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.

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Is super hexagon free