The Hex

The Hex is a meta-narrative mystery game built by Daniel Mullins (the developer behind Pony Island and Inscryption) and structured as a tour through six entirely different video-game genres. The setup: in a creaky old tavern called the Six Pint Inn, in a forgotten corner of the video-game universe, a storm is raging. An anonymous phone call to the barkeep suggests that someone in the inn is planning a murder. The six patrons — all of them video game protagonists trying to escape their pasts — are the only plausible suspects.

The gameplay rotates through the patrons and their flashbacks. Each character is from a different genre tradition — a JRPG hero, a fighting-game protagonist, a strategy commander, and other archetypes — and exploring their memories means playing through extended sequences that genuinely commit to each genre's mechanics. The Hex doesn't just reference these games; it builds working versions of each one and uses them as story chapters.

The mystery accumulates across the flashbacks. As you explore each protagonist's past, you learn what brought them to the Six Pint Inn, what they're hiding, and what each of them is genuinely capable of. The identities of the would-be murderer and the eventual victim emerge from connections only visible after multiple chapters — and the larger metanarrative the game is actually telling reveals itself slowly, in ways that recontextualize earlier sections.

The runtime is around six hours on a first playthrough, which is short enough to leave you wanting more and long enough to fully develop its structural conceit. For anyone who liked the layered storytelling of Mullins's other work, The Hex is the project where the formula started — and it remains one of the most genuinely surprising indie games of its era.