Hex
Join your two sides. Nothing else.
One rule, no captures, no draws. Players take turns placing a stone on an empty cell; red is trying to join the top of the board to the bottom, blue the left to the right. Stones never move again, so every stone you place is permanent — and because the board can only fill one way, somebody always connects.
This one is a web extra — it isn't in the app. The PartyAt app itself ships 17 party games.
Play Hex online free — two players, one device
Hex, playable right here. Two players share one device and take turns placing a stone on any empty cell. Stones are never moved and never captured: the whole game is joining your two sides of the board. Standard 11×11 with the swap rule. Free, no sign-up, and it works offline.
Red joins top to bottom. Blue joins left to right.
Take the first stone?
Whoever moves first has the advantage in Hex, so Player 2 gets one choice: take that opening stone as your own and swap colours, or play on as Blue.
Player 2 took the opening stone — the colours have changed hands.
Hex can never end in a draw: once the board is full, exactly one player has a connection. There are no captures and no passing.
Hex is a web extra — the PartyAt app is a collection of party games for one phone, from a bomb-passing game to bingo, dice and roulette, for up to a hundred players.
How to play — rules
- Red goes first. On your turn, place one stone on any empty cell — you never move or remove a stone afterwards.
- Right after the first stone, the second player gets one choice: take that stone as their own and swap colours, or answer normally. This is the swap rule, and it exists because moving first is otherwise an advantage.
- Cells touch on six sides, not four — the two diagonals that count are the ones running from lower-left to upper-right.
- The first player to form an unbroken chain of their own stones from one of their sides to the other wins immediately.
How to win
Connect your two edges with an unbroken chain of your own stones — top to bottom for red, left to right for blue. Hex has no draw: when the board fills up, exactly one player is always connected, which is a proved fact about the game rather than a design choice.
Tips & strategy
- Two stones a knight-ish step apart with two empty cells between them (a "bridge") are already as good as connected — if your opponent cuts one link, you take the other.
- Every stone you place blocks your opponent as much as it helps you, because your two directions cross theirs. There is no purely defensive move and no purely offensive one.
FAQ
- Do I need to install anything, or pay?
- No. The board on this page runs in the browser, free, with no sign-up, and it keeps working once the page has loaded even if you lose signal.
- What is the swap rule, and why does it exist?
- Hex is a first-player win with perfect play — that is proved, though nobody knows the winning line on a full-size board. The swap cancels it out: whoever opens has to pick a move that is neither too strong (or it gets taken) nor too weak, which makes the opening a real decision instead of a free advantage.
- Can a game of Hex end in a draw?
- Never. Fill the board with any mix of red and blue stones at all and exactly one colour will have a crossing chain — the two goals cut across each other, so blocking your opponent completely is the same thing as connecting yourself.
- Which board size should we use?
- 11×11 is the standard size and the one tournaments use. 9×9 is here because eleven columns on a narrow phone leaves each cell too small to tap reliably — the game is identical, the games are just shorter.
Where it shines
Pass one phone around and play it in moments like these.
- Just the two of youHead-to-head while you wait.
- Anywhere, offlineNo wifi, no signal? No problem.
