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:
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. The only purchase is Premium ($9.99, one time), which removes ads. Full-color board themes are a design pipeline, not something sold today; each one is 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 the App Store for iPhone and iPad, and the bots need no sign-in; one optional Premium purchase removes ads. Get it on the App Store
Coming to Android
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 — a quick interstitial ad between games at most, and a one-time purchase removes even that.
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. In 2,000 simulated bot-vs-bot games, the first player won 47.38% of stochastic matchups and 0.5% of games were drawn; bot-vs-bot results are not human play (see how Hexodic was measured).
Chess-class decision depth
Simulator-verified branching factor of 910/1021/666 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
Simulated mean session: 5.98 minutes at an assumed pace per move. Built for a coffee break or a commute, not an evening commitment.
Seven bots, from first game to fright
Play solo against seven levels of bot — from a gentle random opponent to a deep-searching expert.
Bots that get stronger from real play
CL3O, the learning bot, is re-searched daily by self-play. A new version is served only if a statistical test accepts it as stronger and it answers the games humans won.
Free, and never pay-to-win
Free to play, with occasional interstitial ads between games — a one-time Premium purchase removes them. Nothing you can buy touches the rules.
Every claim on this site carries its honest status, from the one vocabulary the roadmap, the press kit, llms.txt and these chips all render from: SHIPPED (live today — you can verify it by playing); IN-FLIGHT (built and on the way, not public yet); VISION (not shipped — a direction we will always label as such); HISTORICAL (was true once and has been superseded; kept so the record is not rewritten).
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. Nothing you can buy touches the rules. Your rating is earned.
- Ads, kept out of the way. An occasional interstitial ad between games, never mid-game — and a one-time Premium purchase removes them entirely.
- Bots that improve. CL3O, the learning bot, gets a new version only when a statistical test accepts it as stronger and it answers the games humans have won against it. Read how your games help.
Where to play
Hexodic is on the App Store for iPhone and iPad today — version 1.0.1, free to download — get the app. 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 play is not live, and this site does not promise online ranked play yet. 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.