hexceed - Animo Pack DLC

Too much waiting, no dedicated time stop button

Filled with several levels and interesting mechanics with the rotating hexes; and at a dollar a pop, this is a dlc everyone should be getting

I do agree with the other reviews that the rotation mechanic breaks up the flow of gameplay in an unsatisfying way, with the timer lasting far too long per rotation to make it feel fun to play with. Oftentimes you'll end up lost in the bigger puzzles because you miss a few of the rotations on rotate hexes you forget about. It's an interesting mechanic that's poorly executed. What the other reviews miss, however, is the complexity in these puzzles that's missing almost entirely in any of the puzzles in the base game, or in the first DLC. Many of the puzzles in the first 6 worlds include step after step of one-note, simple solutions with swathes of 0's all across the map, allowing you to clear half the board without having to think much at all. The solutions typically involve 1, maybe 2 overlapping mechanics where the challenge comes more from finding the hexes necessary to solve the step in the massive map than deducing which hexes should and shouldn't be marked. These initial worlds are conducive to a casual, few-levels-over-coffee play experience and not much more. Much alike Hexcells, this new world in Hexceed utilizes multiple, overlapping mechanics through every step of each puzzle to ramp up the challenge. Some of the levels can take upwards of 30 minutes, if not longer to beat. Sure, there are exceptions, and part of the time sink does indeed come from needing to wait for the timer to complete so you can look at the next area covered by a hex. Still, the puzzles are so large with so many moving parts that there isn't really much need to sit and wait. There is always something to be doing. On top of this, there are enough puzzles here to make up an entire Hexcells game, and this is just one DLC pack! As mentioned before, there's a timer included in this pack alongside the rotation mechanic. Every time it fills a bar up completely, it flips each rotation hex to its next state. It's an idea new to Hex games and it's a rather creative addition. Used in combination with the rotation mechanic, it has the potential to lock away different parts of the puzzle for short periods of time, forcing you to focus on specific bits until the bar fills up and the hexes flip again. Unfortunately, it isn't always utilized this way, oftentimes only being used to give you incremental parts of a solution. If this mechanic makes a return, I'd love to see it used a bit more creatively. Having it lock the player's attention to given parts of the puzzle at different times would be a satisfying use of the mechanic. It could allow for some puzzles to play around with the player's focus, adding a layer of complexity existent outside of the game itself. It could also give each puzzle an opportunity to refresh the player's attention as they spend more and more time with it, forcing the player to view it from a new perspective every 15-30 seconds. All in all, I'd say this DLC pack is worth it. The pack itself is still high quality, despite some poor execution. The added complexity in the puzzles alone makes it easily worth the $.99. Plus, it's a cheap way to support the developer that's clearly put an immense amount of work into the base game and both of these first two DLC packs.

I get the intent of this mechanic, and it does make for some interesting puzzles, but... ditch the timer entirely. I dunno, I just find it incredibly obnoxious and it leads to many, many misclicks when the timer causes stuff to rotate right when you're clicking something. Like, the puzzles in this are definitely a welcome step up in difficulty but if I could disable the timer and just rotate at my own pace it'd be way more enjoyable to solve these puzzles. Still, for the price there's plenty of value and some pretty clever puzzles, but... the mechanic needs work, yet.

Given that the devs have resolved every issue that I have with this DLC, I can full-heartedly say that this DLC is now tolerable and while I will recommend it, it is still only a slight recommendation because I still find this DLC to be quite the difficulty jump as compared to the others. [b]UPDATED ON: 3/5/21[/b]

So my original review of Animo was negative because of the addition of the rotation mechanic. When the pack first released certain tiles would rotate every 5 seconds, with no alternative way to play, making for a frustrating, slow gameplay. You can now disable the timer and manually rotate, which I literally said in my original review I think would fix things! So now, with the rotation mechanic significantly better, I am reevaluating this pack. While I am still not the biggest fan of it sometimes, it at least no longer ruins the experience. And sometimes it also makes for some clever moments. At times it adds some much needed complexity to the game, because as you get better the previous DLCs could feel a bit too easy at times. If you enjoyed hexceed, animo is now a worthy DLC that adds some variety, and I can recommend it to anyone who played the base game and wanted more.

Edit April 23: In a recent update they have added the option to remove the timer completely, allowing the player to switch at their own pace. I can therefore wholeheartedly recommend this DLC. [strike]I enjoyed the original game, but I hate the rotation mechanism introduced in this expansion. It breaks any kind of flow you get into and punishes you if you don't look at the timer constantly. This is pretty much the opposite of fun. My suggestion is to remove the timer completely and replace it with an action the user can do (e.g. pressing the space bar). Edit March 6: Rotation can now be done manually. However, the timer is still mandatory.[/strike]