The people behind
the tiles
Xago is made by Poco Games — a tiny studio with a big soft spot for games that are easy to learn and hard to put down.
Akshay Patil
Creator & Designer
Product manager, game designer, tinkerer, and father. Akshay is an MIT grad based in Brooklyn who designed Xago to be deceptively simple: rules a five-year-old can learn, with depth that keeps adults scheming. Xago is published under his studio, Poco Games.
How Xago came to be
Xago started when Akshay’s six-year-old wanted to learn chess but couldn’t remember how the pawns and knights moved. Inspired by hexagonal tile games like Hive, he set out to invent his own — built on geometric patterns, in his words, “because I can’t draw so good.”
The rules took about a month to develop. Getting them right took nearly a thousand games — including a four-player loss to a precocious pre-schooler and an hour-plus airport match that almost missed a flight. Along the way he coded the free online version and an AI that thinks four moves ahead, weighing ~1.6 trillion possibilities per turn. He has yet to beat it.
Xago hit its Kickstarter goal in 36 hours in March 2026 and finished at 361% funded with 484 backers. The physical game — with design help from Dan Cox and rules editing by Amanda Edelman — is now in production and making its way to tables everywhere.
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