Daniel Mullins makes the most intriguing games. The first game of his I played was Inscryption, and it quickly became one of my favorites. (Go play it without looking up anything.) This game is one of his first and I’ll also be playing Pony Island soon because I can’t get enough. The way he tells stories really hooks me. I initially had some trouble getting into The Hex because of its flash game look, but it became a nonfactor once the greater mystery started to be unveiled.

You follow the game characters of a lone developer named Lionel. He had some successes and failures throughout his career and you get to relive those as the game characters themselves. It’s a very self-aware narrative with some dark undertones that felt authentic. Though the story is told through the eyes of Lionel’s game characters, their struggles with their self-awareness, regrets, sanity or motivations really hit home. I don’t want to get too much into the story, but you start out at an inn in the woods where all the characters are at a bar. In each section you play as one of these characters and explore the inn. At a certain point, you will experience the characters’ rise to fame (and/or fall from grace), then you’ll move on to the next one. Every game that you play has different mechanics as you start with a platformer, then move to a fighter, then an RPG and so forth. Most of the mechanics of these games are super simplistic, and that was one of my issues with it initially. It didn’t pull me in until the near end of the RPG section as things were starting to pick up in the overall narrative. Once it did though, I was invested. The revelations within really give you some perspective. I know there are multiple endings to this game, but I can’t help but feel like I got the one I deserved. You don’t get to make a lot of choices, however, I feel responsible for what occurred.

It’s a story that takes a lot of twists and turns, but an enjoyable ride with some relatable life lessons sprinkled throughout. Every character had a moderate amount of depth, without being too shallow or too fathomless to follow. If you boil it down, they’re all just trying to find out who they really are. Are they just creations of man, with no real purpose or something more? The self-discovery journey and the player’s role in it makes for another one-of-a-kind experience from Mr. Mullins and I can’t wait to jump into the next one.