We’ve talked a lot about the video game industry in past reviews, but we never took a deep analytical dive into what it truly is. What sets the standards for this industry? Who are the true dominators of this galactic box of virtual marketing and why are they in the place they are now? Are the developers more in control over the games they slave away making each year, or is it the publishers who get the game out in the market and make sure their names are heard. None of these questions have truly definitive answers, but it’s fascinating to see all of the possible answers to choose from. The video game market is growing and expanding each day, and with it comes the idea to push forward. To see what lies ahead and how far we can go until the funding for our projects run dry and we are all forced to get new jobs. To do the most we can until years from now another major video game crash occurs and it’ll take another big innovator to remind us all what the purpose of video games was from the first place. Fun. To express ourselves and our creative vision through virtual media. To create art that can easily be accessed by anyone around the world as long as they have a controller at hand. We don’t always have to shoot for the stars, but what we can do is try our best and deliver an experience. One to look back on.
I start the review off like this, because The Hex by Daniel Mullins perfectly encapsulates what the video game industry is and has come to be. A marketplace of variety, ideas, and competition. Daniel Mullins has certainly been knocking it out of the park these last few years. Pony Island was this mind boggling trip to save your soul from the devil while also learning how to code and edit a video game. Inscription, his most recent outing, was not only a compelling deck builder roguelike about managing resources but also a horror mystery that used metanarrative in such a way where it added to the sense of mystery. His last game, The Hex, was his most narrative driven project and the one that delved into the deepest themes. It wasn’t philosophical or got us to change how we viewed our lives, but it certainly left an impression on how Mullins told his stories. By cleverly uses genre fusing gameplay mechanics and metanarrative to connect players with what could have been average storylines with a bunch of fourth wall breaking.
I’ll try to keep my review on The Hex as brief as possible, but what I can tell you is that Mullins hooked me in. I’ve been meaning to try his previous releases ever since I beat Inscryption, and The Hex was the next great place to go as I was told it was incredibly underrated. There were a few doubts when looking on the surface, like the cheesy concept of six video game protagonists gathering at an inn and learning their tragic backstories. However, The Hex somehow exceeded my expectations and found a way to connect all six narratives and deliver a satisfying conclusion to what could be seen as the many tragedies we’ve seen from the video game industry coming together all at once. This review will be unraveling the entirety of The Hex and spoil certain moments, so if you haven’t already please check the game out. It’s not that long anyways. I think it’ll be well worth your time and it goes for around ten bucks these days. Today we’ll be talking about why The Hex is quite unique and why it deserves your attention.
Story
Immediately once we boot up the game we are dumped at the front doorstep of The Six Pint, a small little inn which is set upon a cryptic hill. Upon entering the inn we are greeted by the owner Reginald, an old man who looks like he has seen better days and navigates around using a wheelchair due to his inability to walk. Reginald gets a mysterious phone call telling him that someone at the inn is secretly a murderer, and the murder they’ll be enacting will commence soon. Reginald grows suspicious of who the murderer is and struggles to find out who since there are six patrons staying at the Six Pint that stormy night. Each of the six patrons are video game protagonists who used to star in fantastical releases, but terrible events happened in the past to cause them to lose their jobs and end up at the inn. To figure out who the murder is, Reginald assigns small tasks to the patrons and slowly we uncover the memories of each one.
The six protagonists include a cartoonish platformer named Super Weasel Kid, a buff fighting game character by the name of Chef Bryce, an elf-looking wizard named Chandrelle who hails from a fantasy RPG, tactical wasteland survivor Rust, guns blazing space marine Lazarus, and a mute faceless figure from a walking simulator. All six protagonists have troublesome pasts, and some seem to know each other but would rather unveil how they know each other at the moment. Through their memories we learn of the game’s universe and what a universe it is. Turns out the real world and video game world are two separate realms. In the real world games are developed and released by real people, but in the video game world the way games are made functions more like Hollywood. Characters are picked off from the street and asked to participate in projects. If a game series is successful or the contractors find another game series these characters can star in then they’ll continue participating in production. However, if there is no longer any use for these characters or they violate company policies then they are thrown away.
The biggest game company in The Hex is GameFuna and they are responsible for funding and distributing games. Well in the real world at least. It’s not until we play as Chef Bryce that we learn and get to discover more about how GameFuna works in the video game world. How Irving, the manager of GameFuna, disrespects those who work for him. How he manipulates his workers and can easily replace those fallen stars and ideas. How half the problems the six protagonists face in the present can be traced back to the actions of Irving and what he did to make money for the company. If we pay attention further we learn of a man named Lionel, someone in the real world. How he too could be connected to six protagonists’ drastic pasts and be the creator of their games. I could dive in further, but I do feel like this story explanation is getting more confusing the more I explain it. Anyways, good luck going down memory lane.
Gameplay
The Hex is a mix between multiple game genres and at times fuses them together, but ultimately it’s a narrative driven adventure game with light puzzle elements. When you experience the memories of the six protagonists you go through the genre they hail from. The platformer has you jump across gaps and navigate around obstacles. The brawler pits you against opponents to beat up. The RPG wizard has you go through turn based combat and level up. The wastelander has tactics based combat similar to classic Fallout titles, the space marine has top down shooting sections, and the walking sim figure goes through a walking sim of course. Each of the genres play out as you’d expect, but there are occasional twists to switch up the gameplay structure.
