One Down, Hundreds To Go

Let’s face it, I’m never going to play every single one of the games I own on Steam. A lot came from bundles where I wanted some of the games but had absolutely no interest in others. I could have just not redeemed them, but where’s the fun in that? I guess I’m somewhat a sort of hoarder of digital games.

Having just gone through all of my “never played” games and marking a lot of them as “won’t play”, I’m kinda surprised to see just how many games I own that I don’t ever intend to play (or have given up with). More than half of them! I think I have a problem…

I am hoping that this site will motivate me to play through a few of the games that I do actually intend to play though! I’ve also been through my Steam library and categorised all of the games on there, which takes away any excuses about never being able to decide what I want to play. Everything is so organised. Now, on to actually playing them…

The Hexcells Series

• Hexcells
  

  2 hours playtime

  5 of 6 achievements

• Hexcells Plus
  

  10 hours playtime

  5 of 6 achievements

• Hexcells Infinite
  

  9 hours playtime

  5 of 7 achievements

I got these games a long, long time ago when they were on sale sometime. After trying the first one, loving it, and promptly never playing it again (…until I did), they sat in my Steam library along with all of the other poor, unplayed games. That is, until these past couple of weeks.

Hexcells is kinda like a cross between picross and minesweeper. The aim of the game is to determine which cells are blue and which cells are not, using various clues (numbers). It sounds simple, but the harder puzzles can take hours and hours to solve. These games are definitely not for people who don’t like to think!

The first and second games, Hexcells and Hexcells Plus both have a set number of levels for you to solve and then you’re done with the game. The achievements come from unlocking each “set” of puzzles, with a final achievement for completing all of the puzzles perfectly. I don’t particularly care about achievements anyway, but I feel like replaying puzzles just to do it without making any mistakes takes a lot of fun out of it, especially if you’ve already solved the puzzle. I end up trying to remember where everything is rather than actually solving it. For this reason, I doubt I’ll ever get those two achievements.

The third and final game, Hexcells Infinite, follows the same format but with the addition of an infinite level generator. I believe it’s also possible to create your own puzzles (I’ve seen ones claiming to be ridiculously hard and taking tens of hours to solve, however I haven’t explored those yet). I finished playing through the set levels today, and I really had fun with the later stages. One of the puzzles had me staring at it for probably 20 minutes before I even worked out how to start the puzzle.

Overall they’re certainly worth playing if you like this sort of game, but they’re definitely not for everyone. There’s a game made by the same people called SquareCells that looks very similar to plain old picross. Although I’m on this site to attempt to play through the games I already own, I really want to play SquareCells now I’m done with Hexcells.

So What’s Next?

That’s a good question.

• Everyday Genius: SquareLogic
  

  43 hours playtime

  16 of 24 achievements

• Picross Touch
  

  55 minutes playtime

  no achievements

I’m still in the mood for puzzle kinda games, and I’ve at least started playing Everyday Genius: SquareLogic and Picross Touch, so perhaps one of those would be a good contender for the next game I play. I’m sure I own many puzzle games I can’t even remember hearing of though, so who knows…