Art Style: Rotohex review

Formerly known as Dialhex on the GBA, this was one of the Bit Generations series of experimental games – so experimental that back then it didn’t even include a proper scoring mode. A puzzle game without a high score table? Hmm… Now it has high scores, sort of, but the gameplay is the same and it’s still some way short of greatness. You move a hexagonal cursor around the screen, rotate it and try to make the triangular segments inside match up. Easy when you’ve just got two colors, head-burstingly tough when you’ve got four or more. It goes all the way up to eight but we’ll never get that far.

While it looks a bit better than it did on GBA, there’s still a certain something missing – a tactile element, perhaps, as making the hexagons vanish just isn’t very satisfying. There are no explosions, the pieces don’t clunk into place, and your only reward is even more little triangles tumbling into the play area. The default controls use the D-pad but it’s a bit more exciting with the pointer.

There’s a two- player mode where competitors share a pair of overlapping playfields, and an endless mode where you have to keep making hexagons of a specific color. That one has a high score table, although you have to play a game of it and lose before you can see it. Beating the solo mode unlocks Sprint mode, which is more of the same. For just 600 points this is worth a look if you want a puzzle game that’s quirky, unusual, very difficult and not all that rewarding to play. Um, is that what you want?

Apr 24, 2009