RTTP: Super Hexagon is so much better than you think it is

Great thing about it is that you actually see and experience your skill progression. The patterns are crazy at first, but you start to memorise what you're going into as you try over and over again, and gradually increase your survival time.

When you finally beat a stage, you feel like a badass.
 
It's a great time waster. I can't fathom how one could beat the harderestest (or whatever the last level is). I could barely beat the first 2.
 
This game is pretty great, although I'm surprised I've had the self restraint to NOT throw my iPad at the wall at times playing. Music is amazing.
 
Beating level three has been my proudest gaming moment so far. But I'm gonna trump that by beating level six.
 
Yeah I play this game every single day too. I can go 85 seconds on super hexagonest. I'm working my way into hyper mode for it, I can go about 20 seconds. It's nice to have a little thing to practice each day that only takes like 15 minutes.

It's funny, I've never even completed the first two difficulties, I only play the third one. And I'm super boss at it.
 
Just snapped a quick video of a pretty ordinary run for me. I shot it on my phone so it's probably pretty crappy.. And I fuck up three times before I get going. :P I fucking love this game. It's funny how its just a part of my daily experience. Playing it has become as ordinary as drinking a glass of water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBoIK_q6rJg&sns=em
 
Absolutely agree OP. One of the best of this generation for me also. And I also had a few weeks/months of hexaobsession playing it on my iPhone constantly.

The way that that improvement over time worked for me was that consciously or unconsciously I started memorizing the patterns, the quickness of the response was primary on the first attempts but then the pattern memorization needed to kick in for me to steadily improve.

Edit: Just reposting my appreciation of the game on the GOTY thread of last year:

Caution! This game is evil. It plays with our brain basic tendency to recognize and learn patterns. It looks at first sight that it's a pure twitch, fast reflexes response kind of game, but it is not. It's memorization and pattern recognition first and fast reflexes response second. Is that what makes it evil? No. The game while throwing at the player its hexagonal patterns at incredible speeds, bombards him with a high bpm soundtrack and flashing almost epilepticogenic graphics so to overstimulate his brain to purposefully make him fail. To break our brain. To make it vacillate. And hesitation, or trying to check the time from the corner of the eye, or even blink, will result in failure. The almost instantaneous retry/failure system makes for a near hypnotic chain of actions in a diabolic cycle of Game Over. Repeat. Game Over. Repeat. Game Over. Repeat. Evil. My most played game on any platform this year. I'm almost embarrassed to think of the amount of hours I played of this game.
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Visualante2 said:
Anyone got some tips for Hexagonest? I'm going to try and fix my Apple chiclet keyboard because I think it will help with more prompt input compared to giant spongey keys. Anyone play in 4:3 find that easier? I know it's cheap looking for easy solutions to improve performance but I don't care.

I need to try Space Giraffe.. this strategy had crossed my mind. But I wasn't sure it would actually work.

I might try and learn to play with my alternate hand or two hands and see if that improves things too. It's so cold in England at the moment that my fingers freeze up.
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I played on my iPad and iPhone for a long time before getting the Steam version on my Mac, so my main issue was that I was used to using my thumbs to play. I ended up just hooking up a gamepad and mapping the keys to the buttons to that so I could continue playing with my thumbs (left on dpad, right on face button) instead of using the keyboard. Well at first I tried both thumbs on the arrow keys but that was a bit awkward and cramped.
 
Tried it a few months ago on my android phone and hated it immediately. I tried it again a month or two later and still hated it. I'll probably give it another go since it gets sooo, sooo much love. But I think the touch controls are just not sitting well with me fundamentally (and I've played my share of touch control games) Am I alone?
 
I will never understand why this game doesn't let you swipe on the screen to rotate. There would be so much more precision if it was controlled that way.

It's a pretty well put together game either way, but I can't help but think that it's just a reflex building / memorization time waster.
 
Thought this should have won IGF design--it's a brilliant example of less is more. Simple, clean, but incredibly engaging and everything works perfectly to make you always play more than a run at a time.
 
