Within the first few minutes of my first game of Hive I was overcome by a sense of despair, of its source I could not be quite sure. It was only when the game wrapped up and the thought of playing another round deeply depressed me did I fully understand that the problem was Hive itself. I deeply disliked it. But why? It’s beloved by many, and the general sentiment is that it’s a modern classic. The answer is Hive is messy, uninteresting, and fundamentally misunderstands the elements that make abstract games work. I am well aware that seemingly no one else shares this opinion, so let’s just get on with the review.
Hive is two-player abstract about a pile of bugs crawling all over each other in big nasty clump of filth. Gross. Players are given 11 hexagonal tiles depicting Beetles, Grasshoppers, Spiders, Ants, and a single Queen Bee. I suppose in the universe of Hive insects and arachnids of all walks of life have learned to unite as a nation under a common flag. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere, but I’m not sure what it is. Anyway, one of Hive‘s big selling points is that there’s no board. I’ve heard many, many people praise this feature, saying they love how “portable” the game is (“It even comes with travel bag!”). Let me just say that a game’s portability has never once influenced my opinion of it. As often as the two are conflated, portability and quality have literally nothing to do with each other. I’ve read many a board game review that seems to be judging how often they were able to play a game rather than its quality, which I find baffling. I do not take such things into consideration, and I wouldn’t even know how.
A game of Hive starts with each player selecting one of their tiles and placing them adjacent to each other. This begins the titular “Hive”. From this point on, players take turns by either adding a new tile adjacent to their other tiles or moving one of their previously placed tiles. Each insect has its own movement rules. Spiders move three spaces at a time (spaces are counted by shifting the tile you’re moving along the edges of the hive), ants can move any number of spaces, beetles can move just one space but are the only tiles that can move on top of the hive, grasshoppers hop in a straight line to the next empty space, and the queen bee can only move a single measly space. The goal of the game is to completely surround your opponent’s queen with tiles.
Hive‘s main issue is that there is no narrative or tension in the game. Good competitive 2-player abstracts are almost always about strategic or tactical domination, but for domination to be interesting there has to be a sustained sense of narrative tension. The “check” in Chess, the vertical board growth in Santorini, and the way scoring a point removes one of your pieces in Yinsh are all examples of mechanisms that accomplish this effect, producing series of events that feel like stories due to the gradual changes in game state. The closest thing Hive has to a narrative mechanism is the placement of new tiles, which increases the size of the hive and thus the game’s decision space. The difference, however, is that Chess, Santorini, and Yinsh‘s mechanisms are all directly tied to the winning condition of the game, which is why they are able to drive the game’s tension in the first place. In comparison, Hive‘s winning condition — to slowly surround your opponent’s queen bee tile — is narratively inert and unexciting due to its mechanical separation.
Hive‘s design is a series of abstract misfires. Placing new tiles may only be done next to your own, the ever-shifting nature of the hive hurts your ability to plan ahead, the movement rules seem arbitrary and rarely allow for interesting interactions between players, and games often feel like they’re won through attrition. Even when you’re on the receiving end of an attack it feels inconsequential, because either you can just move your queen and it’s all good or you can’t so are almost certainly going to lose. To be fair, I am almost certainly underselling the strategic depth of Hive. I can see how there’s room for skillful play in determining which tiles to keep back for last minute queen saves, or setting up satisfying grasshopper jumps, or pinning down your opponent’s pieces with your beetle. Hive‘s structure is just so wishy-washy it’s hard to care. There’s no discernible early, mid, or endgame, so, fittingly enough for its theme I suppose, it ends up feeling like a big mushy mess of unconnected player decisions. The absence of board constraints, lauded though it may be, accomplishes little other than exacerbating both this mushiness AND the game’s lack of tension, lending some insight into why most abstracts have defined boundaries in the first place. If Santorini is a cage fight, Hive is a city-wide game of hide and seek.
Regardless of how I feel about Hive, people continue to rave about it. I frequently hear it enthusiastically referred to as Chess-lite. While not entirely inaccurate, it’s not a particularly good compliment because Chess-lite doesn’t need to exist. I’ve also heard people say they enjoy Hive because it’s more thematic than Chess. The inanity of this opinion keeps me up at night. I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m saying it’s heartbreaking. Besides, Hive‘s “theme” is utterly unappealing. A good abstract should be aesthetically austere, clean, minimal. And if they do have a thematic underpinning, it should be for no other reason than to ensure a visually pleasant table presence. Hive obviously does not accomplish this as tiles with embossed insects on them are far from visually pleasant. I don’t understand the point of making a game with such an unsightly theme. Imagine playing a game about cleaning toilets or scraping gum off the sidewalk. No thanks.
Let it be known that I do not pooh-pooh Hive lightly. I gave it many chances due to its stellar reputation, but the feelings of despair while playing it resurfaced every time. For what it’s worth, none of the three people I’ve played it with enjoyed it either. Why should they? It’s a tensionless abstract about a pile of bugs. If I was pressured to explain its popularity, I would honestly fall back to my earlier musings on the game’s portability. People like games that they actually get to play a lot, for better or worse. To an extent I can understand that, but I ain’t here to review games for their potential life insertion frequency. I make time for good games, whether they’re 10 minutes long and fit in my pocket or 10 hours long and barely fit on my shelves. Hive on the other hand, I don’t see myself playing again. Not even if I had all the time in the world.
Hive gets a rating of TWO out of FIVE, indicating it is NOT RECOMMENDED.