[Review] VVVVVV

Developed By : Nicalis Inc Published By : Nicalis Inc

Release Date : Nov 17, 2017

Mike Benton

The uniquely named VVVVVV brings the story of Captain Veridian, the captain of a ship that has crashed and sent all of it’s crew members scattering to different locations and dimensions. Not posessing the ability to jump, as the Captain, you must manipulate gravity to move around, winding your way through the games crazy puzzly sections, avoiding death as much as possible to resuce your crew.

VVVVVV‘s world will feel familiar to anybody who played old-school computer games. The graphics are quite blocky, but this retro throwback definitely feels like a game of today with it’s gravity warping puzzles. You’ll need to jump and…well fall all over the place to navigate the world’s map.

Some areas of the map are extremely simple to navigate, with big open voids that you can just sail on through. Once things start getting tricky, though, you’ll know you’re getting close to locating a crew member. These areas where the crew members are located will put your aim and your timing to an extreme test. At times it will be simple, simply flipping gravity to bounce between the ground and ceiling to get across the screen. But then come the spikes, they line the ground, the ceiling, even the walls, meaning your landings need to be placed perfectly. That is, if you’re allowed to land at all, because some sections will come with a thin white line across the screen. Passing through this line will automatically flip gravity on you, and these free-floating sections are some of the most difficult in the game.

And if you make it through the whole game thinking it’s a breeze, try out the No Death Mode and see how far you can get. Replay certain sections of the game in a competitive time-trial mode to see how well you can beat the clock. Or dive in to the countless levels that are created by other users, and see if you can beat their challenges.

While there isn’t a lot of depth, nor is this game very long, VVVVVV is a lot of fun. It’s a great throwback to retro 8-bit games, and is most definitely one hell of a challenge for fans of puzzle games. Nicalis does a great service giving you this game to add to your Switch library.