A retro-styled platformer with extreme challenges that are often as satisfying as they are difficult.
The story starts with you and your crew flying in space. Suddenly your ship comes in contact with some sort of interference, which causes the ship to begin crashing. In a panic the whole crew attempts to evacuate via a teleporter. The downside is that only you, Captain Viridian, showed up on the other end. The other 5 crew members were sent into 5 different locations in dimension VVVVVV. It is up to you to use the various teleporters located throughout the dimension to find and save your comrades.
The first thing you are likely to notice as early as the main menu is the style. It is extremely retro. The graphics look like something from back in the Atari/Commodore 64 days, with very simple shapes and only a handful of colors. The background also tends to parallax a certain pattern depending on where you are, but does not go more advanced that than. The sound effects and music follow this format. The music feels more NES-style than the graphics do, but the chiptune-esque music is fairly varied and nice enough to listen to. There's also only a handful of sound effects, which is fine since for this game there isn't much needed. This allows you to focus on the game itself, as well as letting you enjoy the music.
The gameplay consists of one major thing: jumping. The game is a platformer with the controls being up, down, left, right, and "action" which mostly makes you jump. The difference is that Viridian doesn't use the traditional jumping. Instead, he flips and begins flying towards the ceiling. This essentially is a switch of how gravity affects you. If you jump off the floor you'll end up walking on the ceiling and if you jump off that, you'll end up walking on the floor. The entire game is based on frequently switching between the two to get through each room, which consist of spikes, enemies, and platforms.
Though the premise is simple, it is the layout of the spikes, enemies, and platforms that creates the challenge. The spikes cover the rooms to nearly crazy levels, and the enemies (though unarmed and only move back-and-forth) cause you to look and think before you leap. This is because a lot of the rooms have small areas you can land on with precisely timed jumps as well as midair control to land on them. Other rooms require falling (either up or down) through numerous corridors while sliding left and right to avoid groups of spikes. If you hit one, you die and start at the last checkpoint you ran through (little coin-looking objects marked with a "C"). You have infinite lives, but the game rewards you with an in-game trophy if you complete the game between 0 and a few (hundred) deaths. Later in the game, the puzzles change the formula slightly, adding in lines that act as a trampoline that reverses the direction that you're falling. Other more advanced rooms have multiple exits leading to different parts of the same room; a layout style that would make M.C. Escher proud.
The challenges in the game range from the easy to flipping-a-table difficult. This is not for the casual gamer, or those that get annoyed easily as you will die many, many times. In my first play through I had a total of 1554 deaths. This included many attempts to acquire up to fifteen of the twenty collectibles scattered throughout the game, which are generally guarded by the tougher rooms. Though I did die a lot, I often felt that with each death I was gaining some kind of progress, which made it enjoyable. When I finally solved the room I spent so much time trying (and dying) on, there was a good sense of accomplishment. I won't say that I didn't get frustrated with some of the rooms, but with those rooms I always came back and, eventually, bested them. Sometimes, when I felt a little stuck, the name of the room (displayed at the bottom) gave me a subtle hint... or it laughed at my pain.
On top of the main game, there are other various modes. These include: time trials, one-death mode, flipped mode, and a few others. These all contain the same concepts and gameplay as the main game, just more bit-sized pieces and can be good to sharpen your abilities.
If I had one complaint about the game, it is the feeling that Viridian is on ice whether he is in the air or on the ground. Since the keyboard input is considered either on or off, there is no way to inch to the edge of a platform except to tap the button like it's on fire. This can lead to you letting go of the button but still drifting off ledges into spikes, or slide while falling into spikes. This was probably a big cause of my deaths. Once you learn to control it it's not as bad, but it can still get you from time to time.
The only other major drawback is that after the Steam version of this game updated to v2.0, I lost all my saved data. This likely happened because a major change in the game's engine came with the update, deeming the original save files unusable. This is a bit worrisome, but with the now "proper" save system, future updates should not have this issue. There is also talk of a save exporter coming to allow an old save file to be transferred, but I haven't seen any further details.
Overall, I found a lot of enjoyment in VVVVVV. It wasn't as sadistic as "I Wanna Be the Guy," but it definitely is not easy. I keep finding myself loading up the game and playing through some part of it, and though it can be frustrating, I still enjoy it. If you have some spare money to drop into this and are feeling up to a strong challenge with simplistic gameplay, this game is for you.
And if you've been wondering what the name VVVVVV means, I'm pretty sure it's because all six crew members' name starts with a V or it's the name of the dimension. All I see is a bunch of spikes.