9. super hexagon
the gap between beginning super hexagon and completing super hexagon constitutes 6 total minutes of content.
you're a triangle and your goal is to not smash face-first into a wall. you can move left and right. the world can also move left and right. it's colorful and loud. every level is endless, and the shape of the playspace changes every 10 seconds for the first 60 seconds. the game calls these shapes point, line, triangle, square, pentagon, and hexagon. when you reach hexagon (in other words, surviving for 60 seconds), the level is considered beaten. there are 6 levels. they are hexagon, hexagoner, hexagonest, hyper hexagon, hyper hexagoner, and hyper hexagonest. 6 levels, each 60 seconds. therefore, the game is 6 minutes long.
obviously this doesn't account for a player who loses. which you will, often. the game is difficult. each difficulty jump manages to make all the previous difficulty jumps feel like child's play. years ago, i finished every level in the game sans its final and most difficult, the aforementioned hyper hexagonest.
probably about a month after i moved here, i spent a week or so in an extreme depression. i only ate after my roommates had gone to work or gone to bed. i would otherwise lay in bed, except when i went outside for a cigarette. i hated my roommates for being nice to me. i hated myself for everything i had ever done up until that moment that did not involve video games or narcotics. i fantasized in this time about how i could move back to new york, where i could go, who could house me. i tried to imagine an environment where i could live alone and smoke inside. living alone and smoking inside were my primary concerns.
this mental space enabled me to lock in fully to hyper hexagonest. 1 night, for about 9 consecutive hours, while my roommates slept and i lied in the daybed in the corner of their living room that acted as my bed/dinner table/nightstand/work desk/dresser, in the dark, gripping my steam deck, i threw myself again and again at this challenge, all while it was tantalizingly within reach. i surpassed the 50 second mark within the first 20 minutes, and then i'd inch closer, hours between each bit of progress, until eventually i sat at 59 seconds for the last several hours of the endeavor. funny stuff. when i finally finished it i was elated for a second, but then i started feeling very very bad. i can't remember why, but i suspect it had to do with the constant badness i'm feeling at all waking hours.
early on, i thought to record my journey through hyper hexagonest. 3 and a half hours in, my sd card ran out of space. i haven't watched it back so i really don't know the contents therein other than that, for the most part, i'm playing hyper hexagonest. i don't particularly recommend you look at it, but you can if you want to.