This series is criminally overlooked.

After the simple breeze through Hexcells in comparison, Hexcells Plus dialed up the difficulty significantly. This installment is where the rubber met the road for me.

If you enjoy games like sudoku, you will find logical puzzles here that work your brain for hours. While a naive comparison, the game plays similarly to a very advanced Minesweeper. By the second act, though, you'll have discovered the futility of that comparison; this game is on an entirely different level and has an elegance in the solutions that random Minesweeper puzzles cannot ever hope to achieve.

A couple of the puzzles stumped me for more than an hour, and my roommate rapidly grew tired of me talking the solution out loud as I moved my mouse around. There's a brilliant simplicity to the gameplay and yet, while playing, one must keep a large amount of logic in their head. It's easy to get overwhelmed by logic in one area of the puzzle while overlooking the simple move forward in another area, and the feeling is intense when you slap your forehead in stupidity on discovering it.

The soundtrack is quite relaxing, and even after working on the same puzzle for an hour it did not grow tiresome. It's really fun when you get on a "roll" of solving the puzzle, too, because you generate little ditties as a reward.

The entire Hexcells series contains puzzles that are among the greatest I've ever solved. I highly recommend the entire collection, and also very strongly recommend that you start with Hexcells. It is easier than the other two, this one included, by far. For perspective, I am not the greatest logician, and I invested about 15 hours solving this campaign -- for 15 hours of gameplay, this game is a steal.

This series is criminally overlooked. After the simple breeze through Hexcells in comparison, Hexcells Plus dialed up the difficulty significantly. This installment is where the rubber met the road for me. If you enjoy games like sudoku, you will find logical puzzles here that work your brain for hours. While a naive comparison, the game plays similarly to a very advanced Minesweeper. By the second act, though, you'll have discovered the futility of that comparison; this game is on an entirely different level and has an elegance in the solutions that random Minesweeper puzzles cannot ever hope to achieve. A couple of the puzzles stumped me for more than an hour, and my roommate rapidly grew tired of me talking the solution out loud as I moved my mouse around. There's a brilliant simplicity to the gameplay and yet, while playing, one must keep a large amount of logic in their head. It's easy to get overwhelmed by logic in one area of the puzzle while overlooking the simple move forward in another area, and the feeling is intense when you slap your forehead in stupidity on discovering it. The soundtrack is quite relaxing, and even after working on the same puzzle for an hour it did not grow tiresome. It's really fun when you get on a "roll" of solving the puzzle, too, because you generate little ditties as a reward. The entire Hexcells series contains puzzles that are among the greatest I've ever solved. I highly recommend the entire collection, and also very strongly recommend that you start with Hexcells. It is easier than the other two, this one included, by far. For perspective, I am not the greatest logician, and I invested about 15 hours solving this campaign -- for 15 hours of gameplay, this game is a steal.