Hex Stack: Free Online Color Sort Puzzle

Hex Stack is our own color sort puzzle, the kind of game also known as a hexa sort or hexagon stack game. You get three stacks of hexagonal tiles at a time, each with two to six tiles in one to three colors. Drag a stack onto any empty cell of the 19-cell honeycomb board, or tap a stack and then a cell. Once it lands, the tiles on top of touching stacks that share a color slide together, hopping over one by one, and every slide can uncover a new color that matches the next neighbor.

When ten or more tiles of one color sit on top of a stack, they clear in a burst and score 10 points each. Whatever was underneath stays, and if it matches a neighbor the tiles slide again. A clear that sets off another clear is a chain: the second wave of one move scores double, the third triple, up to five times. A number on a tall stack shows how many of its top color it holds, so you can see how close it is to ten. Each color also carries its own small mark, a dot, bar, diamond, ring, plus, square, triangle or star, so the tiles stay easy to tell apart for color-blind players.

While you aim, the stacks that would slide light up, and a tag shows how tall the run would get, or the points if it would clear. Place all three stacks and three new ones arrive. When every cell is full, the game is over.

There are 40 levels. Each one asks you to clear a number of tiles, from 30 on level 1 to 360 on level 40, before the board fills. Later levels start with more colors and a few stacks already on the board, and every level was checked by a bot that cleared at least three times its goal, so each one can be beaten without help. Retries are free and there are no lives. Classic mode is endless: it starts with four colors and brings in one more every 15 stacks, up to eight, and keeps your best score.

The daily challenge deals the same 60 stacks in the same order to everyone each day. Play them all, or as many as fit, and your best score of the day goes on the leaderboard. Your streak counts the days in a row you played it.

Four helpers cost gems: Undo (10 gems) takes back the last stack, Shuffle (15) swaps the stacks on offer, Hammer (20) smashes one stack on the board, and Continue (40) empties the seven middle cells once after the board fills. None of them ever takes points away. Hex Stack is free to play in your browser with no download or sign-up, and its tiles, sound effects and music are all made for the game.