Hello everyone,
My name is Tim, along with two friends, I created a puzzle game called: Multihex! In this post, I would like to share some details about the game and the design process. But first a small explanation about how the game is played.
The rules are simple: place a colored hexagonal cell on a grid. Each placed cell counts as a move. Once you are out of moves, the cells start spreading around the grid. When they can not spread any further, the cells are counted. If you have the right amount of each color, the puzzle is solved!
I came up with the game while sitting in my garden, watching the dandelions that had sprouted in some inventive places. Dandelions produce seeds which are carried by the wind, to bloom somewhere else. This way, one flower could spread along the whole garden. I tried to turn this concept into a game: place a flower on a grid and watch it spread!
While the flower idea withered during the development process of the game for a more minimalist art style, the spreading remained. The first problem encountered, was when two cells wanted to spread to the the same cell. To solve this, the colors were given meaning. Each color was given a priority according to the rainbow, red for example would always get the cell, while violet would always give it away.
At first, each cell would spread in all six directions on the grid, creating a kind of circle in the process. This did not provide many interesting puzzles, which led to the introduction of patterns on the cell. The patterns would show if the cell would spread in a circle, or perhaps a line or triangle.
After a few months of working and testing, the game is now fully released for free on android devices! A demo including the first few puzzles is also available on this site:
https://mastermoni.itch.io/multihex-demo
I hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it!
