Hex Tunnel

How Hex Tunnel works

A small triangle orbits a hexagon at the centre of the field. Walls close in from the edges, each one a ring of six segments with at least one missing. Hold left or right to circle round, line up with a gap before the wall arrives, and slip through. Touch a wall and the run is over. Your score is how long you lasted, in seconds — and ten is a lot.

There are only two inputs, and you hold them rather than tap them: the triangle turns at a fixed speed for as long as a direction is held, and stops the moment you let go. The skill is in reading the next wall early and committing to the shorter way round.

The walls come in designed patterns rather than at random: a single gate, gates alternating sides, a spiral that walks the gap round one segment at a time, a long corridor, and others. Each pattern is drawn turned to a random side and sometimes mirrored, which is why the same few shapes keep surprising you. The walls also speed up the longer you survive, from 95 to 170 pixels a second.

Every wall can be passed

A pattern nobody can clear is the one way a game like this can be unfair, so it is checked rather than hoped for. Each pattern is tested at the top speed, the hardest it is ever seen at: the test tracks every position that survives one wall, widens it by how far the triangle can turn before the next wall arrives, and requires some of it to land in that wall's gap — for every pattern, turned every way and mirrored. Between patterns there is always time to turn half way round, so wherever the next gap is, it can be reached.

Spinning and Still

In Spinning mode the whole field turns, reversing every few seconds and speeding up as the run goes on, and it pulses gently. That is the game's character, and it is also exactly the kind of full-screen motion that makes some people feel ill.

Still mode locks the camera and drops the pulse. The walls, the gaps and their speed are identical, but a field that holds still is a genuinely easier game, so it is offered as its own mode with its own best time rather than quietly substituted. If your system asks for reduced motion, Hex Tunnel starts in Still mode, and the camera stays still even in Spinning mode.

Why it plays the same everywhere

The game advances in fixed steps of a sixtieth of a second and the drawing interpolates between them, so it plays identically at 60 Hz and 120 Hz. Switching to another tab and back cannot hand the game a huge jump either: the time a single frame may advance is capped. Everything runs in your browser; your best times are saved on this device only, and it works offline once the page has loaded.

Where the game comes from

This is the mechanic of Super Hexagon, Terry Cavanagh's 2012 game. Game rules belong to nobody, but a title, a palette and a typeface do, and none of Super Hexagon's are reused: the name is a plain description and the colours are this site's own.