Hexa Sort Game: Play Hexa Hive Free Online

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In this guide

• How to play
• The flow rules
• The five worlds
• Boosters, stars and the Daily Level
• Hexa Hive or Shelf Star?
• 7 tips to clear more levels
• Hexa sort game FAQ

How to play Hexa Hive

Every level starts with an empty honeycomb board and a queue of tile stacks waiting at the top. The stacks arrive in a fixed order — you cannot swap them or skip one. Your whole job is choosing where each stack lands. Place it well and the colours sort themselves. Place it badly and the board fills up with mixed stacks that block each other. The puzzle is never about speed. It is about giving every colour a home before the free cells run out.

1. Press Play, or open the World Map and pick any level you have unlocked. Level 1 in Honey Meadows is open from the start.
2. Tap an empty hex. The held stack drops onto it as one piece. You cannot split a stack, and you cannot place on a cell that already holds tiles or on a locked cell.
3. Watch the colours flow. After every placement, stacks trade tiles with their neighbours. Whenever a stack's top colour matches a neighbour's top colour, the neighbour's whole top run flows into it. One placement can set off a chain of flows across the board.
4. Clear stacks of ten. The moment a stack's top run reaches ten tiles of one colour, those ten tiles burst and score: 100 points for the first clear in a placement, 200 for the second, 300 for the third. Chains are where the big scores live.
5. Mind the mixed stacks. Many stacks carry two colours: one on top of the other. The buried colour cannot move, score or clear until the colour above it flows away or clears. Read the whole stack before you place it, not just the colour on top.
6. Empty the board with the last stack placed to clear the level and earn a 150-point bonus. If the queue runs out while tiles are still on the board, or every cell fills with no way out, the level ends and you try again. All 150 levels are solver-verified, so a clean line home always exists.

Controls for phone and PC

Action	Phone / tablet	PC / laptop
Place the held stack	Tap an empty hex	Click an empty hex
Inspect a stack	Tap the stack	Click the stack
Use a booster	Tap its button under the board	Click its button under the board
Take a hint	Tap the Hint button	Click the Hint button
Open the world map	Tap Map in the top bar	Click Map in the top bar
Sound on or off	Tap the speaker button	Click the speaker button

The flow rules

Only the top colour travels. A stack is a pile, and only the run of tiles on top of it can move. When two neighbouring stacks show the same top colour, one pulls the other's whole top run into itself, and the taller stack wins the tiles. The stack that loses its top run shows a new colour underneath — and that new top can match a different neighbour and start flowing again in the same turn. This is why one good placement sometimes clears half the board.

Ten is the magic number. Clears only ever happen in tens. Every level is dealt so that each colour's tile total is an exact multiple of ten, which means a full clear is always possible — nothing is ever left over by design. If tiles are stranded at the end, the placements went wrong somewhere, not the deal. When a top run passes ten during a big flow, it clears ten and keeps the change: a run of fourteen becomes a clear of ten plus four tiles still in play.

Buried colours wait their turn. A mixed stack is a promise and a problem at the same time. Its top colour plays right away, but the colour underneath is locked in place until the top clears or flows off. Smart players place mixed stacks next to stacks of the top colour, so the lid joins its family fast and the buried colour wakes up early. Careless players bury a colour in a corner and wonder why it never scores.

Locked cells shrink the board. From level 13 in Honey Meadows onwards, some hexes start locked. They hold nothing and break up the board's shape, which makes every placement matter more. The Extra Cell booster opens one locked cell for the rest of the level — sometimes that single extra hex is the difference between a jam and a chain clear.

Free cells are your real lives. There is no timer and no move limit. You lose a level in exactly two ways: the board fills so completely that the next stack has nowhere to land and no booster can save you, or the queue runs dry with tiles still standing. Both losses come from the same habit — placing stacks on random empty hexes instead of building colour neighbourhoods. Keep same colours side by side and the board almost sorts itself.

The queue never lies. The next stack is always on show at the top of the board, with the two stacks behind it listed under it. Nothing is hidden and nothing is random mid-level: the whole queue was fixed when the level was dealt. That means a level is a pure planning problem — if you can see a line that clears the board, the board will honour it. And because every level is solver-verified before it ships, that line always exists, even on the wide Royal Hive boards where it may take thirty placements to unfold.

The five worlds

World	Levels	What changes	Opens at
Honey Meadows	1–30	Gentle boards of 7 to 10 hexes, 2 or 3 colours, small stacks; the first locked cells appear from level 13	Start of the game
Amber Dunes	31–60	Boards grow to 13 hexes, a fourth colour joins, every board hides one locked cell	25 stars
Violet Grove	61–90	Up to 5 colours and 90 tiles a level, two locked cells, mixed stacks with heavy lids	70 stars
Ember Hollow	91–120	Wide 15 to 17 hex boards, 5 colours on nearly every level, long chains become the par play	130 stars
Royal Hive	121–150	The full 19-hex honeycomb, all 6 colours, up to 130 tiles a level — the sorting endgame	210 stars

Inside a world the levels open one at a time: clear a level and the next one unlocks, and any level you have starred can be replayed freely to chase a better rating. The Daily Level sits outside the worlds — every day it deals one of the 150 boards with its colours rotated, so a layout you know by heart suddenly plays in a different key. Clearing it pays out a bonus booster, and clearing it day after day builds a streak worth showing off.

