In 2018, much like every year, there were numerous amazing games released that many gamers just never got to try out – or even hear about. Sometimes it’s due to low marketing budgets, sometimes poor advertising, or sometimes the game just needs to be tried to understand why it’s fun. Often it's just plain bad luck.
When I tell friends about video game protagonist murder mystery The Hex—the latest game from the creator of the surprisingly demented Pony Island—I always say two things: 1) that they need to play it as soon as they can, and 2) that it’s about something completely different than it claims to be.
I’m just gonna cut to the chase: The Hex is this year’s Frog Fractions, Undertale, or—perhaps most aptly, given that it’s from the same creator—Pony Island. It’s a game that makes confetti of genre conventions and reassembles the scraps into a surprising story about how we interact with games.
Daniel Mullins, the creator of beloved indie horror mindfuck Pony Island, is back with more genre-bending antics. His new murder mystery game, The Hex, has a central conceit with which I became immediately enamoured: all the suspects are stand-ins for different video game genres.
