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Puzzle games are hardly scarce on the Nintendo DS, so when a new one comes out, it has to have some seriously standout elements to rise above. On the other hand, some puzzles games hit the streets with little fanfare or particular innovation, yet still manage to be fun for fans of block tapping. Such is the case with Honeycomb Beat, a fun, if not exceptional, puzzler with some original concepts and lots of puzzles.

Flipping Beats

Despite the name, Honeycomb Beat isn’t a music-based game. The beat portion of the game apparently has to do with the pure eye-candy on the top screen. Since the actual gameplay takes place entirely on the touch screen, the designers instead opted to put a sort of visual equalizer-style graphic on the top to keep time with the otherwise forgettable soundtrack.

Utilizing boards made of honeycomb-shaped hexagon tiles, you flip the individual hexagons in an effort to make the entire board the same color. Pieces flip when tapped, which the game calls a beat, and in consequence, the beaten tile causes any connecting tiles to flip as well.

As the game progresses, there are special tiles that cause other effects, such as diagonal arrows that flip all the tiles in a line, or others that require multiple taps to turn over. The basic gameplay doesn’t change though, and the game is remarkably easy to pick up. There are about 200 puzzles to unlock in the main game mode, and while they start out easy, later puzzles get incredibly challenging.

Just the same, each level is divided into ten puzzles and often runs with a solution theme. This means that once you solve the puzzle initially, the remaining puzzles for that level tend to all feel about the same. To break up the monotony of the main puzzles, there’s the Tetris-like evolution mode, where you must use the same gameplay mechanism to get rid of lines on an ever-heightening wall of tiles.

Honey Beatdown

Honeycomb Beat is visually simplistic, but certainly doesn’t look bad.  The audio is meager. As you progress, more visualization and background styles are unlocked, which is a nice bonus. The touch controls work well, and while Honeycomb Beat suffers from a dangerous amount of redundancy, the gameplay is relatively fun and original. There are also plenty of set puzzles to solve, and the evolution mode provides even more gameplay.

Article by: Jason D’Aprile
Video produced by: Jonathan Solin