Super Hexagon undoubtedly engenders that bloody-minded 'just one more go' mentality, though, and you over time you get better at manipulating those delicate controls. You'll die far too many times through rotating too far or not far enough - and there's the continual suspicion that the lack of precise digital feedback is as much to blame as your own cack-handedness. Unfortunately, those skittish controls can't be ignored in such a straightforward game. Get in sync with these beats and you'll definitely improve your chances. This ethos is underlined by the stripped back retro visuals and pounding techno soundtrack, which ties in closely with the swirling, pulsing levels. As with WipEout, You need to be really wired into the game to get anywhere - this is no idle time waster, in spite of its simplicity. The first two are fair enough in a game of this sort. Weaving between these solid barriers is complicated by a couple of things - the sheer speed at which everything happens, the level's disconcerting habit of lurching and spinning this way and that, and some slightly twitchy controls. Needless to say you don't want to get caught in-between. You control a little craft that's stuck in orbit around a hexagonal sun, and the only buttons you have to worry about are virtual clockwise and anti-clockwise inputs.Īs soon as the level starts you'll be bombarded by intricate patterns of barriers all being sucked towards the hexagon.

Every basic levels last 60 seconds, and after 60 seconds, game continues on Hyper mode. Indeed, survival is what Super Hexagon is about in its entirety. There are three basic levels, Hexagon, Hexagoner, and Hexagonest, which difficulties are (resp.) Hard, Harder, and Hardest. If that doesn't sound pathetic enough, getting to level two involves surviving for 20 seconds. Super Hexagon is from Terry Cavanagh, the creator of fiendish retro platformer VVVVVV, so we were prepared for a tough ride (as well as artfully minimalistic graphics) as we waited for Super Hexagon to download.īut nothing can quite prepare you for just how toe-crushingly tough Super Hexagon actually is.Īfter a couple of dozen tries I was finally able to hit level two. They all occur during your typical game of Super Hexagon, but somehow it manages to be really rather fun all the same. These are not the sorts of things you usually associate with a fun video game. We'll know whether Cavanagh has conjured up another winner when Dicey Dungeons rolls onto Steam on 13th August.Repetitiveness. It's certainly a fascinating proposition, and it looks and sounds great too, courtesy of art by Marlowe Dobbe and music by Chipzel. Deck-building rogue-like RPG Dicey Dungeons, the latest game from VVVVVV and Super Hexagon developer Terry Cavanagh, will be making its way to Steam on 13th August.ĭicey Dungeons, which has been doing the alpha dance on itch.io since last summer, sets players - as one of six giant, walking dice - the challenge of conquering an ever-changing, procedurally generated dungeon, fighting foes, finding loot and, ultimately, slaying Lady Luck.Įach of the six available classes - warrior, thief, robot, jester, inventor, and witch - features its own very different abilities, but fights (against the likes of vampiric vacuums and suave snowmen) are generally built around dice slinging and deck building, with roll results being placed into slots that trigger distinctive offensive and defensive abilities.ĭicey Dungeon's Steam page highlights a few of the varied approaches different classes take in their quest to defeat Lady Luck, with the thief able to steal random enemy equipment every turn, the robot gaining dice via a push-your-luck blackjack game, and the inventor destroying their own equipment after each successful battle to get parts for powerful new gadgets.

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