Boosters, stars and the Daily Level

• Undo. Takes back your last change — a placement, a bomb, an opened cell — and puts the board exactly as it was. The gentle way out of a misclick or a bad read.
• Extra Cell. Opens one locked hex for the rest of the level. On a board that is choking, a single extra cell changes everything.
• Colour Bomb. Tap any stack and its whole top colour run is blasted away. It scores nothing, but it can free a buried colour or empty a cell that a jam is closing in on.
• Hint. Not a booster, but it costs 25 points and counts against your stars. The game's own solver works out a full line home from where you stand and rings the next cell to play in gold.

Stars. A clear with no booster and no hint earns 3 stars. One piece of help earns 2. Any other clear earns 1. Stars open the worlds, so clean clears are worth real progress. Boosters live in your toolbox across levels: you start with three Undos, two Extra Cells and two Colour Bombs, every achievement you unlock drops one more random booster in, and the first Daily Level clear of each day does the same. There are 20 achievements in all, from your first cleared stack to holding all 450 stars at once.

Hexa Hive or Shelf Star?

GameOLL has two sorting games, and they ask opposite questions. In Shelf Star, you move single products between shelves with your own hands until three of a kind meet. Every move is yours, one item at a time, and the skill is planning the shelf space. Nothing on those shelves ever moves by itself.

In Hexa Hive you place whole stacks, and then the board moves on its own. Colours flow between neighbours, buried colours wake up, and a single placement can ripple through five stacks before it settles. You are not sorting items — you are setting up chain reactions, more like conducting than tidying. If you prefer your sorting with liquid and test tubes, Aqua Sort pours instead of stacks, and if you want matching with a swap mechanic, Candy Cascade is the match-3 of the family — or browse the full shelf on the Play Games page.

7 tips to clear more levels

1. Build colour neighbourhoods. A stack can only trade with the six hexes around it. Keep every colour in its own district of the board and flows will happen constantly. Scatter colours and nothing ever reaches ten.
2. Read the whole stack, not the lid. The bottom colour of a mixed stack is a future problem or a future clear. Place mixed stacks so the lid has family nearby — the buried colour should wake up next to its own kind too.
3. Keep one cell empty near the action. A spare hex beside your busiest stacks is a landing pad for the stack that completes a colour. A board with zero free cells in the middle is a jam waiting for a queue.
4. Chase chains, not singles. A clear that exposes a new matching top often clears again in the same placement, at double and triple points. Before you place, look for the stack whose clear would wake the most neighbours.
5. Save the Colour Bomb for buried treasure. Bombing a random top run wastes the strongest booster you own. Bomb the lid off a stack whose buried colour is one flow away from clearing, and the bomb pays for itself.
6. Undo beats restart. A jam usually started one placement ago, not ten. One Undo keeps your score, your chains and your progress. Restart only when the whole board plan was wrong.
7. Play the Daily Level. It is a board you may already know, wearing different colours — perfect practice for reading flows instead of memorising layouts. The free booster it pays out every day keeps your toolbox full for Royal Hive.

Hexa sort game FAQ

Is Hexa Hive free to play?

Yes. Hexa Hive is 100% free, all 150 levels included. You play it right on this page. There is no download, no sign-up and no payment.

How do you play a hexa sort game?

Place each stack you are dealt onto an empty hex. After every placement, stacks whose top colour matches a neighbour's top colour pull that neighbour's top run into themselves, so colours gather on their own. When a stack's top run reaches ten tiles of one colour, those ten tiles clear. Empty the whole board with the last stack placed to clear the level.

What is the difference between Hexa Hive and Shelf Star?

Shelf Star is a hands-on sorting game: you move single products between shelves until three of a kind meet. Hexa Hive deals you whole stacks and lets the board move by itself — colours flow between neighbouring stacks, mixed stacks hide one colour under another, and clears come in tens. One is tidying by hand; the other is setting up chain reactions.

How do stacks clear in Hexa Hive?

A stack clears when its top run reaches ten tiles of a single colour. The ten tiles burst and score 100 points, and if another stack reaches ten during the same placement it scores 200, then 300 for a third. Every colour in a level is dealt in exact multiples of ten, so a full board clear is always possible.

What happens when the board fills up?

If every open cell holds a stack and the next stack has nowhere to land, the level ends — unless a booster can save you: Undo takes back the last change, Extra Cell opens a locked hex, and a Colour Bomb can empty a cell by blasting a stack's top run away. The level also ends if the queue runs out with tiles still on the board.

Does Hexa Hive save my progress?

Yes, in your own browser. Your stars, unlocked levels, toolbox, achievements, Daily streak and best score all save automatically the moment they change. A level that is half finished when you leave starts again from the top when you come back. Nothing leaves your device, and there is no account to make.

Last updated: November 6, 2026. Hexa Hive v1.0 — the first release of our original hexa sort game, with 150 solver-verified levels in five worlds, a colour-rotated Daily Level, three boosters, a solver-powered hint and 20 achievements. An original GameOLL browser game. Found a bug? Tell us in the comments and we will fix it in the next version.