting the puzzle), always look for numbers (column/diagonal headers or blue hexagon numbers) that are very big or very small. Anything in the middle is too hard to work with. When looking for very big numbers, you can reduce it to its opposite, very small, by looking at a different perspective: the number of cleared hexes.

And don't forget, when you are down to less than around 7 hexes left to mark, keep the Remaining counter in mind! Harder puzzles like to use this counter.

There are definitely better explanations for some methods, so feel free to share.

 

Awesome, Light Rock! Thanks for the explanation. This makes sense to explain why the option is not available in the original Hexcells, since this particular mechanic is used only in the sequels.

 

This may have been asked before, but I didn’t see it asked...

Is there going to be an iPhone version available?

 

An interesting tutorial is available at ...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=320523083