Happy Life GamesHexa Sort Guide: How Stacks Merge, Burst and Chain
Hexa Sort is a stacking puzzle played on a honeycomb board. You drag little towers of hexagon chips onto empty cells, and whenever the top colors of neighboring stacks match, the chips hop across and pile up together. Get ten chips of one color on top of a single stack and it bursts in a shower of color. It's a lovely chain-reaction game, and once you understand exactly how chips move, it turns into a satisfying planning puzzle.
Every level gives you a fixed supply of stacks and a burst goal. The challenge is to reach that goal before you run out of stacks or room.
How to play
- At the bottom of the screen is a tray holding up to three stacks. Drag any one of them onto an empty cell of the board.
- When you let go, the merging happens automatically.
- Each time you use a tray slot, it refills with the next stack from the level's supply. A small counter shows how many stacks you have left in total.
The bar at the top shows your progress, for example "BURST 1 / 3." Reach the target number of bursts and you win. The number printed on each stack tells you how many chips of its top color are stacked together, so you can see at a glance how close a stack is to ten.
There's no timer. If the board fills up, you run out of stacks, or the game can tell the goal is no longer reachable, a "Stuck? Undo or hint" message appears. Nothing ends the level for you.
How merging really works
Knowing the exact rule is what separates lucky play from planned play.
- Matches gather onto the stack you just placed. When you drop a stack, every neighbor whose top color matches it hands over its entire run of that color. All of those chips pile onto your new stack.
- Chains spread outward. A neighbor that just gave away its top chips now shows a new top color. If that new color matches one of its neighbors, those chips gather onto it in turn. One placement can set off several steps, and big chains earn a "COMBO!"
- Ten bursts. When the top run of a single stack reaches ten or more chips of one color, that run bursts and counts toward your goal. Whatever was underneath is exposed and can trigger more merges.
Only the top color of a stack ever moves. Chips buried lower down stay put until everything above them has left.
Beginner strategy
- Find the goal color. Look for the color that appears most on the board and in the tray. That's usually the color that can actually reach ten.
- Drop next to matches. Place a stack on an empty cell bordered by stacks with the same top color, so they all pour into it at once.
- Read the numbers. Two neighboring stacks showing 4 and 3, plus a tray stack topped with 3 of the same color, add up to exactly ten. Put the tray stack in the empty cell touching both.
- Keep cells free. Every placement uses a cell, and a stack that doesn't merge just sits there. Don't scatter stacks around randomly.
Advanced techniques
Not every color can burst
This is the single most useful insight for our version. In each level only certain colors have enough chips in total to reach ten. Those are the colors that count toward the goal. The other colors are clutter: there simply aren't ten of them, so they will never burst. Don't waste placements trying to build them up. Instead, use them as a place to bury chips that are in the way, and focus every merge on the colors that can actually pop.
Look under the top chip
A tray stack often has a different color beneath its top. After its top chips merge away, or after the stack it lands on bursts, that lower color is exposed and will start gathering from its neighbors. Before placing, check what's underneath and whether it will trigger a useful second merge or an unwanted one.
Choose the gathering point
Since chips always flow toward the stack you just placed, the cell you choose decides where everything ends up. Pick an empty cell that touches as many matching tops as possible. A cell in the middle of the board has six neighbors. One at the edge, or next to a missing cell, has fewer.
Mind the tray order
You can use the three tray stacks in any order. If one tray stack completes a burst only after another stack has piled chips nearby, place the setup stack first. Think one or two placements ahead, the same way you would with tiles in a hand.
Be careful with the obvious move
From level 3 on, our levels are chosen so that simply grabbing the biggest immediate merge each turn doesn't win in the fewest placements, and on some levels it doesn't win at all. If the best-looking move doesn't actually set up a burst, look for a quieter placement that lines up a bigger merge next turn.
Common mistakes
- Feeding colors that can't burst. Building a tall stack of a non-goal color uses up placements and cells for nothing.
- Isolated drops. A stack placed where nothing matches wastes a cell and a stack from your limited supply.
- Forgetting chain direction. Chips gather onto the placed stack, not onto its neighbors. Players who expect the opposite often build the pile in the wrong spot.
- Uncovering a bad color. A merge that strips a neighbor down to an awkward lower color can block the cells you were saving.
What changes in later levels
The first two levels are hand-made tutorials: a single burst on a full honeycomb, with a hand showing where to drop. From level 3 the board loses a few outer cells, leaving two or three gaps around the edge, and the burst goal rises to two. The color count grows from three up to five, and later six.
Level 10 and every tenth level after it is a BOSS LEVEL, labeled under the progress bar. Boss levels ask for three bursts, give you a longer supply of stacks, and need more placements to solve. On later boss levels you also start with fewer empty cells. Levels in between rise and fall in a sawtooth, so a tough level is usually followed by an easier one.
FAQ
What does the hint do?
A hand drags a stack from the tray to the cell where it belongs. That's the next placement of a winning line from your current position. If no winning line exists anymore, the hint first undoes your placements until one does.
Can I undo a placement?
Yes. Undo restores the board, the tray and your burst count to how they were before your last placement, and you can keep undoing back to the start.
Why didn't my stack burst at ten?
Only the top run counts, and it has to be one color on one stack. If the ten chips are split across two stacks, or a different color sits on top, there's no burst yet. Check the number on the stack.
Do I have to clear the whole board?
No. You only need to reach the burst goal shown at the top. Leftover chips don't matter. If you like this kind of placement planning, try Block Blast. For classic color sorting, Water Sort is a good place to start.