Review: VVVVVV

What I love about the 8-bit fetishism trend in the indie game developer community, in recent years, is how it forces the focus onto the bare essentials. Game creators no longer concern themselves with creating graphically rich, lush 3-D worlds, immersive sound or breathtaking combat animation. With relatively few pixels and resources to spare, they instead focus on economy and excellence in level design.

Sometimes these indie games focus on one game mechanic and exploiting it to its maximum potential. Like the ability to rotate the play area in Jumpman, or the ability to reverse time in Braid. VVVVVV has one mechanic and one mechanic only— the ability to flip your character's orientation of gravity, so he can walk on walls and ceilings. In fact, flipping is the only way you can control your character, other than moving him horizontally across the screen. Through hundreds of brutally difficult and brilliant screens, VVVVVV utilizes this single idea to amazing effect.

It’s clear that Terry Cavanagh, the mind behind VVVVVV, possesses a special sort of genius. His 2009 effort, Don’t Look Back, imbues enough emotion within its spare graphics that it’s the closest a video game has come to bringing me to tears. Judith, a collaboration with Stephen Lavelle, combines a creepy cinematic narrative with Cavanagh’s trademark 8-bit aesthetic. However, for VVVVVV, Cavanagh’s first for-pay game, the story takes a backseat to the level design. You'll be flipping to avoid everything from your nightmarish, Dadaist enemies (since you can't jump over them) to the many spikes inexplicably littering the walls. You're sure to die early and often, but Cavanagh's kept this in mind, providing a generous amount of checkpoints throughout any level so that you'll only have to redo a few seconds of gameplay at most with each respawn.

If you can't tell already, I think VVVVVV is definitely $15 well spent, especially since there's a ton of replay value. After you've completed the game, there are bonus "trinkets" you can collect and time trials you can complete to unlock special game features. If you don't feel like working to unlock special game areas, there's a special menu where you can do so with no hassle. Cavanagh's philosophy seems to be that since you paid for the game, you should have the right to experience all of it whenever you feel like doing so. Definitely a refreshing point of view after playing through so many games with pointless achievement systems.

If you're interested, you can play a demo of VVVVVV here, and make sure to check out Don't Look Back here.