Glocal Hexcite

Glocal Hexcite is a puzzle game released by Success Corporation for the Wonderswan handheld console. The Wonderswan was released in 1999 and intended to compete with the neo geo pocket and Game Boy Colour. As it was a console designed essentially for the Japanese market, most of the games are in Japanese, with only a few featuring English text.

As with all puzzle games, the aim of Glocal Hexcite is simple, and as you may have guessed from the title, hexagons are involved. You are given a series of hexagons and must fill them in using shapes given to you. You can either play against the clock, which can get extremely frantic, or you can play against the computer, which is far more strategic as you can use your pieces to block the computer from filling in hexagons.

The game is extremely simple to play and is hellishly addictive. Thankfully the Wonderswan requires only one AA battery so it doesn’t cost a fortune to fuel your Hexcite habit.

Most successful handhelds have a puzzle game which sells excellently and draw people to the console. This is good for two reasons. One, puzzle games don’t require flashy graphics or sound effects and so can be easier to make. The second reason is that puzzle games will attract a far bigger audience then any other genre would. I think the most famous example of this would be Tetris on the original Gameboy. It became the flagship title for the machine and its popularity helped the Gameboy to sell millions and be the most popular handheld ever. The two newest handhelds, the Nintendo DS and PSP, launched with an array of puzzle games including titles such as Mr Driller, Lumines and Meteos. A new version of Tetris has also been announced for the DS.

The point I’m trying to make is that puzzle games are the genre most suited to a handheld console. They typically don’t last long, which is perfect for if you only have a few minutes spare, or are on the bus etc. This “pick up and play” attraction means that puzzle games always tend to sell well, which is obviously good for the console. Therefore Glocal Hexcite is the Wonderswan’s flagship puzzle game, their Tetris if you like.

I suppose the main difference between Japanese and Western puzzle games as fair as I am concerned is the lack of characters in Japanese games. In Tetris you move blocks, in Meteos you blast blocks. In Glocal Hexcite you make hexagons. Compare this to some Western Puzzles games. Lemmings, for example, sees you guiding you bunch of lemmings to the safe part of the map without having direct control over them. A similar thing applies in the Lost Vikings series, as well as the Oddworld series. The only Japanese puzzle game I can think of with characters in it is the Mr Driller series, which has been around for several years and on almost every format.

So why is this? My personal point of view is that perhaps game developers in the west think that their audience needs a character, something tangible on the screen, for us to understand and want to play the game. The Japanese on the other hand, are content with the game mechanics as they are. A character isn’t needed as what the game alone offers is sufficient to draw in people.