Hint is a puzzle game. Sort of.
Puzzle games normally have rules, but Hint doesn’t have any.
Scratch that. Puzzle games normally have one set of rules, but Hint has tons – pretty much one rule for each of its 27 bizarre, inventive, occasionally infuriating stages.
Confused? Join the club.
If you’ve played any of Bart Bonte’s immaculate color-based puzzle games (red, blue, pink, etc) you’ll know roughly what’s going on in Hint. Each level consists of two challenges. First you’ve got to work out what you’re supposed to do, and then you have to do it.
We can’t go into too much detail without giving away spoilers, but it won’t do any harm if we explain the first stage. It’s not particularly challenging, but it gets the game’s approach across.
In the first stage, all you need to do is tap a blue dot. It’s almost disconcertingly straightforward. Once you’ve “solved” this puzzle, you’re taken to what is effectively an end credits page, apologetically explaining that the game is complete. It’s a freebie, after all.
But, of course, this isn’t the end of the game, though there doesn’t appear to be any way to play the rest of it until – aha! – you scroll upwards to reveal a “next stage” button.
Hint Delights in Wrong-Footing You
That’s how Hint works. Its rules aren’t necessarily contained within the stages themselves – sometimes you need to scroll through a “game over” screen, or tap the “options” button to change a setting, or whatever.
Usually, though, you just need to work out the stage’s logic. Sometimes this logic is fiendishly complicated, and sometimes it’s even more fiendishly simple. Hint frequently contains solutions so obvious that you overshoot them in search of more sophisticated answers. This is a game that delights in wrong-footing you.
The reason Hint is called Hint is that each stage contains a series of increasingly helpful hints, delivered by either Hexa or Neph, depending on which narrator you choose. Hexa is a friendly, helpful woman, and Neph is a gruff but genial man who sounds a lot like Mr T.
They give different hints, so you can replay the entire game with each one when you’ve finished it with the other and get a slightly different experience. And both characters are brilliantly acted, adding an element of warmth to an otherwise starkly presented puzzler.
Once you’ve exhausted all of your hints in each of Hint’s stages, you can skip to the next stage, and you can do this all the way through if you like, solving none of them. If you’re anything like us, you’ll have to admit defeat on at least a couple of the more obscure puzzles.
Flawed but Free
What you’re left with after completing the game is a record of your most recent playthrough, letting you know how quickly you solved each stage, how many hints you used, and whether you solved it at all.
Hint’s longevity lies in playing through the game again and trying to top these results, but you can only do it a whole game at a time. While it’s possible to replay stages, the results don’t go on your record, which seems slightly inflexible.
It would be nice to be able to dip in and play a stage with either Hexa or Neph, and to reap the rewards of mastering one stage without having to play the whole campaign – particularly as a handful of stages are skill-based.
Hint is a fairly small game, with only 27 stages. It packs a huge amount of innovation and challenge into those 27 stages, but we’d love to see more in an update. It looks and feels very basic, too, despite its world-class voice acting.
But, as Hint itself points out, this is a freebie. If you like challenging, creative, occasionally infuriating puzzle games, it’s a no-brainer. You can find it on Google Play here.