While people wouldn’t typically think of puzzle games as being capable of being revolutionary or groundbreaking, a quick reminder of the name Tetris says otherwise. Now, granted, while the Picross series is consistently satisfying, and I truly love Grindstone in particular, there hasn’t been anything approaching that same level of shout-it-from-the-rooftops amazing in the genre on the Switch, but a man can dream. While I try to keep an open mind with all new indie releases, hoping for the next great game that will surprise me and knock my socks off, unfortunately Hegzis is not such a title.

Conceptually perhaps there could have been some potential, with the play area looking a bit like a honeycomb and you laying down a variety of pieces constructed of hexagons, trying to complete full lines in any direction. Every time you complete a line all of the pieces along that path will be removed, potentially getting you out of a jam from poorly placed pieces, or to make room for better combinations. If you’re able to complete multiple lines at once you’ll get bigger bonuses, so there’s some incentive to perhaps take some risks to not be stuck simply completing one line at a time like an amateur as well.

When it comes to problems though, there are actually quite a few of them. The first, is that in some ways the game feels like an incomplete thought. There are power-ups you’ll be able to use in order to try to prolong your run, but they really aren’t well explained, in general don’t feel vital, and their inclusion invites control issues. The second is that it takes a long time for the game to add any supplemental complexity, and when it does begin adding some static barriers to complicate your piece placement, they’re simply a bit underwhelming. They slightly raise the bar of challenge, but it isn't enough to prevent a creeping sense of boredom. The last is that there simply isn’t much urgency to piece placement, removing the excitement of being forced to make last-second decisions and rapid moves like you’d see in Tetris at higher levels. Here there’s simply no real equivalent.

The result is unfortunately a puzzle game that’s just sort of there. It has its own approach, which is at least somewhat novel, but beyond that core concept it doesn’t seem to have any additional worthwhile ideas. That makes for an experience that quickly gets redundant and stale, making it a really difficult game to try to sell with any positivity.