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Bill Rosgen
Singapore
Singapore
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VVVVVV is platforming refined to the basic essence. You are the captain of a ship lost in a strange dimension who must recover his scattered crew using only his ability to move left and right and to invert gravity. The game is refreshingly simple: there are no power-ups and there is no score. You do not even have the ability to jump. This restricted set of options allows for a surprisingly inventive set of levels that are backed with interesting visuals and a brilliant soundtrack. The main difficulty is traversing the maze of hazards without dying too many times to count.
Gameplay:
The central mechanic in VVVVVV is Captain Viridian's ability to invert gravity. Pressing the spacebar while standing on a hard surface immediately reverses the direction of gravity, causing Viridian to fall away from the surface he was standing on. The requirement that the player be standing on a hard surface means that this ability cannot be used to fly, merely to fall in a controlled way. In addition to this flip mechanic, Viridian has the ability to walk left and right, but not climb over obstacles, which requires the (often clever) use of the flip ability.
With these abilities the player confronts two threats: spikes and enemies. The set of enemies includes anything that moves that is not a part of the ship's crew or a platform. These enemies are often fanciful; the player must avoid a bus, yes-men, foes with stop signs for heads, as well as a pack of lies. These foes move in straight lines, often reversing when they encounter an obstacle (or the edge of the screen). The spikes are the main threat to the health of the player. These line the screens that the player must traverse; any contact is instantly fatal.
The player has one helpful ally in the quest to recover the crew of the ship: checkpoints. After each death the player is resurrected at the last checkpoint encountered. These are the key to what would otherwise be an incredibly frustrating game, as they are sprinkled liberally throughout the game. Each screen tends to have at least one checkpoint, which means that the player does not spend an inordinate amount of time replaying portions of the game, as is common with other difficult platformers. Challenging sections usually have a checkpoint at both the beginning and end. This is essential: Viridian will be killed frequently, but the checkpoints result in each death costing the player very little, as the game instantly sets Viridian up for another attempt.
Game Structure:
The game possesses almost no story. You are the captain of a ship that has become lost in a strange and unstable dimension. Your crew has been scattered throughout this dimension and needs to be rescued. The first order of business is to returning to your ship, since Viridian has also been misplaced. Once this has been accomplished, the overworld can be accessed by stepping outside of the ship. This overworld can only be distinguished from the various `levels' by a (comparative) lack of danger. Throughout his exploration Viridian will find several teleporters, which allow the various parts of the world to be revisited and explored with little tedium. A helpful map is also provided.
Exploration of the overworld leads the player to the handfull of levels found in the game, which can be explored in any order. These levels are denoted on the map with blocks of colour so they can be identified. Each level contains a small twist: in one level you must race to avoid oncoming spikes, while in another the edges of each screen are connected to form a torus. These tweaks do not fundamentally change the game but do a lot to keep it from getting repetitive.
The design of these levels is one of the highlights of the game. For having relatively few mechanics, Terry Cavanagh has crafted a brilliant set of levels. The game manages to continually present interesting challenges. Some of these challenges require speed and reflexes, while others challenge the player to figure out how to use the flip ability to get to the next screen or to collect one of the trinkets sprinkled throughout. Perhaps most importantly, these levels contain a sufficient variety of challenges that they do not feel like rehashed version of previous challenges. There is no filler in the game. Nothing is wasted: the player is either attempting to get through a difficult challenge or exploring the overworld to find the next set of challenges. The game never presents the player with a boring hallway or an easy challenge that feels like padding.
Commentary:
Make no mistake: this game is challenging. The helpful counter of player deaths read 1003 by the time I had completed the game and recovered all of the shiny trinkets. While frustration is often avoided by the generous distribution of checkpoints, the basic rhythm of the game is to try something, fail, die, and repeat. Only after several attempts at each challenge is the player likely to succeed, as these often involve getting the timing just right or moving quickly enough to avoid some hazard. In particular, a couple of the optional trinkets are very difficult to obtain.
Compounding this difficulty is that the controls feel a bit odd. Viridian moves quickly enough that it is often not easy to make him stop in the right place. Many of my deaths were for the simple reason that I couldn't always hit the right position when flying through the air, or even when running along the ground. I also felt like the collision detection on the spikes was little off: they sometimes seem a little larger than they are drawn on the screen, though this may simply have been due to my own frustration at my inability to get things right. Despite this, the game seems unrelentingly fair. You know what you have to do, and usually how to do it, it is just a matter of executing correctly.
Ameliorating this difficulty is the fact that the visual style is charming. You may die a hundred times completing some challenge, but at least the colours are bright. It would be easy to make a game with these mechanics dreary by allowing tying the theme to the fact that the player will die hundreds of times, but instead, the theme is pleasantly retro, with brightly coloured backgrounds and enemies and limited to what looks like a 16 colour palette. The art is also simple: large blocks of solid colours keep the art from being busy and distracting.
The graphics are eclipsed only by the excellent music. Magnus Pålsson has crafted a wonderful chiptune soundtrack to match the visual style. The soundtrack is cheery and uptempo, which helps to keep the game from feeling like a monotonous death march to complete some of the more difficult challenges, even though in a literal sense, this is exactly what the game is.
One potential downside to the game is length. The main game can be completed the first time in a few hours, including finding all of the collectible shiny trinkets. The PC / Mac version includes a collection of levels designed by various parties, but in my brief foray into them, I found that they lacked much of the magic of the original set of levels. This is not a game that you will play for 40 (or even 10) hours, and so there are some legitimate questions about the price tag. On the other hand, the game is broken into many short segments: this makes it an ideal to play in small doses over several days.
Summary:
To wrap up, VVVVVV is an excellent platforming exercise with fun graphics, brilliant music, and incredible level design. I would recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind that fact that it isn't that long and that it does require reflexes. This is the best 2D platformer I've played in a very long time.
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Twinge
United States
Berthoud
Colorado
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I'd agree that the initial price of $15 was clearly too high, but the current price of $5 is more than fair for the quality of game. On top of that, you can often find it on Steam sales, and it is also currently available in the Humble Bundle 3 for a few more days.
(You weren't imaging things, by the way - the hit detection is off a bit, and is pretty bad in a few specific areas. Hit detection must be surprisingly hard to do perfectly though, because I see it off in many well-made games like Super Meat Boy as well.)
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Anthony DuLac
United States
Minnesota
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The awful throwback graphics would be enough to drive me up a wall, regardless of clever gameplay mechanics.
Great review though, despite my opinions and tastes in the matter!
Well done and pictures too, very excellent! 
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Twinge
United States
Berthoud
Colorado
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wytefang wrote: The awful throwback graphics would be enough to drive me up a wall.
Personally I almost find that to be a selling point rather than a detractor. And I wouldn't really say its nostalgia - I grew up more in the NES era than anything prior.
However, the graphics are clean & crisp and really help with the overall feel of the game. The graphics, music, and simplistic story all add to the charm and end up giving it more atmosphere than many games with significantly more advanced graphics.
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Железный комиссар
United States
Madison
Wisconsin
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Fantastic review; thanks for putting this on my radar.
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Nick Bos
Denmark
Copenhagen Ø
Sjælland
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I recently bought and played through this game,and wanted to write a review about it, but I see we have basically the same opinion about the game.
I really really really loved it. The music is awesome, the difficulty isn't too high (while still being very challenging, but not undoable), the characters/comments/story is funny. 10/10 for me =)
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