mixed habitat & densely vegetated hiding places

In this extremely fast-paced minimalist action game by Irish developer Terry Cavanagh, your only goal is to guide a small triangle through a geometric maze of abstract obstacles which constantly rotate as they come at you. If the leading tip of your triangle touches a wall, you die and return to the beginning of the stage. The longer you survive, the faster everything goes.

A still screenshot really doesn't do anything to convey what the game is, so here's a video of me playing the first stage:



This is a monstrously difficult game, and at first it seems impossible. Within seconds of starting the first level, you're dead. It's so fast, it feels like there's no way you can do it. And yet, if you keep trying, you start to learn how to get through the gaps in the first few walls. You survive for five seconds, and then, thrillingly, ten. As your attempts improve, you realize the obstacles come in sets and patterns that repeat. Some of them are a little less crazy than others; once you know them, they almost feel like "downtime" in between the more frantic moments. And then, at last, you make it to the end of the stage! Sixty whole seconds, incredible! That wasn't so bad after all.

Then the next stage starts. It's faster, and the patterns are new. Within seconds, you're dead. It's so fast, it feels like there's no way you can do it...

To me this is a game about pushing yourself to do more than you thought you could. As with Cavanagh's gravity-switching platformer VVVVVV, you don't feel like he's laughing at you for failing, you feel like he wants you to succeed. When you get into a flow state with it, it's thrilling, like you're flying, and the way the environment bops along to the acid-trance-inspired chiptune soundtrack gives it the satisfying feel of a rhythm game.

The music itself adds a lot of fun and appeal. Something I only realized after it was pointed out to me is that when you die and restart, the music track skips ahead rather than starting over, subtly suggesting that as you continue your attempts you're moving forward instead of falling behind.

I bought this game in 2013 because I was trying to complete a minigame in World of Warcraft that was based on it. The WoW version doesn't go nearly as fast, but it adds the twist that you also have to fight a boss while you do it, so you're basically playing two games at once. After playing Super Hexagon for a while, dodging the walls in WoW was easy, so it was just the rub-tummy-while-patting-head factor I had to work on. I heard that some players actually completed this by having a RL friend sit at the keyboard with them and do the turning for them while they did damage. I can say proudly that I did not need to do that, though on my successful run I did die at the end... but the boss died too, so it counted.

Video: My WoW character battles a Beholder-type monster while spinning to dodge purple lines as a chiptune track from Super Hexagon plays. Another player, watching from the sidelines, says, "this boss is hard right? ive never seen someone beat that one". Neither I nor the Beholder survive. My body appears outside the ring and I self-resurrect.


Anyway, I never did beat the last stage of Super Hexagon. Maybe someday...

Super Hexagon is available on PC, Mac, Linux, and mobile devices for $2.99 USD. I would recommend it for anyone who likes a twitchy challenge. Or if you need to get yourself psyched up for just about anything, you can just listen to the soundtrack.