VVVVVV is the name of the game.

I'm pretty sure it's actually pronounced "The Letter V Six Times", but that's beside the point. Or is it the point?

I've been replaying a handful of smaller games (Portal, Braid, VVVVVV). They may be small games, but they have BIG IDEAS! There was specifically one challenge in VVVVVV that I promised I wouldn't subject myself to when playing it a second time. Quickly: In VVVVVV, you can only move left or right, and change gravity up or down. The whole game is tied to these simple mechanics.

This part is so insanely difficult. The first time I did it, it took me approximately 550 tries over the course of a half-hour. But the instant retry aspect of it is what keeps it from becoming overwhelmingly frustrating. If you had to wait a few seconds after you died, or had to answer a "Retry?" question, the game would be broken.

The game's creator, Terry Cavanagh, said that he wanted the challenges of the game to stand alone. He wanted the challenges themselves to the the only barrier. No artificial barriers like a finite number of lives. You can make the simplest game incredibly difficult by limiting the number of lives or tries you get. In this way, VVVVVV is only about the obstacles, and nothing else. This kept me completely captivated despite the fact that I died 1200 times by the end of the game. 1200 times!

This is the reason I completed that ridiculous challenge again. I knew that I would never get too angry. But an interesting thing happened. I was able to beat it in about 100 tries this time. This was because I still had the muscle memory I cultivated the first time through. This challenge was so ludicrous that the only way to beat it was to program the movements into your fingers. By the end, I could probably do much of it with my eyes closed. Like playing a musical instrument, it was all about rhythm and timing, and that slowly meshed into my fingers over the course of 550 attempts. It also wasn't quite as thrilling the second time, though. The more insurmountable the task, the greater the euphoria once completed. It wasn't so insurmountable this time.

I urge everybody to play this game. It's fantastically fun, and available on PC and Mac. At least try the demo out!
VVVVVV