HexaLex Review

HexaLex by Nathan Gray is another crack at the hexagonal-grid form of Scrabble and it's at this point that a lot of readers may switch off, but hold on, it's honestly a great implementation. Small considerations such as additional rules which can be modified or even turned off make this an extremely challenging variation on a popular board game idea.

For fans of word-games it's likely you've already stumbled on this title, but the recent 2.0 updates have added some great new features and it begged to be explored. Most of the game's controls are completely intuitive, ranging from dragging tiles to their position on the board; tapping them in to place after marking a starting position; and controlling your zoom level with pinches or multi-taps. Scoring is handled automatically and several rules extend the ability to place words while ignoring 'trash' words to increase the available play-space.

Visually the game is kept simple with clean interface designs that give this a professional board-game feel. One of the most impressive features is the ability to run several concurrent games locally and online with several players and AI. iOS 4 backgrounding is used to great effect and allows you to keep your games live while notifications prompt you when moves are made if you're playing asynchronously with a friend or two.

Ultimately HexaLex isn't going to convert many people to a life-long love of word-based games, but for fans of Scrabble or word-games this is definitely a great implementation of a classic game.