I think it's more addicting than it is good. There are a few cases where is impossible to save yourself in time and that's unforgivable to me. That said, I have probably put at least twelve hours into it and think it deserves every bit of success it gets.
 
snoopeasystreet said:
I think it's more addicting than it is good. There are a few cases where is impossible to save yourself in time and that's unforgivable to me. That said, I have probably put at least twelve hours into it and think it deserves every bit of success it gets.
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It's never impossible to save yourself in time, trust me.
 
Lord Error said:
I will never understand why this game doesn't let you swipe on the screen to rotate. There would be so much more precision if it was controlled that way.

It's a pretty well put together game either way, but I can't help but think that it's just a reflex building / memorization time waster.
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As things get going faster swipe controls would make it a lot harder to play, particularly when you have to make longer continuous moves like when it throws spirals at you.
snoopeasystreet said:
I think it's more addicting than it is good. There are a few cases where is impossible to save yourself in time and that's unforgivable to me. That said, I have probably put at least twelve hours into it and think it deserves every bit of success it gets.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure it gives impossible situations...it's certainly possible to set yourself up for impossible situations when you screw up, but it gives you enough heads up to set up the next move if you're paying attention.

That said there is one thing that kills me more than it should. Past 60 seconds on Hyper Hexagonest when the first exit is on the top or bottom, it's hard to see until pretty late because the screen isn't rotating, and the top/bottom are shorter distances away than the sides. I set up for it by staying on a side until I see the opening, but I still manage to screw it up constantly.

There's one evil thing that bugs me too, it got Wario64 in his video in the end there. There's a pattern in Hyper Hexagonest that's always the same, but after 60 seconds it throws in another one that looks the same but isn't. That change up is usually the one that gets me if I last a while in it.
 
I think it's overhyped, the only good thing about it is the soundtrack.

I couldn't get into it on PC, maybe it's better on an iPad?
 
Wooooo

image.jpg
 
Yeah, it never gives you impossible patterns. It may give you very difficult situations where you are dead if you hesitate for less than a tenth of second, but that's your fault.
 
I'm not gonna lie, I'm still having a hard time being sure which way I'll move depending on if I hit right or left. Clockwise vs Counterclockwise can be hard to remember/think about that quickly.
 
The_Darkest_Red said:
It's never impossible to save yourself in time, trust me.
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japtor said:
I'm not sure it gives impossible situations...it's certainly possible to set yourself up for impossible situations when you screw up, but it gives you enough heads up to set up the next move if you're paying attention.

That said there is one thing that kills me more than it should. Past 60 seconds on Hyper Hexagonest when the first exit is on the top or bottom, it's hard to see until pretty late because the screen isn't rotating, and the top/bottom are shorter distances away than the sides. I set up for it by staying on a side until I see the opening, but I still manage to screw it up constantly.

There's one evil thing that bugs me too, it got Wario64 in his video in the end there. There's a pattern in Hyper Hexagonest that's always the same, but after 60 seconds it throws in another one that looks the same but isn't. That change up is usually the one that gets me if I last a while in it.
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I'm sure there isn't from a mechanical standpoint but because I'm playing it on a phone with a 16:9 aspect ration and the play space is a circle, you're able to see upcoming gaps on the horizontal sides before the vertical ones because you have more screen real estate on those sides. And I understand that's probably why Terry designed it so that the whole play space rotates but there has to be situations where a gap spawns in on the top or bottom and while if you could see it you could certainly get to it but since it's in an unknown area you have to wait until either rotates into sight or gets so close that you can you can now see it and in a game where split second timing is everything, it does make a difference.
 
argh it still sucks

but the music is so beautiful and compelling. I wish I could play it with a rotary spinner (arkanoid or tempest style) and this would be 1000X more enjoyable. Bring on the Super Hexagon arcade!
 
