| Type | Game |
|---|---|
| Date | 2014-04-10 |
| Series | Spring Thing 2014 (9) |
| Tags | interactive fiction, cyoa |
The Adventures of a Hexagon is a CYOA-style story, implemented as a set of HTML files, about a day in the life of a hexagon. Geometrical shapes, we learn, can escape from textbooks when no one is looking and go off to have their own adventures.
Hexagon is very short. There are only 38 pages, each containing at most a few short paragraphs of text, some of which are extremely similar. I completed every path in about five minutes.
The story is also extremely lacking. Essentially, the PC, a hexagon, can choose to go to either the Museum of Geometry or the Polygon Village, either with his friends, Pentagon, Heptagon, and Octagon, or, in the latter case, alone. Ultimately, if you choose any option other than joining with a group of other hexagons, the PC is killed. If you try visiting the village with your friends, the only path to a good ending is for the PC to abandon his friends to the tender mercies of a gang of polygons, and find a group of other hexagons to join with. If there is a theme to this story, it is that one must seek out others like oneself--that those who are different are not to be trusted, and one cannot be happy among them.
But I fear I'm giving the game too much credit, saying that. A sample of the game's text should illustrate it better. If the PC goes to the museum and, through a series of pages which basically amount to 'specify your path', chooses to look at the triangle exhibit, you are presented with:
You take a closer look, and you realize that the triangle has a little needle point sticking out of it. But it's too late! BLZZZT! It sticks the needle in you, leaving a great big hole in you. Game over! I guess you can never trust a triangle!
That's it. The end. Pick the pentagon exhibit, and you get:
You get your six sides together and hop up on the ledge. The five pentagons say, "You have one side more than all of us! Har, har, har!" You hear a sound like that of a broken record as you are dragged to the wave-pool. Broken record sounds are always a bad sign in a dramatic scene. You are now being dragged underwater by the fierce five-siders. You have been drowned by the pentagons!
Other choices end with the hexagon killed similarly suddenly. Only choosing to view the hexagon exhibit doesn't end in the PC's death:
You approach the hexagons, and they all say, "Hello, Sixling!" The other five hexagons then open the door, and you enter the building just as they do. A late 1990s dance song starts to play as the hexagons hit the dance floor. You join them in a disco-style up-beat dance.
Congratulations! You got to dance with some polygons! You finally found a path that wouldn't get you smashed to pieces by other polygons! You won!
The other 'good' endings are almost exactly the same, having the PC dancing with other hexagons.
The whole game is just a set of menus leading to the PC either being killed or joining other hexagons and dancing. It's a story, generously speaking, but the non-ending parts of the story would probably fill less than half a page.
The Adventures of a Hexagon is not worth the few minutes it takes to complete.
Play time: about 5 minutes.
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Tyler Zahnke | Author |