Indie Darling VVVVVV Gets Mind-Breaking Fan-Made Upgrade

[John Funk]

Indie Darling VVVVVV Gets Mind-Breaking Fan-Made Upgrade

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If you thought the gravity-warping VVVVVV was tough before, then this fan-made take may make you feel a little bit ow my brain.

Terry Cavanagh's VVVVVV [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/events/ids2010/7084-Indie-Developer-Showcase-Day-Two-VVVVVV] is one of our favorite indie titles here at The Escapist. It's an old-school platformer stripped down to the barest, purest essentials of the genre focused on a single, awesome gameplay mechanic. So, when I was first linked to the above video, I simply thought, "Hey, someone redid VVVVVV with more modern graphics. I guess that's kind of cool."

Then, I think my brain exploded. I could barely handle VVVVVV when it was in two measly dimensions and involved switching gravity up and down. This doubles that, and now I'm feeling something throb in my forehead.

Sadly, this project - codenamed VVVVVVx - is not a real game. It's a concept animated in Maya by a Terry Cavanagh fan who goes by the moniker Roxfox, and it doesn't look like it will exist in any form other than this video anytime soon.

Perhaps it's for the best after all. Can you imagine what a pain in the neck the camera would be?

(Via RPS [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/10/25/super-vvvvvvboy/])

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[Onyx Oblivion]

You know...

I wonder what VVVVVVXXX would be like...

 

[MindBullets]

You know...

I wonder what VVVVVVXXX would be like...

I'm sure deviantart can sort that out for you.

On topic, I dread to think what the Veni Vidi Vici level's 3D equivalent would be. This was fairly awesome though.

 

[strum4h]

That is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Aside from some of the Portal 2 trailers.

 

[Rad Party God]

That was great!, shame it's not becoming a fully fledged game anytime soon. Also I'm quite glad, I wouldn't even play the game properly if the camera angle were behind the shoulder third person style. But there's another platform game, I don't quite remember how it's called, that let's you switch the environment in 3D style, if the game were made in the vein of that one, while keeping the 2D side scroller perspective, I would buy it on day one.

 

[LeeshaJoy]

It's not quite the same thing, but the Flash game Run [http://www.kongregate.com/games/player_03/run?sfa=permalink&referrer=LeeshaJoy] has similar gameplay mechanics to this video.

 

[BlueInkAlchemist]

Yeah, this would break brains. Also, VVVVVV is now on my Steam wish list. Played the demo and had to force myself to stop. I'm still at work.

 

[Snork Maiden]

The graphics style seem to lose a lot of it's charm by going 3D :/

 

[Firetaffer]

You know...

I wonder what VVVVVVXXX would be like...

I'm sure deviantart can sort that out for you.

On topic, I dread to think what the Veni Vidi Vici level's 3D equivalent would be. This was fairly awesome though.

Veni Vidi Vici will probably be easier, considering you can jump on walls....

I mean just jump on the wall, jump down, and you're practically beside the trinket .

 

[Wing Dairu]

I wonder how many people realized how similar Master Chief looks to that little guy.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

On topic, I dread to think what the Veni Vidi Vici level's 3D equivalent would be. This was fairly awesome though.

Veni Vidi Vici will probably be easier, considering you can jump on walls....

I mean just jump on the wall, jump down, and you're practically beside the trinket .

Well, obviously not an exact duplicate of the existing rooms into 3D, but something of comparable difficulty that takes advantage of the additional options/challenges available with an extra dimension to work with. Unfortunately nothing in this little clip seems to really have any particularly inspired layouts/design beyond just being an obvious and straightforward extension of the 2D gameplay into 3D. You could potentially do a whole lot of crazy stuff, but it wouldn't really work at all without a fixed camera of some sort or some other type of similar restriction, both for the sake of being able to tell what the hell is going on and to prevent you from trivially bypassing everything by just rotating your character and/or view so "sideways" is a new direction.

There's shitloads of those games where you switch gravity around, it's nothing new at all. It also looks reallllyyy simple.

It is simple, at least in concept, which is kind of the point. It's a retro C64-style game (which someone's actually been working on porting to run on a real C64, which is pretty awesome). It's very polished, though, with great music and some extremely clever (and brutally hard) level design in places. Many of the "shitloads" of similar games came about or got attention because of the success of this one, but few of them are as well done (although there are some good ones out there).

 

[himemiya1650]

That game amused me, if it weren't on my comp I'd throw it out my window 3-dimensions are insane.

 

[Delusibeta]

Yeah, this would break brains. Also, VVVVVV is now on my Steam wish list. Played the demo and had to force myself to stop. I'm still at work.

I really shouldn't point out that it's £3.20 (or $3.49) from here. [http://www.getgamesgo.com/catalogue/game/vvvvvv] But I just did. Failed.

 

[Bloodstain]

I remember playing VVVVVVERTIGO on Kongregate... x)

 

[Bigsmith]

Or well, I could just go play mario galaxy. Sorry, played the Demo for VVVVVVV and didn't like it.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

If they, somehow, through some miracle/hard work/deal with an ancient demon (pick any one) managed to make that happen with a real, working, non-aggravating camera, the sound of heads exploding would echo like thunder across the lands.