What is Nembis
Nembis is a deep-water survey laid out on a honeycomb. Every hexagon is either safe or a void, and a void ends the run the instant you scan it. What you get in exchange is information: each cell you open shows two numbers instead of one. The amber number, in the middle, counts the voids touching that cell. The cyan number, in the corner, counts the glints — harmless bonus cells that are worth points and nothing else. Two numbers on six neighbours is a different puzzle from one number on eight, and it takes about three cells before that starts to feel obvious.
The field never asks you to guess. Every survey is generated and then checked by a solver before you see it: if it cannot be finished by deduction alone, it is thrown away and another is dealt. That is the promise the game makes and the one worth knowing about, because it changes how you play. When you are stuck in Nembis you are not unlucky — you have missed something, and it is on the board.
How to play
- Click a hexagon to scan it. The first scan is always safe, and from there the numbers do the work: amber counts voids among the six neighbours, cyan counts glints. A cell with amber 0 opens everything around it in a cascade, which is where most of your progress comes from.
- Right-click, long-press, or switch to Beacon mode to plant a beacon on a cell you believe is a void. Beacons cost nothing and cannot be wrong in a way that hurts you — they are your notes, not a commitment. The counter at the top tracks beacons against the number of voids in the field.
- PULSE probes one cell with zero risk. If there is a void under it, the pulse marks it with a beacon and pays you twenty-five points times the class multiplier; if the cell is safe, it opens normally. You get one pulse per survey, and every pulse you finish with is worth sixty points times the multiplier — so spending it is a real decision, not free.
- Glints are safe. Opening one is worth forty points times the streak times the class multiplier, and the streak climbs by one for each glint you find within eight moves of the last, up to six. A field has six to ten glints; finding them in a row is the difference between a decent score and a good one.
Strategies that work
- The cyan numbers are not decoration. A cell showing cyan 2 has two glints among its six neighbours, and glints are always safe — so cyan tells you where you can open with no risk at all, and where the streak is waiting. Players who ignore the cyan number finish with roughly half the score of players who chase it.
- The pair rule is what gets you past the wall. If cell A's hidden neighbours are all inside cell B's hidden neighbours, then the cells B has that A does not contain exactly (B's count minus A's count) voids. When that difference is zero, all of them are safe; when it equals how many there are, all of them are voids. Almost every position that looks impossible falls to this.
- Time is worth more than it looks. The bonus is one and a half points for every second you finish under par — 240 seconds on ECHO I, 420 on ECHO II, 720 on ECHO III — multiplied by the class. On ECHO III that multiplier is 2.4, so a survey finished four minutes under par is worth more than eight hundred points of pure speed.
- Save the pulse for a real fork, not for comfort. Sixty points times the multiplier is what an unused pulse pays at the end, and on ECHO III that is 144 points for doing nothing. Spend it when a genuine two-way choice is blocking a whole region — that is the one place where its twenty-five-point void bounty and the unblocked cascade behind it beat the reserve.
- Beacon everything you deduce, even when you are sure. The counter at the top of the board reads beacons against total voids, and once the two numbers meet, every remaining hidden cell in the field is safe. Getting there is often faster than finishing the deduction cell by cell.
A little history
Minesweeper's grid is square, and its numbers count eight neighbours. Nembis moves the same idea onto a hexagonal field, where every cell has six neighbours instead of eight and there are no diagonals to reason about separately — a change that makes each number more informative and each deduction shorter. On top of that it adds a second channel: the cyan count of glints, which is pure upside and turns a game about avoiding things into one that also rewards going to find them. The pulse, one guaranteed-safe probe per survey, comes from the same tradition as the single undo in a puzzle game: it exists so that one awkward position does not cost you a run you had earned. What the game does not borrow is the coin flip that ends so many minesweeper games. Every Nembis field is verified as fully deducible before it is dealt, which is a promise a square-grid classic almost never makes.
Frequently asked questions
Can I lose to bad luck?
No. Every field is checked by a solver before it is dealt to you, and any field that cannot be finished by deduction alone is discarded and replaced. If you are stuck, the information you need is somewhere on the board — usually in a pair of cells whose hidden neighbours overlap. The first scan is also always safe, so there is no opening coin flip either.
What is the daily challenge?
One field, the same for everyone on Earth, on ECHO II — ninety-one cells, sixteen voids, eight glints. It comes from the date in UTC, so it turns over at the same instant everywhere and does not depend on your computer's clock. The daily field even opens its first cell for you, in the same place for every player, so nobody gets a better or worse start than anyone else.
What do the three field classes change?
ECHO I is 61 cells with 9 voids and 6 glints. ECHO II is 91 cells with 16 voids and 8 glints. ECHO III is 127 cells with 27 voids and 10 glints. Each class multiplies everything you score by 1, 1.6 and 2.4 respectively, and gives you more time before the clock bonus runs out — 240, 420 and 720 seconds. Every class gets exactly one pulse.
