Tess Elated
Inspired by Minesweeper but unlike anything you’ve tried, Tess Elated is fresh and inspiring.
The vibrant and diverse cast of characters makes the story both interesting and rewarding with plenty of laughs.
With a colorful and fun art style and a joyful soundtrack, the game is sure to keep your interest.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hex Grid Female Protagonist Games.
“Tess Elated” is nothing new. In fact, it’s a direct copy of “Cavesweeper”. Also it’s NOT a logic puzzle as they claim, because it requires guesswork. A logic puzzle never requires any guessing, only logic. The game has no instructions or a way to skip the long repetitious dialogues between levels. The Medium and Hard modes use three and four colors, so you will spend most of your time guessing, unlike Minesweeper which inspired it. Also, the Achievements are broken.
– Real player with 3.0 hrs in game
Hexanome
I did not enjoy this successor nearly as much as Hexa Turn - gave up on it before finishing, actually. What frustrated me was that after a few levels, I was mostly trying out paths blindly instead of puzzling them out or planning them in advance, and the game became a chore with one obscure exact path to follow that was never obvious or solvable, at least for me. The game starts out too easy and becomes too difficult later. Your experience might vary… So this is actually closer to “I didn’t like it” than a non-recommendation. Absolutely get Hex Turn, however - that one is brilliant.
– Real player with 21.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hex Grid Turn-Based Games.
nice puzzle game with a few difficult levels. would recommend.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Hexa Turn
This is not a game, exactly it’s a series because wonderkid development had launched the reverse version of it on 11th December, 2018. I had played many elegant puzzle games, such as kensho is good at immersing players in the nature music’s vide, superliminal is good at breaking the normal thinking, macdows 95 is good at getting surprises to players, etc. Obviously, this one still make a deep impression for me, why?
The answer is it’s good at creating the creative mechanic.
Charming and tricky mechanics makes wonderful levels
– Real player with 17.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hex Grid Minimalist Games.
This is a well paced strategy game by people who obviously enjoy them too. Simple in its design, it takes little time to understand the mechanics despite using it’s own symbolic language with no native language prompting. It was boringly easy for me in the first tier, in the second I had to try a few times on a few, and by the 3rd tier I couldn’t stay awake (thankfully I didn’t fall asleep at the desk; just woke up with a mouse in my bed).
Great game I introduced my father to the next day while cooking dinner; and then…
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game
Hexxon
Nice puzzle. Seems easy, but can be challenging)
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
I love this game! I am an avid puzzler, and for me this is on par with solitaire and sudoku, however I have never seen a game like this before. Engaging to play on it’s own, or while listening to books or podcasts!
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Steam: Rails to Riches
Would I recommend this game? Perhaps, but if it has to be a binary answer, I tend to say “no”. Once you figured out how to play this game, it is some fun if you like strategic board games. But the in-game tutorial wasn’t any helpful to me. In the end, I watched a video on YouTube explaining the physical edition of this game, and figured out the rest by observing the AI and trying out stuff, taking a couple hours untill I finally knew what I’m doing.
There are also some glitches. Rotating track pieces, or changing the piece after you accidentaly picked the wrong one, feels quite clumsy. Undoing an action requires redoing the whole phase. You cannot always zoom out, which is in particular a problem when moving goods. If you accidentally attempt to do an illegal move a warning pops up and you have to wait until it disappears by itself, which is quite annoying. Some elements (like the action cards) are unnecesserily small, so unless you know where you have to click, you don’t have an idea what you are doing (in particular when playing from the couch).
– Real player with 23.0 hrs in game
Some of the physical map expansions don’t seem available (yet? ever?) but it’s a good implementation of the boardgame. Fully cross-compatible between Steam and iOS – I’ve had two games going at a time for a while, and I can play my turns on either platform. Game servers have had a tendency to randomly go down on occasion during my several weeks playing so far, but only delays playing for some hours or overnight. Touch play on iOS phones can be a little finicky in dragging and dropping hexes; the undo button can certainly be your friend! Animations could use an option to speed up. (UPDATE CORRECTION: such an option already exists under the options menu, and the fastest version is handy for me.) I’ve turned off the repetitous and somewhat shrill sfx.
– Real player with 16.3 hrs in game
Hexcells Infinite
The Hexcells series (Hexcells, Hexcells Plus and now Hexcells Infinite) has been an incremental polishing of a strong concept. The game base mechanics feel like a mix between Sudoku and the old Microsoft Minesweeper.
One difference should be pointed out, though: Sometimes in Minesweeper, you would end up having to guess, because with the information available to you, there were more than one possible solution. Not so in Hexcells. There’s always enough info to get you one step further. You just have to be able to process the information properly. Don’t get me wrong - there are times when I’ve been completely stuck. Some of the later pre-made levels are monstrously tough to do flawlessly. The fact that you know it’s all down to you and your abilities though, makes it more of a challenge and less frustrating.
– Real player with 558.9 hrs in game
After 20 (oops, 100 now) hours of gameplay, I have completed the game, made more than 5 levels in the level editor, and won +100 randomly generated levels, and perfected every single level (the other hours are there because someone else is playing on slot 2), all I can say: this game is one of the best puzzle games i’ve played.
