Yes, I understand that the title might not make any sense at all, but let's go step by step: Super Hexagon was one of the best games of 2012, and of course, one of the best you can buy today. The group "Club del Jaqueo", based in Buenos Aires, decided to take the Super Hexagon concept a step further and created "Super Ventilagon", an Arduino-based variant that uses a spinning fan as its main display. Want to build one? Careful with your fingers…
About Super Hexagon
Super Hexagon debuted on iOS on August 31, 2012. In less than a year it reached Windows, Linux, OS X, Android, and BB10, becoming one of the most popular titles. It even made it to the final of the 2013 Independent Games Festival, where it lost to another giant, FTL: Faster Than Light. Its official price on Steam and the official site is about three dollars, though a trained eye can find it for half that amount through deals and coupons. The original experience is great, but what if you could build your own Super Hexagon in a completely different way? Yes, the verb is "build," because this clone of Super Hexagon doesn't run on a computer.
Super Ventilagon
Super Ventilagon is a project created by the group "Club del Jaqueo" in Buenos Aires. The game's code is stored in a small Arduino Nano, which in turn has a series of 32 LEDs connected in a line. The LEDs act as a "screen," but they need a little help, which comes from a fan. Both the Arduino, the LEDs, and the battery are attached to the fan's blades, which spin at one thousand revolutions per minute. The solid appearance of the "screen" is achieved with a Hall effect sensor that measures the fan's rotation speed and allows the LEDs to blink appropriately to create the optical illusion.
Build It Yourself
All the documentation you need to build the Super Ventilagon is available in a repository on GitHub. As always in these cases, anyone can modify the code to their liking. Perhaps the only limitation of Super Ventilagon is that it doesn't reproduce the hexagonal shapes of the original game; however... that's what the original game is for, right? If you have an Arduino on hand and an extra fan at home, what are you waiting for?
