Hypothetical situation: You have arranged a good long night of gaming. You and four friends are planning on spending four or five hours on a colossal board game. The only catch is, the fifth guy just called, and he's going to be a half-hour late. So now you need a game, something to kill a half hour, a game where you can explain the rules and play the whole thing in the time it takes your errant buddy to arrive.

You need HEX HEX.

This crazy little card game from Smirk & Dagger Games has extremely simple rules. Everyone gets five cards, and then someone casts a hex on another player. That player plays a card to divert the hex to another player, and so on, until the hex goes off on someone who cannot divert it. Pretty simple so far, which is why that's not all there is to it.

When a player is hexed, he loses voice, and the player who threw the hex at him gains voice. Voice is the key to winning – the player with the most voice at the end of the game gets to create a rule for the next game. The rule could be anything, from 'whistle whenever you play a card' to 'hand size is now six cards.'

About half of the cards in the HEX HEX box (and there are a lot of cards in this box) are simple blocks – pass the hex left, or right, or across the table. The other half are considerably more interesting.

For instance, one card will force the hex in a particular direction, with a compulsion to pass it the same way. The first player who cannot pass the hex to the right or left (whichever applies) gets cursed.

Another card duplicates the hex, so that two hexes are spinning around the table. Another card boosts its power, so that it is more destructive. Still other cards are played when a player is hexed, and may reverse the entire procedure, causing the hexed player to gain voice and everyone else to lose it. The reversals and counter-hexes in this game can get dizzying, and are very likely to have everyone laughing out loud.

The real highlight to HEX HEX is the option to really put the screws to your friends. Sending a hex flying at an opponent after others have drained all their cards is great fun, especially when you smile wide while you drop the bomb on him. When one player gets ahead, the others tend to team up to take him down a peg. The game is not as brutally cutthroat as some games, but it does allow for a certain amount of good-hearted mean spirits.

The downside to HEX HEX is that it is not a particularly strategic game. It is fun – there's no doubt about that – but it is not what you might call a deep, tactical experience. It relies heavily on the luck of the draw, so that if you don't have the card you need to pass the hex, there really are no options to save you.

This is not a considerable downside, unless you are looking for a serious game. HEX HEX is entertaining, and does not claim to be a brain-puzzling masterpiece. It is simply a short, easy, fun game.

This review covers HEX HEX 1.5, an update to the original. A couple new cards have been added to keep the action more intense, and the graphics have been tightened a little. Speaking of graphics, these cards look very nice. The backs have a very cool painting, and the fronts are simple black with gold metallic ink tracing out various counter-hexes. The game comes with little glass beads for tracking voice, and everything looks top-notch.

So to go back to the hypothetical – your fifth friend arrives just before the game ends. He watches the last hand or two, laughing along with everyone, and instead of dropping HEX HEX to go play the monstrous board game, he joins in for just one more game. After all, you need something to do while you're waiting for the pizza. Just make sure to finish before the pizza guy shows up, or you'll end up playing a round with him, too.

Style: 4 – A very attractive game with simple graphics that definitely get the job done.

Substance: 4 – Not too long on strategy, but easy to learn and lots of fun to play.