Remember when you thought that Hexcells Plus was hard? Ha, Hexcells Infinite just laughs at that.
The puzzles are so well made and most of the time you’ll stare at your screen for a good 10 minutes until you see what you have to do for the next step, and often it turns out to be the most simple thing, the game hides its clues very well in the least obvious way possible, so I really recommend playing the first two games before this one to get you ready, but before you do that, i’ll let you know, that no matter what, there is no need to guess in all of the Hexcells games at all, so try to think twice before you make your next move!
– Real player with 263.0 hrs in game
Hexcells Plus
Hexcells Plus is a great puzzle game, and a great continuation of the first Hexcells game. Much like the first game, the base mechanic is that tiles are either marked blue or give a number representing the number of blue tiles adjacent to them, somewhat similar to minesweeper. But the game takes that base mechanic, adds a few other basic mechanics (number of blue in a column, marking that some need to be consequtive, having some ‘?’ tiles), and builds it into a wonderfully satisfying and relaxing puzzle game. The music is ambient, and actions taken in game generate tones that go with the music as well. All puzzles can be solved without guessing and have a single solution, so when playing, I find it most enjoyable to take my time and only take action when I know it is correct.
– Real player with 16.9 hrs in game
Much like the original Hexcells, Hexcells Plus is an updated version of the classic strategy game Minesweeper with a bit of added style: you play with hexagons instead of squares. The board starts with an oddly shaped field made of orange hexagons. Mines are marked by left-clicking a hexagon, turning it blue. Hexagons are revealed by right-clicking, showing the number underneath if you click correctly and shaking the piece and adding a tally mark to your mistake count if you’re too hasty in your decisions.
– Real player with 14.8 hrs in game
Braveland
I recommend this game. Yes, it is a watered-down version of ‘Heroes of Might and Magic,". . . but I really like Heroes of Might and Magic. Certainly the mechanics are familiar to anyone who has played HoMM or Kings Bounty: you fight turn-based battles while continuously leveling up your General and moving your troops around. It is faithful to HoMM-1 in that you have 4 stats on your General and those 4 stats also beef up your troops. It is more like the original Kings Bounty (the one from around 1990, not the current series) in that you just move around one single General, stopping at taverns to replenish your troops. You don’t have to worry about conquering gold mines or garrisoning castles. Think of this as a single scenario map, and decide for yourself it you want to try it. It has a free Demo if you’re not sure. Personally I had a blast playing it, and I got many hours of playtime out of it. And I still haven’t tried it at the Hard difficulty.
– Real player with 22.8 hrs in game
Small cartoonized game based on hard soil of “King’s Bounty” and “Heroes of Might and Magic” and originally made for smartphones. Contains easy short linear campaign for wanna-be-knight with “they burned my village” motivation… and sometimes-challenging survival mode.
Hire some peasants, then some archers and magicians, move on on the map with turn-based combats similar to the elders of the genre I’ve mentioned already… Yes, grids, some very basic tactics of shooting the melee fighters and melee enemy shooters… You’ll get the drill very quickly, even if you weren’t familiar with it.
– Real player with 17.0 hrs in game
Braveland Pirate
Braveland Pirate is the third and last game of the Braveland trilogy. The three storylines aren’t related, so you can play them in any order. However, I would recommend to play them as they are supposed to be ( Braveland = Wizard = Pirate ). Keep the best for the end : Pirate is, in my opinion, the most entertaining and enjoyable game of the series.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=650674317
– Real player with 30.7 hrs in game
I really enjoyed the first braveland, I skipped the second one after hearing it sucked and then I decided to give the third one a chance seeing how it got positive receiption here on Steam.
You should take this recommendation as somewhere between a half recommend and a full recommend.
So here we go for the pros and cons.
-
Pro
-
The new pirate units you get all have different abilities from the units from the first game, giving the combat a new coat of paint from the first game.
-
Open world. Instead of having to play battles in a certain order you’re more open to choose a different battle instead.
– Real player with 23.7 hrs in game
Braveland Wizard
Braveland Wizard is a turn-based strategy game with three difficulty levels, in which you have to manage your units (moves, abilities…), your equipment, spells and skill tree. The game is linear but entertaining with a cartoon style design and a nice background music.
Wizard is the second game of the Braveland trilogy. The three storylines are not related, so you can play them in any order. However, I would recommend to start with the first Braveland , which is better than the second one in my opinion, so you can familiarize with the game system and the different types of units. Plus, you’ll be able to answer some questions in game at some point.
– Real player with 30.1 hrs in game
I found the first Braveland as passable, so given how I love to punish myself, I actually gave part II a shot as well. Unfortunately I think it is even worst than the original. 3/10 (some repeats from my original review since it appears as though they kept the engine and just swapped in some new units)
Pros: nice graphics and pretty easy to pick out, this game reviews well so I won’t elaborate too much here.
Cons:
- The PC price discrimination: Pricing in this game is especially egregious - It is $1 on google/apple store and $7 on Steam. Oh wait, right now it is “on sale” for $3. Wow. Price gouging to the max. DO NOT SUPPORT THIS AS A PC GAMER.
– Real player with 26.3 hrs in game