Abstract strategy · iOS
Chess-class depth. No memorization.
hexodic is an abstract strategy game on a 37-cell hex board: one kind of piece, a handful of rules, about five to six minutes a game — and every game you play helps train the bot that plays you next.
The whole turn
Project. Shape. Echo.
01 — Project
Place a stone from your reserve — or, once it’s empty, move one. Moving onto an adjacent enemy stone from higher ground captures it.
02 — Shape
Raise or lower one cell’s tier. You’re not just placing pieces; you’re terraforming the board they fight on.
03 — Echo · optional
Three charges for the whole game: flag an extra capture check, or permanently lock a tier-2 cell. When to spend them is the mid-game.
That’s the whole skeleton — the full rules in plain language take about a minute to learn. Or skip the reading:
Play it right here
Two minutes, and you know the game.
This is the real thing — the demo runs the game’s canonical rules engine, verbatim. A guided tutorial walks you through placing, shaping, and your first capture, then hands you the board against a practice opponent.
Practice opponent only — the six-tier ladder and the bots that learn from real play live in the app.
Loading the board…
Practice opponent only — a simple built-in sparring partner, not the app's six-tier ladder or its evolving bots. Rules are the game's canonical engine, verbatim.
The one place color lives
Grayscale forever. Themes optional.
The base game is strictly monochrome — depth reads through shade, never hue, and nothing you can buy touches the rules. Full-color board themes are the one cosmetic exception, each one contrast-checked so the game stays legible. Two from the pipeline:
Polygon
Retro-console cream and primary-color play. A red vs blue duel over warm parchment.
Hi-Vis
Safety-vest yellow with pure-black play. Zero subtlety, maximum clarity.
Get hexodic
hexodic is free on iOS — no account, no sign-in, cosmetic-only purchases. Get it on the App Store
Be there when it ships.
One email when hexodic is playable. Nothing else.
Go deeper
For ranked-ladder players
A rating that's earned, not bought — deterministic rules you can actually study.
The ladder case →
For your coffee break
Real strategy in five minutes, with nothing shoving ads in your face.
The five-minute case →
For the AI-curious
A game whose bots improve from human play — here's exactly how the loop works.
How play trains the bot →
For abstract-strategy purists
If you like Hive, Tak, or Onitama, this board was built with respect for the genre.
Where it sits in the genre →
The claims — with their status labels
No dice, no draws that matter
A deterministic ruleset on a 37-cell hex board — outcomes come from your decisions, not luck. Measured across simulation: a 0.25% draw rate and no first-move advantage to speak of.
Chess-class decision depth
Simulator-verified branching factor of 911/1009/665 at half-moves 5/10/20 — more than 20× the design target. The depth is in the board, not in homework.
A full game in about 5–6 minutes
Measured mean session: 5.92 minutes. Built for a coffee break or a commute, not an evening commitment.
Six bots, from first game to fright
Play solo against six levels of bot — from a gentle random opponent to a deep-searching expert — or pass-and-play with a friend on one device.
Bots that get stronger from real play
Every decisive win over the bot is analyzed to build a new candidate opponent. Only a candidate that beats every current bot, by a strict statistical test, gets promoted.
Free, and never pay-to-win
Free to play. The only purchases are cosmetic — nothing you can buy touches the game. No forced ads, ever.
Every claim on this site carries its honest status. SHIPPED is measured or live. IN-FLIGHT is built and on its way. VISION hasn't shipped — and we'll always say so.
What is hexodic?
hexodic is a mobile-first abstract strategy game played on a 37-cell hexagonal board. There is one kind of piece — the stone — a handful of deterministic rules, and no luck anywhere in the system. A full game takes about five to six minutes. The ruleset went through nine rounds of design, simulation, and critique before it shipped, and its measured decision depth exceeds the chess-class target it was designed against.
Why people stay
- No memorization. Depth comes from the board, not from opening theory.
- No pay-to-win. Purchases are cosmetic only. Your rating is earned.
- No forced ads. Nothing interrupts a game.
- Bots that improve. Every decisive human win over the bot spawns a new candidate opponent that must beat every current bot — by a strict statistical test — before it ships. Read how your games help.
Where to play
hexodic is in a private TestFlight beta for iOS today, with the public beta link and the App Store launch coming. No account is needed to play. See the FAQ for current availability, or read how it works to learn the rules first.
Where it’s headed
Online ranked play is built and returning, and the long-term vision is national bots — bots that represent and play for their countries, trained by their own player bases. That part is vision, not a shipped feature; the roadmap keeps the two clearly separated.