I have the feeling that an important ingredient in Hexcells taste is in the familiarity of the base, half minesweeper, half sudoku (some say Picross, but I don't know it first hand). It’s simple to understand because the rules are always simple. The interest escalates quickly by taking advantage of handmade levels where the positioning is carefully considered to the detail, so that you never need to guess while you still need to slowly examine all the hints to advance without failing.

The great understanding of space is as important as the great understanding of rhythm. In just one hour, the game achieves tranquility, which is clearly pointed at in its visual and sound style, through an impeccable complete concentration. When you realize, you've gone through the whole game in a single one-hour session.

This is what Plus fails to understand from the get go. It's not a bad premise to begin from where the original left off, throwing much harder levels early on. But the Plus isn’t only in the difficulty but also in the size and length. What used to be a concentrated session is now a collection of huge, tedious levels where you spend too much time counting, not deducting, and where you keep tabbing out frequently to clear your mind, something unthinkable in the first one. Even worse are the new hints. The hints with question marks may still have some grace depending on their positioning, however the hints that tell you how many blue hexes are there in a range, represented by an area that looks terrible and hard to read often, multiply the already tiring counting by having to count again, now in circles. And that without going into the levels that rely on this new idea essentially.

That infinite Hexcells games can be made was obvious. That a key essence from the first one was to be concise and not needing anything else, not so much it seems.