Played through all of the levels in part 1 of this compilation (#-D), and wrote down my times, whether I'd done them before, and my thoughts on each after playing. Under the spoiler are all of those, plus a little color-coding for people intending to play this compilation to see which levels are the best, which are bad, and which ones are really utterly shitty.
Levels in
green are good, levels in
orange aren't much good and Balneor should consider removing, levels in
red are absolute shit and should 100% definitely be removed. Anything in
blue is a problem with the level that Balneor should fix in a later update. Levels with no color are generally unexceptional, they range from "fairly good but nothing crazy" to "barely passable" - see comments for details on those.
(Sorry about the length, distractionware can't do spoiler tags.)
000000 by alek - 10ish minutes. Played before. Fun level, nice use of enemies and graphics but very short and sadly unfinished.
100 Challenges by som1sezhi (rip) - About 1hr30mins. Partially played before. Contains some of the best design of any VVVVVV level but it’s also hard as balls, especially later.
Needs an ending crewmate. Also, the last few levels took up 1 / 3 of my level time - could probably be nerfed.100000 “by pattoo1234” - 15ish minutes. Literally just shitty 333333. What the fuck pattoo. Why is this here?
25 Rooms by Yoshi13 - 5ish minutes. Fun and easy, amusing dialogue. Nothing special, but I like it.
333333 Hard HiFi by Sendy - 50ish minutes. Did the nonhifi hard + hifi easy before. Fuckin’ love 333333, and this is no exception.
336699 by TheEnderCast - 5ish minutes. Really simple and kinda bad.
90% of my gameplay time was one obnoxious DTTHW that kinda ruined the level, should be nerfed. (Starts at “you hate me”).3x3 Spiral by Lollipop - 2ish minutes. Easy and simple, incredibly basic design. Doesn’t really deserve to be on here.
4 People, 4 Paths by Pinkamena Diane Pie - 10ish minutes. Looks and feels like someone's first level but other than a couple of broken trinkets, a lot of the challenges are surprisingly meritorious. Decent level.
400 Rooms by Multiple Authors (who should be ashamed of themselves) - 15ish minutes. "ey jim" "yeh steve" "yannow dat vvvvvv game" "yeh steve i do" "well jim, yannow how most levels are designed to feel good and fun" "yeh" "well what if we made a level that looks and plays as shitty as possible to make as unfun an experience as we can" "yer a fuckin genius steve"
5 Liner by RikkianGD - 2ish minutes. Played before. Simple and easy, but enjoyable enough.
5 Rooms by ? - 25ish minutes. Top 10 times a good level ruined itself by trying to make the ending too hard.
Please, PLEASE do something about that god damn ending.5x5 Spiral by Lollipop - 8ish minutes. Even shittier than 3x3, this level has basically no merit. Definitely doesn’t deserve to be on here.
7 Areas by Lollipop and Veec7 - 35ish minutes. Long and dull. zzzzzz
8888888 by Lenare - Played 45ish minutes before I hit a gravitron fling without saving and gave up. Playing this level was a waste of my time.
[Hacked] by ? - 5ish minutes. Reminds me a bit of Line Wrap, but not quite as good. Still, it’s a lot of fun.
[/] by Bruce Michez - About 1 hour. Played before. I don't need to tell anyone else how good this level is, it’s one of the staples of the community.
[II] Bruce Michez - About 1hr15mins. This one’s even better than the original! Aaaaah so goooood.
[X] Bruce Michez - About 1hr. Not as good as the first two (too much overworld) but still superb.
A Big Challenge by nPOW11 - 5ish minutes. why the actual fuck is this on here, it literally has no redeeming qualities. wtf
A Lab by AYellowPerson - 7ish minutes. A bunch of annoying precision challenges and then it's over. Boo.
A Linear Level by WF - 10ish minutes. Someone's first level. Get this outta here.
A No Story Dimension by DeadlyGoomba - 5ish minutes. Played before. IS fails to make this level interesting.
Needs an ending, or you could just remove the level from the compilation.A Quick Trip by Lollipop - 20ish minutes. Better than Lollipop's others, I guess. Still shitty and boring. Appreciate the modification, but the fact that this level needed it at all kinda says something about how bad a designer Lollipop is.
