Hex Hop

Overview

Hex Hop is an isometric pyramid hopper built on one crisp rule: land on a cube, light the cube. Twenty-eight cubes stacked in seven rows make the board, and lighting all twenty-eight ends the level — but the board fights back. Balls bounce down the staircases on random diagonals, a pink egg drops to the base and hatches into a snake that hunts you cube by cube, and from level three a green imp hops around dimming tiles you already lit. Your one escape valve is a pair of floating discs flanking the middle row: hop off the edge beside one and it airlifts you to the apex — and if the snake is tailing you, it follows you right off the board and dies for a 500-point lure bonus. From level two every cube needs two visits, turning a coloring game into a route-planning game. Five levels, three lives, and every off-edge hop without a disc costs one of them.

How to Play

Press Start Hopping. The arrows map to diagonals: Up hops up-left, Right hops up-right, Left hops down-left, Down hops down-right. On touch screens, tap the four corner pads, or tap a quadrant of the board to hop toward it. P pauses, R restarts. The cube counter in the HUD tracks lit tiles out of 28. Balls squash you, the snake outthinks you, and the imp erases you — but you can squash the imp by landing on its cube for 300 points. When the pyramid is fully lit, the next level raises enemy speed and, from level two, demands double-touch tiles.

Tips & Strategy

Plan two-visit levels as loops, not sweeps: since every cube needs a second touch, trace a circuit that re-crosses itself, and save the apex for last because the top cube has only two neighbors and the fewest escape options. Learn the ball rhythm — each ball commits to a diagonal per hop, so watch its current column rather than the cube it sits on, and step perpendicular to its descent lane. The snake is beatable by altitude: it always hops greedily toward you, so holding the top rows forces it to climb through your landing zone where you can hop over it — a diagonal that passes between its current and target cube. When the discs are both intact and the snake is close, the classic play is bait: stand beside a disc, wait for the snake to close in, then hop on and collect the 500-point lure plus a free ride to the apex. Spend discs early on crowded levels; an unused disc is worth nothing once you are cornered. Hunt the imp only when it is mid-descent — it moves straight down, so intercept its column rather than chasing it. And never hop upward blindly from the apex: both up-diagonals are open air there, and a shieldless misstep costs a life.

What Makes It Distinct

Hex Hop turns a coloring mechanic into a pursuit: the board is small enough to read at a glance, yet the combination of double-touch routing, a greedy snake, and tile-erasing sabotage means the hard part is never the hopping — it is deciding which cube you can afford to leave dark.