It doesn’t seem like two years since we reviewed this for Android, then only a smartphone platform. Between then and now, developer Hexage has been busy releasing new titles and porting its games over to multiple platforms. This version of Everlands, appropriately labeled Everlands HD, is great fun. You’ll notice that the style of most Hexage games has changed since Everlands was first released. More recent games use a minimal, 8-bit art style, while Everlands HD sports cartoon characters that have a cute, poke-esque (yes, we did just create that word) quality. Fundamentally, this is a board game, with little action or animation to draw one’s eye, but the character design helps draw interest. You can tap twice to reveal a short snippet about each creature, which ends up being humorous and instructive all at once. During battles, the most you’ll see things animate is when creatures run through their attacks, bouncing up and down in the direction of another tile on the board. Suffice it to say that you’ll need to be captivated by the strategic gameplay in Everlands HD, rather than the art, sound, or music.

Although the cute characters are appealing to younger kids, Everlands HD is a tough nut to crack. As the story develops, you play as a troupe of animals investigating strange behavior from some of their wild cohorts. It seems there’s a sickness spreading from animal to animal, that causes friends to turn against each other. Only by routing the sick animals in combat can you make your way through the land and determine what is causing the plague. This plot works perfectly with the chosen format of Everlands HD, which is a hexagonal tile-based combat game. Each turn gives you the opportunity to place at least one tile. The conditions for winning are to conquer more than 50% of the board, once the board is full. This sets up interesting choices during play, as you try to determine the best combination of offense and defense. Randomized placement from the A.I. keeps it fresh upon replays, and a Duel Mode allows you to test your mettle against a human opponent. The included tutorial makes it easy to pick this up and play, but we wished for more intuitive controls that allow you to drag and drop pieces into play. In the final analysis, Everlands HD is a good, literal translation of the original game that we hope exposes more players to one of the titles that first put Hexage on our radar.

Ooh, it’s hard! It’s random, and it’s hard. The randomness makes it hard, because tile placement is everything in Everlands HD. Each character has a unique combination of health and attack, plus a distinct attack pattern. It’s cute the way some of these correspond to real-life attributes of each animal, such as the hedgehog’s multi-directional attacks (like its spikes) and the fact that bees have a special power that lets you play two tiles in one turn. These special powers mean you’ll spend a lot of time thinking about the ideal way to attack, as well as considering how your enemy’s defense is being constructed. When bears are in play, you want to be careful about placement, since a wounded bear gets additional strength... Beyond the tutorial, Everlands HD includes a simple hint feature that shows you what it believes to be the optimal next move. This only pops up once you’ve been sitting for long enough, pondering what tile to play next. We like this feature quite a bit, as it lets complete novices in essence do an auto-play of the entire match, by continuously punching this button. For more seasoned players, the hints will assist you in those moments where you’re feeling stuck.

The simple, tile-based combat means that the tide of battle can turn quickly. A well-placed tile late in the game can convert a losing score into a victory. In a nutshell, once a creature’s health is drained, that creature succumbs to the mysterious plague, and the tile it occupies counts against you. If you defeat the corrupted creature, you reclaim that tile, and you also earn back the creature’s attack ability. The right timing is at least as important as the right placement. Putting down a powerful creature like a bear too early in the game (or in the wrong spot) can result in a powerful opponent. By the same token, scattered weak enemies such as rats can gang up on larger animals and easily take them down.

If you have the patience to stick with Everlands HD through the learning curve, and come with the expectation that this is a challenging puzzle game, it will give you hours of enjoyment. The campaign and A.I. is quite good, but the ability to play against human opponents is what will really keep this game’s icon on your Home screen.