A Trip to Nowhere by Bearboy - 4ish minutes. Someone else's first level. Seriously, get this outta here.
AAAAAA by Mr_YTP - 3ish minutes. Not as good as later alphabet levels but still good. Always room for some mrytp as a bit of respite through all these levels.
Abandoned Space Station “by pattoo1234” - 15ish minutes. Honestly I get what pattoo was going for here and it's kind of neat, but I don’t want to encourage this kind of behavior from him so I’m marking it orange anyway.
Abducted Once More by Pinkamena Diane Pie and SJMistery - 25ish minutes. Story has a kind of a “so bad it’s good” charm but that doesn't excuse the terrible gameplay. Also, bad design "ironically" is still bad design.
Adventure by Mysterio - 20ish minutes. Feels like it was made in a day. Definitely not playtested. Thumbs waaaay down.
AdVVVVVVenture! By Kley - 5ish minutes. Dunno why I keep expecting more of these, at this point “someone’s incredibly basic first level” is just kinda the norm.
All Alone by Mysterio - 5ish minutes. Easily the worst of the bunch so far, which is actually kinda impressive for a 3x3 map. I get that this is for people who just want more VVVVVV regardless of quality, but I can't imagine anyone desperate enough to do this piece of garbage.
Alphabet City by Ciolf - 20ish minutes. Gimmick is neat and dialogue is fun enough but gameplay is sadly lacking for the most part.
An Honest Mistake by Chap - hell no
Another Dimension by ZUXi03 - 30ish minutes, 18/20 trinkets. Aside from the comical amount of padding, this level is harmless.
Apathy by robloxfan1999 - 5ish minutes. Get it, it’s funny because the designer felt “apathy” about making his level so it came out really terrible.
Arkive's Tutorial by Arkive86 (duh) - 4ish minutes. I mean, it's a decent respite after all those hard levels, but this level kind of has no reason to exist?
Ascension by Pyrite - 2ish minutes. flurp
Ascent from the Dungeon by weee50 - 5ish minutes. Mostly unexceptional, but still better than the majority I've done so far, as weee actually kinda knows what he's doing.
Ascost by Sergione - 10ish minutes. Surprisingly fun and well made. I like it. Ending is cool but
the last bit of IS is broken, needs a fix.B0unc3 by FCreature - 3ish minutes. Wow, this is... charmingly bad.
Back to VVVVVV by FIQ - about 1hr30mins. Played before. I get that it's an important milestone in VVVVVV history but it's just not *good*.
BBBBBB by Mr_YTP - 4ish minutes. Ahhh mrytp, a sour ending and bullshit trinket won't change how much I love your levels. Not your finest work, but still a good time.
Beginner Level by Chip - 2ish minutes. Well it performs as advertised, I guess. Not interesting.
Blocky by Veec7 - 5ish minutes. Can't deny it's visually pleasing and fun to play. Good level.
Blue's Adventure by Frans Hoorn - 10ish minutes. Heh, I love this one. Where is this dude's Oscar, I cried so hard
Bounce Mania by Robert - 10ish minutes. Ehhhh, it's mildly enjoyable I guess. Unremarkable.
Building H by Veec7 - About 1 minute. As simple as they come, and incredibly tiny. Don't see why it's in here but it's harmless.
Burly Fortress by Joseph Cardle - About 1 minute. Manages to pack a lot of bad design into such a small space. It’s almost impressive. Except it’s not, it’s terrible.
CCCCCC (1) by MrXlix - 6ish minutes. Weird (bad kind of weird) dialogue and rather dull/easy gameplay. It’s not AWFUL but it’s not, like, good.
CCCCCC (2) by Mr_YTP - 3ish minutes. Played before. First mrytp I ever did. Love this one.
CCCCCCCCCC Retold by Whirligig - 45ish minutes. Played before; featured by Terry. One of the gems of old, great gameplay and a nicely building story, even if a couple rooms are waaaay too hard. A+
Challenges of Death by Bearboy - 5ish minutes. D- level. Bordering on red.
Cloning Technology by alek - 15ish minutes. It's no Unshackled but alek is still a solid level designer. Fun to play.
Complex Conveyors by Lollipop - About 1 minute. Actually kinda neat, but I’m not sure I’d call it worth featuring on here. Kind of both orange and green at the same time.
