In December 2009, a beta version of VVVVVV which had been given to donors was leaked on 4chan. The game was first shown publicly at the 2009 Eurogamer Expo, which gave Cavanagh the opportunity to collect feedback from players. Cavanagh wrote that VVVVVV, unlike some of his previous work such as Judith and Pathways, would not be a "storytelling experiment", but rather "focused on the level design". The game had been in development for two weeks, and Cavanagh estimated that the game would be finished in another two, "but hopefully not much longer." A follow-up post published in July 2009 included screenshots of the game and an explanation of the game's gravity-flipping mechanic. Ĭavanagh first unveiled VVVVVV on his blog in June 2009. In an interview with, Cavanagh said that he was interested in using this idea as a core concept of a game, something he felt other games which include a gravity-flipping mechanism had never done before. The gravity-flipping mechanic of VVVVVV is based on an earlier game designed by Cavanagh, entitled Sine Wave Ninja. The player's goal, as Captain Viridian, is to rescue the missing crew members and find the cause of the dimensional interference. Upon returning to the ship, the Captain learns that the ship is trapped in an alternative dimension (referred to as Dimension VVVVVV), and that the ship's crew has been scattered throughout this dimension. The crew escapes through a teleporter on the ship however, Captain Viridian becomes separated from the rest of the crew on the other end of the teleporter.
The player controls Captain Viridian, who at the outset of VVVVVV must evacuate the spaceship along with the captain's crew, when the ship becomes affected by "dimensional interference". Due to its high level of difficulty, the game world contains many checkpoints, to which the player's character is reset upon death. These are situated inside a large open world for the player to explore, spanning more than 400 individual rooms. VVVVVV contains eight main levels, including an intro level, four levels which can be accessed in a non-linear sequence, two intermission levels, and one final level, only seen outside Dimension VVVVVV (in a "polar dimension"). Later areas introduce new mechanics such as moving floors or rooms which, upon touching one edge of the screen, cause the player character to appear on the other side. The player uses this mechanic to traverse the game's environment and avoid various hazards, including stationary spikes and moving enemies. This feature was first seen in the 1986 8-bit game Terminus. Unlike most platforming games, in VVVVVV the player is not able to jump, but instead can reverse the direction of gravity when standing on a surface, causing Captain Viridian to fall either upwards or downwards. The "C" icon to the left of the spike pit is a checkpoint, which the player is returned to upon dying. In this room, Captain Viridian must avoid the red spikes and green ghost.
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