One Of The Best Indie Games Ever Is Finally On Phones

If you like fun, buy VVVVVV now.

In the saturated market of indie platformers, VVVVVV (pronounced "Vee"—six times over), is one of the oldest, and still one of the very best. Originally released in 2010 for Mac OS by the brilliant Irish designer Terry Cavanagh, VVVVVV doesn't have as high a profile as Super Hexagon, Cavanagh's 2012 twitch masterpiece, but its nearly as great a game.

And finally it's available to an audience commensurate with its quality. Last Tuesday, Cavanagh released a port of VVVVVV for Andoid and iOS, to raves from users.

What makes the game so good? A few things. Cavanagh is a master of difficulty, and he uses the game's main three ingredients—your adorable stick-figure hero, the ability to reverse gravity, and an unreasonable number of spikes—to engage and challenge the player without ever quite pushing her into despair. Also: the music, by Magnus Pålsson. The music is so good you wish it would donate like 10 percent of its goodness to other games, because the game could spare it.

Otherwise, it's just you assisting the wee Captain Viridian on his quest to rescue his lost-in-space companions against the chirping background of 8-bit space. It's hard. It's fun. It's $2.99. Buy it already.

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