Much like randomly walking around a bookshop, stumbling on a new book you’ve never heard of, and falling in love with it, I adore walking around conventions and stumbling on new board games and video games I have never heard of before. There is something intoxicating to me about discovering something you had no knowledge about just minutes before – almost as if it was blinked into existence right then and there. Back in March at PAX East, a small game made of wood caught my eye and my interest and didn’t let go. That game was Hexopolis, which is currently on Kickstarter.
Designed by Andrew Coeytaux, Hexopolis is an abstract strategy game for two players that gives off a chess-like impression, only with a more artsy flare. Composed of four types of components – the player tokens, stackable tiles, bridge connectors, and connectors that serve as walls – each player’s goal is to either trap the other on a stack of tiles or to pounce on them from a higher stack. The premise is simple to explain, but much like chess, it’s a game that is difficult to master
The game begins a completely open slate each time, with the first player laying the first tile that the rest of the game will expand off from going forward. From there, players take turns laying their tiles to build towers, bridging towers together, or locking them down in a push-and-pull dance that can change at a moment’s notice. More often than not, in the matches I played, a player’s advantage could quickly change hands from one turn to the next, making the games feel tense and exciting. Granted, much of those thrilling moments came after my friends, and I had played some rounds and started forming strategies and seeing the patterns to watch out for. During those early learning games, though, games would be over pretty quickly, thanks to a stupid move or not paying attention.
As someone who enjoys a good chess game now and again, I appreciate the similar depth that Hexopolis offers. I won’t say that it’s as deep as the 1500-year-old game, but seeing strategies and planning moves ahead gave me that similar rewarding feeling in my gut. Right alongside those facepalm-inducing moments of stupidity when you hand over the win after a poorly planned move.
Hexopolis is a game made entirely out of laser-cut wood, which, besides making it smell great (yes, I have on occasion taken a whiff of a board game or two), the burnt wood edges and rustic look make it one of the most unique games in my collection. Hexopolis is a game where a finished match could be confused as an art piece on your coffee table and would be perfectly at home in a trendy coffee shop or in that dimly lit brewery you like to frequent. In an age where the push for sustainability is becoming more prevalent in the board gaming space, Andrew and Hexopolis have taken the idea to the extreme, with the collectors edition of the game even coming in a wooden game box.
For all my praise, just like any game, there are aspects that I found to be more troublesome or lacking. Perhaps the most annoying aspect of Hexopolis comes when you need to use the connectors to link one tower of tiles to another that are varying heights, requiring you to remove tiles to reach the next open connector port – a feat made exponentially more tiresome if the more connectors there are on the tower. This issue is due to the shape of the connectors, which, while making the connections more secure and stable, prevent you from being able to slip them together. As my copy of the game is a prototype and not a final retail release, I would love to see these adjusted slightly to make it easier to use without deconstructing the towers. And then there is the underlying fear of breaking a piece I have, begging the question of how resilient the all-wooden components are.
Hexopolis is one of those games I am thrilled to have among my board game collection and one I would happily have on my coffee table (if I didn’t have a grabby 9-month-old that would LOVE to taste all the pieces). It’s a game that will only become more enjoyable as I play and devise new strategies, and I look forward to bringing it to my local drinking hole to play with my friends. For fans of other 2-player strategy games, Hexopolis is worth your eyes.
Hexopolis is available on Kickstarter, which has already met its funding goal!
