Replaying VVVVVV

This is a small post! Just to document a little bit of something I've been doing these past few days that I wanna share. (Oh also, saying it now, it's just pronounced "V".)

There's this game called VVVVVV which I really love. I got it as a christmas gift from a close friend in 2022 and I adore every single part of it! It's a retro-styled (Commodore 64 to be exact) platformer where you flip your gravity to traverse, and really that's it! But the game utilizes that single mechanic extremely well.

Although I generally like the idea of 100%-ing games, especially ones that I really like, VVVVVV's achievements were a bit too much for me and I ultimately just got 2/19. One for beating the game, and the other for lasting 5 seconds in the Super Graviton minigame. Later on I would eventually reach 10 seconds.

Anyways, recently I felt an urge to replay the game again, I think due to the new update (which btw fixed the level editor on MacOS, appreciate that!). For funsies I tried the Flip Mode (which just flips the whole thing vertically lmao) and just played it regularly, but then I actually ended up beating it with less than 500 deaths (365 to be exact), which actually gave me an achievement! (Plus the one for Flip Mode).

After that, I decided that maybe some of the achievements weren't all that bad! A lot of them definitely were, yeah, but I could at least try some!

With one more replay I ended up beating it in 159 deaths, giving me another achievement for beating it in less than 250. I hope to get the one for sub-100 soon, and hopefully I can practice for the final sub-50 one! (The no death run is a bit too much for me though)

The other set of achievements (aside from the Super Graviton which I am not good at) is for time trials of some sections of the game! Specifically getting V-Rank, which is for beating them in a specific amount of time, without dying, and getting all the trinkets (shinies).

I completed the one for the first section, Space Ship 1, which is probably the easiest of them, but it took me about an hour total, mostly due to me struggling with the second trinket.

And just today, I did the one for The Tower as well! I similarly got a bit stuck due to the second trinket, and I also had an embarassing fail literally at the last moment because I dropped too early onto the final platform while it was still covered by spikes. Ultimately, though, I found this one a bit less stressful, probably since I didn't have to worry about speed due to the autoscrolling. I did take longer than Space Station 1, I'd say about half an hour more, but it still was fine!

That's it! Just wanted to share some stuff about one of my favourite games out there. Seriously, if you're a fan of platformers, I cannot recommend VVVVVV enough. It's challenging but not overly frustrating, it's very easy to get the hang of its mechanic, and it has a lot of personality! It's also 50% off right now due to the Steam Summer Sale, so yeah!

(oh also there may or may not be a very silly combo of a song from this game and a famous music video in my YouTube channel hoy hoy)