(note: I've played the other Hexcells games. The other ones are pretty much just level packs for the original so I'm just going to review them all here, more or less.)

Pleasant puzzle game. The levels are fun and satisfying to solve. Sadly, at least for me, it is way too easy to mess up. I misclicked quite a bit, more than I do in other games for whatever reason, and having to restart the puzzle then fill in everything I already know how to do just to ensure I get all the hexagons at the end of the level is just frustrating.

Furthermore, maybe I'm just clueless, but I'm fairly confident that there are a few puzzles that cannot be solved without small guesswork, despite what the game implies near the start.

Conceptually very interesting, until this game conceptualized the bishop as "moving in 2 parallel axes" I never really thought about it in any way besides "it goes diagonal" and hearing chess movement patterns put in terms like that was kind of cool the first time around. Sadly concept can only make you so forgiving of making 14 moves in one turn, vaguely understanding the consequences of these moves, avoiding the central mechanic of the game just so you can get it over with already instead of making another timeline.

Very goofy visual novel. I remember years ago playing The Yawhg with a group of friends and being transfixed at the premise, I'm glad that another studio found it and took it in such a radical direction.

Both games have a sense of preparation but this one's is, obviously, the Monster Prom. You do a small questionnaire at that start of each game, but other than that you don't get much indication of who to pursue. Rather, you get a small group of people in each interaction, and whoever you go out of your way to impress slowly starts to show up more on your turns. Additionally, it's a lot of fun to pickup items from the shop or get some random interaction that turns your run towards one of the many special endings in a way you may not have expected.

Additionally I love how the game gets the players to participate in other people's turns. While sometimes it's more direct such as the weekend events, at the end of each week the turn order is rearranged by a game where the players each choose a thing X, then debate over which X would be the most to least Y. Other than this you don't get much direct interaction with other players, but my friends and I found reading the goofy tumblr-text-post-esque dialogue to be enough for a good time.

My only gripe with this game is probably the general vagueness of the win conditions. You have to please each character a certain amount and have enough of a few certain stats to get them to accept you as their prom date, but the latter isn't really implied or said anywhere as far as I can tell. Some character's stats are fortunately pretty obvious, but this isn't always the case.