There are a number of different patterns that are arranged randomly. Super Hexagon’s levels, to the best of my understanding, are pseudo-random. And working my way through each level, a pattern emerged. In the three weeks I’ve owned it, I clocked about 26, so averaging over an hour a day of Super Hexagon alone. The main narrative arc ends, and I’m surely not going to play nearly as much Super Hexagon in spite of the strange fact that it is, in its strange, high-pressure, rapid-fire way, a very relaxing, entrancing, experience to play it moment-to-moment once you hit a certain level with it.Īround the end of January, I grinded a lot of hours on the game to get to the point of being able to beat it. My experience of Super Hexagon, narratively rendered, has changed with me finishing the game per stated goals, unlocking all the achievements, and seeing the ending. That’s the crescendo, the climax, it’s all denouement or trying to grind the global leaderboards from here. "Game Over" just means I get to try again.Last post, I wrote about the narrative of Super Hexagon, not that it has one, but the intensely subjective one that it enables. I didn't want to succumb to that same life-ending panic. I didn't want crushing failure to be the focus of my daily life.
The tire and the panic becomes their entire world. While it’s far easier to just give up completely, you won’t get where you want to be if you do.Īfter a few days of playing this game, I understood instinctually why squirrels run under car tires. It takes a certain amount of bravery to keep moving in the face of increasing difficulty. If you focus on your obstacles, you’re likely to hit those instead. If you focus on your goals, you’re likely to hit them. As a result, I started losing contact with them, which was the very thing I was trying to avoid. I thought they would see me the same way. In real life, back when I saw myself as a failure, I started alienating myself from my friends. But if I focused on my goal, the openings, I ended up getting through them more often. In Super Hexagon, I realized that every time I focused on the obstacles in front of me, I'd usually hit the obstacles. Self-motivation gives you a sense that you are in control of the situation and, therefore, confidence. This may sound silly, but just telling yourself "I can do this" can really help. I'm talking about responding to panic with self-motivation. And I'm not talking about literally getting into fist fights. It takes a lot of self-awareness and willpower, but you can respond to panic by fighting through it. Some people take martial arts to learn this. You can actually teach yourself to respond better in fight-or-flight situations. If you're caught in a negative feedback loop and not doing anything to make your situation better, that is a form of learned helplessness. If you keep messing up at 10 seconds in, your mind may actually be blanking out every ten seconds out of habit. In other words, you'll actually start getting worse at what you're doing if you keep doing it.
Eventually, you're going to have to take a break or else you will fall into patterns of failure. When you’re going at a million miles a second, sometimes the most unbearable thing is having to stand still for a moment. Lock into the patterns that help you succeed and ditch the patterns that don't. And the more you succeed, the better you get at succeeding. Every mistake you make, you learn to avoid that mistake next time. This is a gamer 101 tip, but it's still a good one.
I began to see the lessons in the game as lessons I could apply in my own daily life. So of course, what could be better than playing a game where everything literally spirals out of control?įor that reason, the lines between game and reality blurred. My life felt like it had spiraled out of control. It turned out to be the most appropriate game for me at the time. I bought Super Hexagon on a holiday sale over a year ago, back when I was unemployed and could only afford a game that was on sale at the time for about 30 cents or so.