I don’t really mean that, but this distinction will be useful if I want to articulate how Super Hexagon is different from other videogames. I don’t want to say that Super Hexagon is not a videogame, but I will, kind of. I have higher plans for Super Hexagon, though. Maybe we need a way to connect them somehow, and that’s cool. But there’s a good practical reason to do it, too: without these definitions, we could never point out the similarities, if any, between the three games.

It may believe itself to be a videogame - and this claim might even be true, if you believe it to be true if you think videogames are a well-rounded enough category to include Super Hexagon, The Stanley Parable, and Super Mario World. Super Hexagon exists as a software, codified information to be interpreted through a machine. The problem is: definitions don’t capture meaning. Apparently, none of our definitions escape that duality. Either the act has a definite purpose, or it’s futile. But even then we are instilling some kind of motivation to ground the religious act. If we don’t see it as useless, we may concede that it is representative of something else: one would pray for rain, for a good harvest, or to keep bad things from happening. In the same way, any religious practice can be read as futile: one could even say that this lack of apparent purpose is necessary to define an act as religious. To an external observer, the game may be seen as a futile distraction. In the same way, Super Hexagon’s value is a matter of belief. No matter how stupid or cruel it may be, it only exists and makes sense in the mind of the believers: like “ ethics in games journalism”, or morals, or God. No matter how homeless it can make you, interest rates only exist when participating in a definite, specific, system. What I mean is: it doesn’t have a material existence. If interest rates weren’t a real thing, bank loans would be called allowances, or pocket money. A visual representation of something that doesn’t really exist.īut sure it exists. Super Hexagon, more than any videogame I can remember right now, looks like an interest rate graph you would get from your bank in a nice plastic folder when applying for a loan. There’s no risk of spoilers because there’s nothing to be spoiled. In this video we can watch Super Hexagon being beat from start to finish, courtesy of JTexted, who hasn’t been the same since. It was really sophomoric stuff: I talked about how hard Super Hexagon was (and is), about the feeling of not being in control of yourself, about the psychological concept of flow… aaaand I quoted the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, in his documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology: At that point I had lost all the original files and what was done was done. I printed 10 copies and kept one, but later I found out they were missing an important page (my first and last zine, I must say). On my first half-assed attempt at videogame criticism, I wrote a zine… on Super Hexagon. It all began on November 2014, almost 3 years ago. And then, weeks later, sometimes months, this same thought would occur me again - while, say, I was walking down the street - and that would be enough to turn my stomach around and fill my body with a short burst of anxiety. I have spent many, many nights, playing with this concept in my head, poking it and stretching it, trying to make some sense out of it, only to wake up the next day and forget all about it. Why write about a videogame that’s been out for 5 years? Honestly, I don’t know.īut there’s this one idea that has been bothering me for years. I’m gonna try it anyway and let’s see where it’ll take us. THIS ESSAY IS A FUTILE ATTEMPT to discriminate Super Hexagon’s essence. If you want to support my work (thank you!), consider buying the Deluxe Edition I.

Super hexagon achievements