Vex 6

Vex 6 looks like a simple stickman runner from the thumbnail, blocky character, flat platforms, nothing that suggests difficulty. It plays like a precision test that expects you to memorize a saw’s swing arc down to the frame. That gap between first impression and actual difficulty is why the game has stuck around as a genre reference point rather than a quick five-minute distraction.

Nine Acts and the Vexation Stage That Closes Each One

Vex 6 organizes its levels into 9 Acts, and every Act ends with a dedicated closing stage called Vexation that’s noticeably tighter than what led up to it. Where the earlier stages in an Act let you settle into a rhythm, a Vexation level tends to chain several distinct hazard types back to back with almost no breathing room, which makes it the point where most players’ completion streak actually breaks.

Finishing an Act’s normal run unlocks its Hardcore version, same layout, same platforms, but with faster-moving traps and less margin for a mistimed jump. It’s not a separate set of levels so much as the same geography played at a harsher pace, which is part of why Vex 6 rewards players who learn a level’s layout rather than just its difficulty on a first pass.

Wall-Jumps, Slides, and the Rest of the Stickman’s Toolkit

The stickman in Vex 6 can run, jump, slide, wall-jump, swim, and carry objects, and the game is built around chaining those moves together rather than using them in isolation. A wall-jump that looks purely decorative in an early Act becomes mandatory a few stages later, when a gap is too wide to clear with a straight jump and too tall to climb any other way.

• Sliding lowers your hitbox to clear low obstacles and gaps under swinging hazards without breaking your run.
• Wall-jumping chains off vertical surfaces to reach ledges a standing jump can’t.
• Swimming sections change the movement rules entirely, trading platforming precision for current and depth management.

New players often try to power through with jump and run alone, which works for the first Act or two before the level design starts demanding the full moveset in combination. Carrying objects adds a slower, more deliberate layer on top of everything else, since the stickman’s usual speed and jump height both change while holding something, and a few sections are built specifically around that reduced mobility rather than around the fast traversal the rest of the game trains you to expect.

Reading Spinning Saws Before They Read You

Spinning saws are the most common hazard across Vex 6’s Acts, but they’re rarely placed in isolation for long. Later levels combine them with razor-sharp spikes and disappearing platforms, so a jump that would clear a saw safely on its own can land you directly on a platform that vanishes half a second later. Cannons show up in select Acts too, firing on a set interval rather than reacting to the player, which makes them a straightforward memorization problem once you’ve died to one at least once.

The disappearing platforms are the hazard players complain about most, since the visual cue for when a platform is about to vanish is subtle enough that a first-time run through a section almost always costs you a life just to learn the timing. Cannons are comparatively more forgiving once you’ve clocked their firing interval, since that interval never changes, but placing one right after a blind jump is a favorite trick in the later Acts.

Checkpoints and the Cost of a Wasted Death

Green flags scattered through each level mark checkpoints, and touching one instantly saves your progress at that point. Die afterward and you respawn there rather than at the start of the Act, which keeps failed attempts from feeling like a full reset. In Vexation stages especially, checkpoint placement becomes part of the challenge itself, since the gap between two flags is usually where the level’s hardest combination of saws, spikes, and platform timing lives.

What Makes the Hardcore Versions Different

Once an Act is cleared, its Hardcore counterpart becomes available, and the difference isn’t cosmetic. Traps move faster, timing windows shrink, and sections that were forgiving on a first clear stop giving you room for a mistimed slide or a slightly late wall-jump. Players who found a comfortable rhythm on the normal Act often have to relearn its timing almost from scratch in Hardcore mode, since the same layout at a faster pace changes which move you need to commit to and when.

What’s the difference between a normal Act and its Hardcore version in Vex 6?

The layout, platform positions, and general path through the level stay the same, but traps move faster and timing windows shrink, so a jump or slide that was comfortably timed on the normal run has much less margin for error in Hardcore mode.

Why do I keep dying on the same disappearing platform in Vex 6?

Disappearing platforms give a subtle visual cue right before they vanish, and most first attempts through a section land on one just as it disappears, since the timing isn’t obvious until you’ve seen it once. Treating the first attempt as a scouting run rather than an actual clear attempt tends to fix this.

Do I need to master swimming sections separately from the platforming levels?

Yes. Swimming sections in Vex 6 change the movement rules entirely, trading the run-jump-slide rhythm of the platforming stages for current and depth management, so the timing habits you build in a normal Act don’t transfer directly.

What holds Vex 6 together across all 9 Acts is that none of the individual moves, the slide, the wall-jump, the swim, ever get simpler once you’ve unlocked them. Vexation stages and Hardcore versions just force you to combine them faster, which is why a stickman running past a few saws on a flat platform ends up being one of the more demanding parkour tests in its genre.