HExistentialism

hExistentialism is an iPhone and iPod Touch game developed by Ayumusoft. hExistentialism was released on May 22 2009, and has received a warm response by many app review sites and blogs, such as The Gadgeteer, and App Scout. hExistentialism is a puzzle game where the user spots similar or dissimilar patterns on hexagonal tile with an abstract symbol.
Gameplay
The goal of hExistentialism is to reach hExistence. hExistence can be achieved by scoring a sum (score) of 37800 in hard mode. The only way to score a sum 37800 is to reach an “inErtia” of 27. inErtia is increased by one every time a combination is found. Every combination adds (100 x inErtia) to the accumulated sum (score). When a mistake is made or the “nExt hEx” button is used and there is a combination on the board, inErtia will be reduced to one. Combinations are found by selecting 3 hEx whose four attributes are either all the same of all different. The attributes consist of hEx (tile) Color, Symbol Direction, Symbol Fill, and Symbol Number. The game play moves at a thinker's pace. Allowing the player to stop and interact with the real world around them and the drop back into the game.
Art Style and Design
The design and art style was loosely influenced by the priniciples of Existentialism. It is an open-ended game driven by a player's choice of which tiles to combine to maximize the sum; The ultimate outcome, however, is still at the mercy of the order in which random tiles appear and how they complement the tiles already on the board. The color scheme opted away from the bright color schemes of the majority of other puzzle games.
Development
Development began in late February of 2009 by Ayumusoft, founded by Dani Zuniga, Simar Bal and Cael Gustavson. The company was
built on the principal that giving ownership to those working on a project not only spurs dedication but creativity. Ayumusoft’s Vision was to create games that would constantly be evolving through user requests. Early development was fraught with personal hardships and business issues with Apple developer support but The Ayumusoft team persevered and released hExistentilsm 1.1 on May 22nd 2009.
Releases and Updates.
hExistentialism 1.1 was released on May 22 2009. Version number 1.1 was used because the game received a major update to its original design. The Ayumusoft team decided to redesign the hExistentialism after a few weeks of playtesting revealed that the tutorial in version 1.0 was not adequate to teach the diverse demographic of the iPhone.
In July 2009 hExistentialism 1.3 was released with an accompanying free version. The update includes easy and medium modes allowing players to work up to a hard level. Difficulty levels were added because initial reviews suggested the iPhone Ecosystem housed a set of users that play iPhone games for very short spurts of time, and the game would not appeal to the user that can not make progress over a short game session. The developers added easy and medium modes to help these players achieve the pattern recognition needed to play in hard and try to reach hExistence.

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See Also

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