Theoretically, you can beat Super Hexagon in 6 minutes, the same way that, theoretically, I shouldn't have lost my sanity by playing it, but, y'know, not everything in life is as simple.

Do not be mistaken, even though I only started to log it on here very recently, my history with this game started many, many years ago, 6 to be precise. I would take me 3 years to beat the first level and another to beat the second, but why? I wasn't exactly constantly trying and failing, but rather every time I came back to it I was left broken and shattered, my will in the dust and my determination gone. So, you may think: ''Oh, is the game is actually that difficult?'' and let me tell you one thing you poor, poor sweet innocent soul, it's so much more than that...

I'm versed and have played many considered ''challenging experiences'', but I wouldn't necessarily call Super Hexagon a difficult game, it's more of a living nightmare test of patience and resilience, one that demands skill of course, but it also asks of you to embrace the defeat over and over again, it asks of you all of your mental fortitude; but even in that camp Super Hexagon shines in a different light compared to the others.

Take a game like Jump King example, one that I beat last year. It's demanding and cruel, and isn't scared of making you lose hours upon hours of progress, but there's always movement: even if you fall down, you are always going up, there's a feeling of progression, both venturing in terra ignota and when undoing a costly mistake. Super Hexagon offers an experience I could only qualify as some kind of cosmic horror, an eternal punishment that beats you over an over, and only has voice to remind you of your swindling temporal progress, when you reach further a past try, to tell you you've failed... and that you'll try again.

With each failure you learn, yes, and there can be a feeling of you getting better at it, yes; but more often than not, the satisfaction is tainted by the thought of having to start over, to fail miserably at a specific pattern, to go left instead of right or right instead of left. The game only asks you one think over the course of its six stages: evade the walls for one minute, and in Super Hexagon you either do it, or you don't, and 99% of the time, you don't.

Only three buttons are used: two to move right or left and one to restart once you've failed. Each level new obstacle, each time new ways to be a triangle for the slaughter, maybe the hexagon will change forms, or maybe the walls will unite in such a way they demand a specific dance, maybe the way the screen turns will change mid movement and cut most of your speed, or maybe the colors and music will unite to overwhelm your senses. One way or another, you are here, in this eternal dance without law or sense, and it's painful as it is captivating, is stressful as it mind-bending, is requires skill as it is sometimes RNG depENDENT GODAMNIT WHY DID THOSE PATTERNS JUST CAME ONE AFTER THE OTHER AND IT HAD TO CHANGE DIRECTION TO CUT OFF MY SPEED FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- cough... I apologize.

Super Hexagon demands a lot, sometimes even more than you can possibly give it, but that may be part of the joke, an unfunny joke for everyone except for the game itself. Once you think you got it and beat a level, the Hyper stages come and, especially the last one, Hyper Hexagonest, a name I'll never forget despite wanting to, it will destroy you without compassion; it already reminded you at the end of Hexagonest but it reminds you once again: there's no hope, and it's at this exact point where I began to really begin think that this was the personal hell of the shape I was controlling, and when the one question the game asks you each time you lose: willst thou suck?... or willst thou soar?

Once you finally prevail, the game stops, and for a moment, the things that have been tormenting you each attempt, the shape that has been at the center almost taunting you... it gives you a final spectacle, your true final reward: for once, they surrender to you, and everything you have overcome unites to perform this kind of concert that only asks of you to relax... you have done it, and now the game asks no more questions, yet one doubt emerges within you: Was it worth it?

...maybe? I don't know, it must have been clear that I've gone absolutely bonkers, I don't know if in condition to answer that.

Simple, yet flawed, yet fascinating, Super Hexagon is a game that I can only recommend depending on your level of masochism and patience that you can have with it; it will absolutely push you till its entirety is engraved on your brain, and that is a sacrifice I cannot say is or should be for everyone.

It's kinda poetic and even a bit sad to finally finish it, a game that in a way has been with me for so long, only for me to do an existentialist dumb rant on it and say it's only kinda good, but there may be a bit of a stupid beauty on that. A game that made me despise it a time, while others I only saw the sensation of victory and overcoming the impossible.

There may be meaning in the meaningless after all.

It's hard by nature to put an out of five rating for games like these. Basing it off gameplay alone might be good, but by nature its a very non-rating friendly game.

It's unreasonably hard, very old, and sometimes incompatible to play with modern specs, being locked in 60 fps feels horrible nowadays.

However, I believe this game has an underlying narrative that is only apparent if you stick it out through the pain of studying and playing this until the end (yes there is an end to this).

Through this, this was the first game to open me up to the idea of pushing through regardless of difficulty. It taught me that something awaits you beyond the pain, and its beautiful.