HEXvolver | A Match-4 Spinning Hex Puzzle

Now also available in Google Play!

A match-4 puzzle by spinning in a hexagonal grid!

HEXvolver is a Match-4 hexagon based puzzle game. By grabbing a gem and moving to neighbour gem, you can orbit the other gems around to line up groups of matching gems. Match 4 or more to gain points and more time to play. With 5 matches, you get a fire gem that explodes on match, and with 6+ you get a lightning gem that destroys rows of gems in all 6 directions. Get a good high score and win the leaderboards!

Controls

Click/tap and hold a center Gem you want to spin around. Then drag  your cursor/finger towards any neighbouring Gem. Now just orbit your cursor/finger around the center Gem to spin the Gems around the center Gem and release to drop them in place.

Leaderboards

With 0.3 (and tentatively even a bit before) we can finally compare our scores with players around the internet! Or at least, do so with in-game functionality as opposed to just screenshots. Currently the leaderboards are divided into All Time, Monthly, Weekly, Daily and Hourly. The Hourly leaderboards might be a bit too granular - at least for now - so they might go away at some point. 

NB. The leaderboards will be force reset once or twice during development, mainly when there are gameplay changes that affect functionality

Planned improvements for the leaderboard include separate leaderboards for RUSH and CLASSIC gamemodes, rewards (what kind, no idea yet) for winning a leaderboard before reset and gaining top positions in All Time, and more data per leaderboard entry than just score (like what Score Multiplier did you attain or how long did you play in that highscore game). 

History

Originally started this game for my "Make an android game to Google Play speedrun solo jam". Target was to get under 48 work hours. I managed to get the base game done in half that time, but the rest - polish, quality of life improvements, game juice, metawork including setting and Google Play Developer, CI/CD pipeline for automated builds and uploads, etc. have resulted in a ton of workhours more than just the 48. So, maybe I'll get a task failed successfully and still get the game out on Google Play, even tho it takes me 3-4 times the amount of time originally intended? Anyhoo, good practice!

Roadmap for version updates

• v0.1
  • Proof of concept
• v0.2
  • Special Gems
• v0.3
  • Leaderboards
    
  • Streamlined main game mode
  • Sound/Music improvements
• v0.4
  • Alpha on Google Play Store (ie. Closed Testing)
• v0.5
  • game juice
  • leaderboard general improvements
• v1.0 (current version)
  • Release on production track on Google Play
  • Android bottom banner ads
• v1.1
  • QoL
    • Small tutorials for control
    • Leaderboard account handling and deletion
    • Pacing improvements to Rush mode
  • Classic -mode
  • Zen -mode
  • Bug fixing
  • Android
    • linking with Google account/email
    • Rewarded ads
• v1.2
• v1.3
  • Puzzle -mode
• v1.4 Final Release

Known issues

• Sometimes two opposite gems flip the position when releasing rotation.
  FIXED. Please report back if it still happens to you!
• Sometimes a just released gem that's now part of a match-group has it's animation all floaty and going in wrong direction
  FIXED. Please report back if it still happens to you!
• Aspect ratio fix won't activate until the window is re-activated after fullscreen. This happens when the screen size is changed when the game is inactive. It can't change the aspect ratio until it's activated again - sometimes the game gets out of focus and deactivates when entering the fullscreen. Just clicking on the screen again and it should be fixed.