Hahaha, I bought chipzel's soundtrack and then the two-pack because I could listen to Focus on loop for like days but haven't even installed it yet. I'm worried that my monitor will be too slow and the horrible LCD motion blur will give me a migraine like the last time I tried to play Bit.Trip Beat :(

Anyway I have a copy left over that's been sitting in my inventory since day one, so if you're interested please ask for it.
 
wondermega said:
argh it still sucks

but the music is so beautiful and compelling. I wish I could play it with a rotary spinner (arkanoid or tempest style) and this would be 1000X more enjoyable. Bring on the Super Hexagon arcade!
Click to expand...

It moves waaayyyy too fast even after just Hexagon to use any kind of analog control.
 
snoopeasystreet said:
I'm sure there isn't from a mechanical standpoint but because I'm playing it on a phone with a 16:9 aspect ration and the play space is a circle, you're able to see upcoming gaps on the horizontal sides before the vertical ones because you have more screen real estate on those sides. And I understand that's probably why Terry designed it so that the whole play space rotates but there has to be situations where a gap spawns in on the top or bottom and while if you could see it you could certainly get to it but since it's in an unknown area you have to wait until either rotates into sight or gets so close that you can you can now see it and in a game where split second timing is everything, it does make a difference.
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Absolutely, but the game is clearly designed with those considerations in mind. The post-Hyper Hexagonest stage plays on that very deliberately, and with anything prior to that stage reflexes aren't as important as muscle memory.
 
The_Darkest_Red said:
Absolutely, but the game is clearly designed with those considerations in mind. The post-Hyper Hexagonest stage plays on that very deliberately, and with anything prior to that stage reflexes aren't as important as muscle memory.
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The way to fix it would be to highlight what segment has an opening in it by changing the colour of it's background. That solves all the problems I have with foreshadowing.
 
Finally bought it because of this thread and it happens to be on sale in the Play Store too! Thought the shit was ridiculously hard and I could not understand how anyone liked this. I mean I heard about the learning curve and how you get better but I only amounted to get up to like 5.47...

..then I realized that I had started on the hardest level (the green one) -_-


So you mean to tell me there are harder stages than hardest? I ain't touching those ones. After starting on the first level, I was more relieved.

You guys should also check on Trid on the play store/appstore. It's one of those great simple to control and play puzzle games that get very difficult, but you get better at it as you play just like with this one.

EDIT: Oh, well I guess there's a PC version (probably the original of trid: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/608753)

it's definitely superior on mobile
 
reKon said:
So you mean to tell me there are harder stages than hardest? I ain't touching those ones. After starting on the first level, I was more relieved.
Click to expand...

There are 'hyper' versions of the same levels. It just means it starts at the 60 second mark instead of the 0-60 second stage (which is way too slow when you do master the game)


And you can master the game, it looks impossible but it's doable. Trust me. It's like the same experience I had with Guitar Hero...hard to wrap my mind around it but after practice, anything below expert is boring
 
Okay, Hard and Harder I can get 60s+, but Hardest is drving me to the brink of my abilities. Holy shit.

But this game is soooo good, I would play it all day, but after 15min Sessions I am totally exhausted :D
 
I bought it some time that I don't remember, but it's still in my backlog of Steam stuff. I'll take a crack at it one day.
 
There is literally not a single thing I would change about this game that would make it better in any way. It just does everything it sets out to do as well as it can be done.

It's annoying that I had to disable v-sync to get the most responsiveness out of the controls but gameplay-wise it's as perfect as it could be.
 
blamite said:
There is literally not a single thing I would change about this game that would make it better in any way. It just does everything it sets out to do as well as it can be done.

It's annoying that I had to disable v-sync to get the most responsiveness out of the controls but gameplay-wise it's as perfect as it could be.
Click to expand...
Wow you're right, thanks for posting this. I'm now playing Super Hexagon 2: Dog Days
 
The tearing without vsync is hilariously bad on Hyper Hexagonest on my screen. It's the first time I've felt the need for a 120hz screen.
 
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