Voraciously vociferous oh I can't do this
Well, best of luck.One of the testers for Crystal Towers 2 gifted me VVVVVV by Terry Cavanagh QC over the holiday, and I blasted through the main game in a couple of hours. I had always meant to look at it, but had been put off by the price (it was originally $15 but is now hovering around $5) - however, even though it doesn't last very long, it's extraordinarily well put together.
The game's premise is very simple - it's a platform...ish thing, not quite falling into typical of the genre because you can't jump. Instead, you can switch gravity from down to up and back again while you're standing safely on a floor, and the rooms are based around variations on this theme - they start off simple but soon get spectacularly clever, having you navigate past wires that turn you over, conveyors, rooms that lead back to where they started, and various other obstacles as you try to avoid being impaled on the spikes from which the game gets its name. And there are a lot of them about - we're not in IWBTG territory here because the checkpoints are generous and you will never be smashed by a suddenly falling moon, but the level of challenge is high enough for you to really feel very proud of getting into a new room or collecting another shiny thing.
And the whole experience is wonderfully retro-styled throughout. This isn't a game that just uses the recent popular trend of having graphics that are a bit blocky - everything about how it's presented reminds me of the Commodore 64 era, in details like the names for the rooms and the abstract Manic Miner-like enemies, to the soundtrack that's like some of the best of David Whittaker. In fact, the range of expressions on the little men (consisting of :D and D:) also put me in mind of ZZT, as did the game's layout of having individual "levels" that seamlessly led off a hub area - a relationship that was only strengthened when I came across a room called Sweeney's Maze, which featured marching thetas and capital Os, which I can only now see as Centipedes.
I just can't get over how clever the whole thing is - it just sets up some basic mechanics and then uses them very well. There are points where you're accompanied by one of your crew members, who always runs towards you at full tilt unless you're on the ceiling - and you think that's all that you'll be asked to contend with, until something comes up that also makes use of the way that he'll only bother moving if you're a certain distance away from him as well. At one point, it even uses the way that the screen switches between rooms as part of the puzzle, and it's a really wonderful moment when you work out what you're expected to do. Followed by a dreadful one when you realize what's now involved in pulling it off.
It's definitely worth playing. And there's a Flash demo of it here!