What does the letter V six times sound like when said really fast? Probably a chainsaw, but never mind.

The point is that I played and finished a game called VVVVVV today (not in the same day; that would be a record). Outside of I Wanna Be the Guy, I don’t think I’ve died so many times in such a short time span – the final game results told me I had 539 deaths in about one-and-a-half hours of work. Finding some of the crew members in the early going is easy, but some rooms (especially the ones where you’re bouncing up and down all over the place due to anti-gravity fields) can be brutal.

The first time I rescued three of the guys, I thought I had done something wrong because the third person I rescued was the last one on the list, and that I was supposed to get them in order. Apparently that’s not the case, and I got them in order for my second go-round, and I still got transported to that weird dimension where I had to help one of them cross a rather treacherous path. There are two levels like this; one when you rescue three crew members, and another when you save four of them.

But joy of joys, there’s still bonus material to tackle. Trying the game from the beginning sounds like a good idea, if only to cut down on my death count, but I don’t expect to do too much better than I did this time around. I could probably go back and retrieve the last three trinkets I missed, two of which are hidden in the hardest-to-find spots in the game.