# Where hexodic sits among the games you already know.

> An honest comparison with Hive, Tak, Onitama, chess, and Go — including what those games do better.

How hexodic compares to Hive, Tak, Onitama, chess, and Go: session length, luck, piece complexity, memorization burden, and what each game asks of you.

Canonical HTML: https://hexodic.com/games-like-hexodic
Site index for agents: https://hexodic.com/llms.txt

## What are good games like Hive, Tak, or Onitama — and where does hexodic fit?

If you're here, you probably already love perfect-information, zero-luck games. So do we — hexodic was built by studying what makes them last. Here's the honest comparison.

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th scope="col">Game</th>
      <th scope="col">Board / pieces</th>
      <th scope="col">Luck</th>
      <th scope="col">Typical game</th>
      <th scope="col">Memorization burden</th>
      <th scope="col">What it asks of you</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <th scope="row">hexodic</th>
      <td>37-cell hex board, one piece type with three tiers</td>
      <td>None — fully deterministic</td>
      <td>About 5–6 minutes (measured mean 5.92)</td>
      <td>Minimal — a handful of rules, no opening theory required</td>
      <td>Read three simultaneous win threats on a small board</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th scope="row">Chess</th>
      <td>64 squares, six piece types</td>
      <td>None</td>
      <td>10–60+ minutes</td>
      <td>Heavy — opening theory is a lifetime study</td>
      <td>Deep calculation plus a serious knowledge investment</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th scope="row">Go</th>
      <td>361 points, one stone type</td>
      <td>None</td>
      <td>20–90+ minutes</td>
      <td>Moderate rules, enormous pattern vocabulary (joseki)</td>
      <td>Whole-board judgment built over years</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th scope="row">Hive</th>
      <td>No board, five-plus bug types</td>
      <td>None</td>
      <td>10–20 minutes</td>
      <td>Light — each bug moves differently</td>
      <td>Spatial reasoning with piece-type asymmetry</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th scope="row">Tak</th>
      <td>Square board (3×3 to 8×8), flats/walls/capstone</td>
      <td>None</td>
      <td>10–30 minutes</td>
      <td>Light rules, real road-building pattern depth</td>
      <td>Building while blocking on one shared axis</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th scope="row">Onitama</th>
      <td>5×5 board, five movement cards in play</td>
      <td>Card setup varies per game</td>
      <td>5–15 minutes</td>
      <td>Very light — the five cards are the whole rulebook</td>
      <td>Tactical sharpness within a tiny move vocabulary</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

## What hexodic borrows, and what it adds

From **Go**: one piece type whose meaning comes from position. From **chess**: the branching-factor bar — hexodic's measured branching (911/1,009/665 at half-moves 5/10/20) clears the chess-class target by more than 20×. From **Hive and Onitama**: the conviction that depth shouldn't require homework. What it adds: **three simultaneous win conditions** (Network, Takeover, Strangle) on just 37 cells, a **three-charge Echo economy** that makes scarcity itself a strategic axis, and **bots that get stronger from real human play** — no other game on this table does that. Read [the full rules](/how-it-works) or [how the bots improve](/play-to-train).

## What the others still do better

Honesty clause: chess and Go have centuries of literature, communities, and over-the-board culture hexodic can only dream of. Hive travels in a bag with no board at all. Onitama's five-card rulebook is a masterclass in minimalism. If those are the qualities you're optimizing for, play those games — hexodic's bet is specifically *chess-class depth, five-minute games, zero homework, on your phone*.

## Questions this page answers

- What are good abstract strategy games like Hive or Tak?
- How does hexodic compare to chess?
- What's a shorter game with chess-like depth?