The things the screens do not have room to explain: the Win chance, replays, your rating, the plans, and what leaving a game costs.
An estimate of how likely each player is to win from where the game stands. It comes from a neural network trained on a great many games, the same one the strongest bot uses to judge a position. It is shown as the Win bar: one segment per player in that player's colour, as wide as their chance.
It is an estimate, not a promise. In the middle of its range it tends to read a few points high, and a single roll can move it a long way.
No. Your Win bar is worked out from what you can see yourself: your own hand and everything public on the board. Somebody watching the game sees a neutral version that reads nobody's hand. Nor does it care whose turn it is, so it holds still when the turn passes.
It shows only when all of these are true:
The title of the Win chance card folds it away and brings it back, and your browser remembers which you chose. After the game, and in a replay, it is always on offer.
The Win chance of every player across a finished game, one line per player, a point at the start of each turn. It shows where a game was won: the turn a lead opened up, or the roll that turned it. It is on the end card and in the replay, for anybody whose plan opens the replay. The Points chart beside it, which shows where everybody got their points, is free.
A finished game played back move by move on the board, with the animation and the sound, from the first placement to the last point. You can step through it and see what everybody built, traded and stole, and when. Watching one is the same as watching a game live, only the game is over.
Under Your games on the start screen, once you are signed in. The list of your games is free: who played, on which island, and how it ended. Playing one back move by move needs the Trader or Merchant plan.
A game is in the list when you held a seat as it began and it was played to the end. That includes a game you left before it was over, because leaving a game counts as losing it. The tutorial is never kept.
A game keeps the visibility of the table it was played at. A game at a private table, which every solo and ranked game is, can be read afterwards only by the people who sat at it. A game at a public table is public afterwards too, as the table was.
It is an Elo, the scale chess uses, worked out from every rated game you have played. A bot of each strength has a known Elo, with the expert bot at 2000, and your number is the one that best explains your results against everybody you have sat down with.
It is not a running total that a win adds to. After every finished game the whole of your history is read again from the start, so a new game can shift what the older ones say about you. The end card shows the number before the game and after it.
Every game that is kept counts, solo or with other people, ranked or not. A game you abandon counts as a loss. The tutorial does not count.
You have played fewer than five rated games, so the number is still a first guess and you are in your placement games. After the fifth the brackets go, and ranked play opens.
A place on it takes ten rated games against at least five different opponents, all within the last thirty days. You have a rating before that; you simply have no row yet. A guest's name on the leaderboard carries a short tail, because two guests may share a name.
A queue that looks for a player near your own rating and seats the two of you at a private table. It looks close first and widens the search the longer you wait. It is free on every plan, a guest can use it, and the game is rated exactly like any other.
A bot's name is followed by a diamond. Hold the pointer over it to see the bot's strength. A person's name is followed by their rating alone.
Six strengths, from novice, which plays the first thing that works, through beginner, intermediate, advanced and expert, to master, which plays every move forward before it chooses. Each has an Elo of its own on the same scale as yours, so beating a stronger bot moves your rating more.
Playing is free, and so is ranked play. No plan changes a rule of the game, and none makes your seat stronger at the table. The prices are on the Plans card.
A table with other people has a clock on each turn. If yours runs all the way out, a bot takes over your seat for the rest of the game and you can only watch. The game still counts as yours, and as a loss.
A solo game has no clock. It waits for you for a day since your last move. Come back within the day and you go on where you were. After that it ends by a forfeit, and a forfeit is a loss.
Abandon, beside the game on the start screen. It asks twice, because it costs you: the game counts as a loss and your rating will most likely go down. A solo game ends there and then; a game with other people goes on with a bot in your seat. A table where no move has been played yet costs nothing to leave, and the button says Leave.
A table waits a while for people. A chair still empty when it is time to play is filled by a bot, and anybody who arrives before the first move takes their chair back from it. Once the first move is played the seats are fixed. The host, whoever has sat at the table longest, can start before every chair is taken.
A game in progress is written down as it is played, and when the server comes back the game is brought back where it stood. Rejoin it from the start screen. The tutorial is the one exception: it starts again.
No. You can play as a guest, and a guest has a rating too. A guest lives in one browser for thirty days. An account keeps your name, your rating and your games on every device, and signing up takes the games you played as a guest in this browser with you.
Write to us on the , or at info@hexalon.io. If the answer is one somebody else would want, it goes on this page.
Last reviewed 2 October 2026.