Hex Factor: A most pleasant surprise

Sometimes games just surprise you in a positive way because they play differently from the others games you have in the collection.

Hex Factor is one of those games. It was not a game that had a ton of hype before arriving, and yet by the time a night of play was over The Meeple Guilders at the table were discussing was it a game that might make our individual top-five games of 2025? For the answer to that you’ll have to check back in a few weeks of course.

It was sort of a game design goal for designer Frederick Weller, who said he wanted “a very easy to learn game that will stimulate the geek brain in a whole new way. . .

“You can learn to play in one minute, and yet the process of playing is very mentally stimulating. But it’s stimulating to a part of your brain that you didn’t know you had.”

Weller explained, “as a theatre actor, I started designing games when the theatres shut down in 2020.

“I wanted to develop a game that could be equally engaging to both the children and the adults in our quarantine bubble. I knew it would have to be some kind of visual puzzle like the game Azul.”

In Hex Factor players have a set of hexes, each with one of three designs.

From the hand of hexes players simultaneously compete to match designs on a central modular player board, dropping one of the wooden markers on designs they match up first.

When one player has placed their fifth piece the game ends and you add up points. Places ‘captured’ that have five designs being worth more than four and those more than three.

It is a race game of a kind, without really feeling that way because you can win without being the one to complete five ‘captures’.

Weller said he wanted a game that created some rivalry.

“I wanted the players to experience the classic board game tension of trying to balance different tasks that may sometimes conflict; but I wanted this tension to be experienced on a strictly visual, pattern-building level,” he said via email.

“. . . I love the urgency of the game. It’s a pulse-racing experience. You are pressed for time, but there is no clock. The clock is the other players. You are racing to claim territory before the other players do.”

The game has a high level of replay because your hand is always different, and it plays fast enough that when you lose you want to try again.

And, Weller has created some advanced rules – a different scoring method – that will enhance game options too.

For a game that is just a bit different Hex Factor is worth a very long consideration. Check it out at get.roxburygames.com