Boilerplate
hexodic is a mobile-first abstract strategy game on a 37-cell hexagonal board — one piece type, fully deterministic rules, and games of about five to six minutes. Its measured decision depth exceeds the chess-class branching-factor target it was designed against, and its bots improve through a transparent evolution loop driven by real human play: every decisive win over the production bot spawns a candidate that must beat every current bot, by a strict statistical test, before it ships.
Fact sheet
| Fact | Value | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Abstract strategy (perfect information, zero luck) | — |
| Board | 37 cells, radius-3 hexagon; one piece type, three tiers | SHIPPED |
| Session length | ~5–6 minutes (measured mean 5.92) | SHIPPED (measured) |
| Branching factor | 911 / 1,009 / 665 at half-moves 5 / 10 / 20 (target ≥35) | SHIPPED (measured) |
| Draw rate / first-player win | 0.25% / 46.38% | SHIPPED (measured) |
| Bots | 6 difficulty tiers, on-device | SHIPPED |
| Platform | iOS — private TestFlight beta now, App Store launch coming | IN-FLIGHT |
| Price | Free; 7 cosmetic in-app purchases; no pay-to-win, no forced ads | IN-FLIGHT (listing locked) |
| Online ranked play | Built and returning (ran in the web phase) | IN-FLIGHT |
| Play-to-train bot loop | Live mechanism (classical evolution + statistical promotion gate) | SHIPPED |
| National bots | Vision — country-trained bots representing their players | VISION |
The three story angles
- The game itself — a deterministic hex-grid abstract with chess-class measured depth in five-minute sessions: the “depth without homework” story.
- Play-to-train — the game whose players are literally the selection pressure on its bots: a transparent, statistical evolution loop, not a neural-net data grab. Full mechanism on play-to-train.
- National bots (vision) — where it’s headed: bots trained by their own countries’ players, representing them. This one is explicitly a roadmap story — we’ll say so on record, every time.
Accuracy notes for journalists
We’d rather lose a headline than ship a false one, so: hexodic’s bot loop is not deep learning — call it an evolution loop or a bot tournament, not a neural network. National bots have not shipped — present-tense phrasing would be wrong. The iOS app is in TestFlight, not the App Store (yet). The iOS app contains no gambling or wagering of any kind. And the beta is private TestFlight today — “download now” phrasing would be early. If you catch this site ahead of reality anywhere, tell us — the claim gets fixed, fast.
Assets & contact
Wordmark, board art, and screenshots ship with the App Store launch window — this section will link a downloadable pack. Until then, media contact runs through the hexodic support site.