Some of the protagonists starred in other games and carry over their memories of being part of these different genres. The wizard lady used to be in a fighting game before being taken out, and there’s a boss during the RPG section where she must use her fighting game skills while her companion performs attacks from a distance. The companion who aided the wizard lady is now the space marine, and there’s a section where he must navigate fragments of the RPG world and use his current high tech weaponry to quickly cut down foes. I said that The Hex is a puzzle game and while there’s not a hefty amount of puzzles it certainly does challenge you. Learning where to strike enemies during the fighting game segment, re-align lasers in the shooter section, and beat a boss who covers the entire battlefield with gas during the wasteland tactics section but slowly unveil more safe tiles to stand on when you lure him towards you. The Hex knows how to make use of rules and gimmicks during each six memories, and luckily these memories never lag on too long. Once you think a character’s memory is dragging out it ends and moves on to the next one. The Hex knows how to keep good pacing and it does it so that it can deliver its story and reveals. Besides that there isn’t much else I can say about The Hex. Hopefully you can piece together the past and figure out who the murder is within the Six Pint. A painful truth to find.
Thoughts
The Hex is a decent concept on the surface, but upon playing the game you realize there’s a little more to it. The game does quite a bit right and at times it introduces intriguing ideas that couldn’t have been executed anywhere else. I will say though that not everyone is going to like The Hex. The premise is already weird and cliche enough, but due to the linear narrative structure of the game there isn’t really a reason to go back to play it. There aren’t any hidden endings to uncover, and with the short runtime it makes purchasing this game difficult. However, the short runtime means The Hex doesn’t overstay its welcome and gets the job done effectively rather than having a long runtime slowly deteriorate the quality and appreciation value of this game.
I like the genre fusions they had during certain segments and being able to connect how they are able to do so using the narrative. I like how with the wastelander section you learn that modders are adding cheats to the game and you utilize these cheats during combat. Figuring out what cheat combination to use and how to effectively wield them. I like the idea of swapping between cheats. It’s like changing the playstyle of your character without having to reallocate or reroll your character, or swapping on the fly during a stealth game or immersive-sim. It’s not incredible or expanded upon, but I’d actually love to see a game where you have to utilize systemic exploits to make impossible fights more manageable. I also liked the coding section later on where you had to align certain programs to characters, so that they may perform their actions. The puzzles themselves were fine, but it was during the genre fusion between RPG and programming that I found something interesting. Changing the numbers of your health, damage, and mana so that you can either recover more or deal more damage during a single turn. Meaning you won’t get cut down as easily or quickly speed up a fight. This would also be a cool idea to explore upon, because as i said earlier it can transform a difficult fight into a more manageable one.
The Hex can be interesting at times with how certain mechanics are shown and introduced, but overall each genre section is shallow. That’s not a bad thing, because the main priority wasn’t to have innovative gameplay design. However, it means nothing in The Hex is really a challenge or demonstrates where the genre currently is. The platforming in the platformer section is basic, and the fighting game segment had to work around limitations so that enemies easily signal their attacks and you just strike them where they aren’t guarding. A couple of other complaints would include the shooting and RPG section lasting a tad bit longer than they should have, and the shooting section specifically having this weird difficulty curve whereas everything else was easy so that the narrative could be told. Final complaint is that the art style doesn’t look great. Not a major priority either and it’s not the worst pixel art out there, but good lord these character models look awful. Like they were rushed or a sixth grader was detailing them, but that was the point. To show the cheap tricks devs have to take to focus on other parts of their game.
The Hex is a video game about video games that isn’t really a good game in of itself, so why am I still recommending this to you either way? It’s because of the story, the reveals, and how Daniel Mullins demonstrates how to properly use metanarrative so that it adds something to the narrative. The Hex starts off as a series of origins stories, but what it eventually leads to being is a revenge story. Not one of the six characters hating the others, but the six characters banning together so they can go against evil. An evil that doesn’t lurk over their shoulders, but they have engaged with it in the past. That evil being the video game industry and how it corrupts. The Hex addresses the biggest problems found within game development and publishing, and how greed and terrible corrupt tactics could transform good intentions into bad ones. Paying a streamer hundreds of dollars to sell your game even if it’s bad. Releasing an unfinished game and going to war with modders for using your property even though they actually make it playable. Blaming the bad qualities of your game on your workers even though you are treating them badly and enforcing crunch on them. Running off with the money when you fail to pay said workers. Calling your audience and fans stupid because they didn’t praise your work and you think you are " a misunderstood artist". In the end, it was about how a faithful indie developer got blinded by money and popularity. It’s not incredibly compelling, but The Hex does address interesting real world events. Ones we have actually witnessed from companies such as Ubisoft, Naughty Dog, and more.
The Hex is worth it just for the story and presentation alone. It’s good for if you have nothing else to play and can probably be beaten within a single day or play session as it lasts around only four hours. It's short, but pretty well executed and I think the leap in quality and production Daniel Mullins took between Pony Island to The Hex would signal his future success with Inscryption. Still my favorite game from Daniel Mullins by the way. In the end I am going to give The Hex an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
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