Hextraction, a free and open source board game | Hacker News Reader

Hextraction, a free and open source board game

playhextraction.com

76 pointschedoku13 comments

"Hextraction is a free-form board game for any number of people where players compete to race a ball across a customizable board, strategically placing hexagonal tiles to create paths and obstacles. Players can 3D-print their own tiles and configure the board to their liking."

I feel like that text is missing from the landing page.

Worth noting that the designer, Zack Freedman, has a popular YouTube channel[0] detailing all sorts of projects in witty videos. They are targeted towards a broad audience so aren't excruciatingly technical, but I think they make for good entertainment and inspiration.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/zackfreedman

Big fan of Zack - his videos are informative and enjoyable while not being in the “boring tutorial” zone.

And Hextraction was one of his April 1st videos if I remember correctly, where he pitched it as a hexagonal gridfinity variant.

When Zack burst on the YouTube scene I said, "Who is this rock star we don't deserve?"

Trying to keep up with the digs and jokes he delivers in his rapid-fire narrative is one of the ways he is so entertaining.

His crappy robot, Christopher the Quagsire, was a fave: https://youtu.be/BCNxHGKFiQ0

I have 3D printed a number of the "Gridfinity" storage units that began (and other's have run with). My crafting desk is much more organized now.

Honestly, the witticisms get old. I loved a few of his more technical videos, but his style and jokes feel like he's emulating youtubers like PewDiePie or whoever else does this whole ridiculous exaggerated expression screeching shit. Jacksepticeye? Idk. And that's not great.

I can't find any reference to "open source" on the page. I see "free" in the title of the page but it's clear from context that this is meant as "gratis".

The "free and open source board game" in this posts title is misleading as "free" can be easily misinterpreted as "libre" (as in libre/freedom).

The title should probably be changed for this post.

EDIT: Nevermind, the 3d design files for the tiles are available under an MIT license [0] and the "where to get" page at does say "open source" (correctly) [1].

[0] https://thangs.com/designer/ZackFreedman/3d-model/Hextractio...

[1] https://www.playhextraction.com/where-to-get

Stealing a comment by darknavi in a previous submission (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35945006 (68 points | May 2023 | 10 comments))

> I know videos aren't everyone's favorite format, but Zack (voidstarlab) has a great video on Hextraction and is just a fun person to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iqz7ZDdP25A .

I printed Hextraction for my kids[0] (then 6 and 4 years) and they love it. I haven't used the more advanced tiles with text and special effects yet but we'll get there.

[0]: https://www.jonashietala.se/blog/2024/02/09/printing_hextrac...

Got into 3d modeling a few month ago and build another game using marbles with a bit of an objective instead of being free form. See: https://makerworld.com/en/models/684705-marble-logic-a-capti...

This really needs a video that isn’t ten minutes of a dude talking about an organization system before it gets to the game.

Why does the video link go to gridfinity? Maybe the author has made a mistake

Hextraction is gridfinity 2.0, and in addition to being a game, a particularly high effort april fools joke.

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