Hexotic 2024

Hexotic is a two-player game played on a regular hexagonal board (all sides of equal length) of any size, initially empty. The two players, Red and Blue, take turns placing their own stones onto unoccupied cells of the board, starting with Red. Sometimes a player concludes his turn with the removal of enemy stones.

If you begin your turn with a placement on a perimeter cell, you must immediately also place a stone on the opposite perimeter cell (opposite about the board’s center point). For non-perimeter placements, you only place one stone per turn.

To win, you must eliminate all enemy stones from the board.

CapturesIf you form a path which surrounds enemy stones, you must immediately remove the surrounded enemy stones from the board, concluding your turn. There are two types of surrounding paths: loops and partitions.

A loop surrounds its interior area. A partitioning path occupies two non-adjacent perimeter cells. It surrounds the area which includes the shortest perimeter path between the two perimeter stones.

Design notesHexotic is a rare, Oust-class game. That is, it’s a two-color game of placements and captures in which the board starts out empty and ends with only one color of stones on it. Hexotic is closely related to the connection game Hexagonal Y, another Mark Steere game.