Computer Battle by CreepiX - 5ish minutes. This is a fantastic concept, but the actual design is frustrating and finicky.
It's cool but please make it easier/less precise.Computer Crisis by tos tur - 15ish minutes. Poorly made and buggy. Basically the previous level but worse.
Conveyor Vun by Nicholashin - 10ish minutes. Had to use the editor multiple times. “i fucking despise this atrocious piece of shit” is the thing I wrote immediately after finishing it, so uh, that’s not a good sign.
Core Retrieval by uugr - 10ish minutes. Played before (obviously). Yeah this level is a real piece of trash, whoever made it is a dumb loser.
Crash Landing by Mysterio - 3ish minutes. Played before. Incredibly unpolished and basic.
I'd be ok with a modified version of this level on here, but in its current state it's just... waaaay too buggy and ugly looking.Crashed! by QwertymanO07 - Uff-da, this level is good! A shame it crashed partway through and the rest is heavily unfinished.
I'd at least ask for bugfixes and an available ending, just so I don't have to leave it unfinished.Cyberspace by damn it all to hell - 2ish minutes. IDK what this level's deal is or why it's reusing main game rooms, but it's not very good. It's not terrible, but there's really not much substance to it.
Dark Lab by cheesefactory - 40ish minutes. Partially played before. Hoo boy. I'd actually never all-trinketsed this before, and DAMN is it tricky. Easily the hardest level in this section, and quite possibly the second hardest VVVVVV level ever made without fake difficulty (first being Nova, of course). That being said, it's REALLY good. Cheesefactory sure as hell knew what he was doing. rip
DDDDDD by Mr_YTP - 4ish minutes. Played before. What better way to unwind after the horrors of Dark Lab than with a bit of mrytp? This is a good one, got some clever ideas. I love how you get at least one consistent good level per letter, really makes this compilation tolerable. Thanks mrytp
DDDDDDimension! By Lollipop - 25ish minutes. Boring, repetitive design mixed with obnoxious out of sync enemies/pointless backtracking/checkpoint starvation, and lovingly slathered with IS that's barely passable even by the standards of when IS was first discovered. I can totally see why this masterpiece was featured.
Death Dungeon by Zane - 4ish minutes. Well this level is uh, "special". Why is this here?
Deja Verdigris by Ciolf - 8ish minutes. Played before; featured by Terry. This one is decent, don't have much to say about it though.
Destiny by Eric - 7ish minutes. So sick of playing people's first levels. Might have enjoyed it if it wasn't sandwiched between a billion other levels. I dunno, maybe I should be doing this slower.
Devious Dimentions - 4ish minutes. Played before; featured by Terry. Pretty much a ‘collectathon’, but this one is actually surprisingly a lot of fun.
Difficulty Spike by Nicholashin - Played 15 minutes, then decided to stop. God, this level is AWFUL.
Dimension A/D by Veec7 - 25ish minutes. Nice, fun, good easy/medium difficulty. Reminds me of [\].
Dimension ABCDE2 by lamourieparkinson - 20ish minutes. Actually significantly worse than the original, really inconsistent difficulty and some VERY poor rooms. Part of the wave of "look mom, I can IS too" type levels.
Graphic file is missing (??).Dimension ABCDEF by tos tur - 8ish minutes. Not sure what the connection is to the sequel. Decent vanilla gameplay but difficulty is a bit high at times.
Dimension Analog by Veec7 - 20ish minutes. Worse than A/D but still good, any level with "Info Teddy's Nightmare" as a room is fine by me.
Dimension Artificial by KostaRotaev - 10ish minutes. The smallest 20x20 map with 20 trinkets ever, probably. I dunno what to say, the room design was... fine? I mean jeez, KostaRotaev’s writing is just as nonsensical in his levels as his posts.
Dimension Byte by Veec7 - 20ish minutes. Until the final level this was really good, but the overlong repetitive final level was totally unnecessary.
Four Paths by Mr_YTP - 20ish minutes. "Expert" section is a bit frustrating but this is otherwise decent. Good to see mrytp was a good level designer even when he was just starting.
(Also, this should technically be later in the pack, I think...)Dimension Colored "by pattoo1234" - WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS DOING HEREDimension Colour by Mr_YTP - Forgot to record my time. Played before. Arguably mrytp's best work, this level is fantastic. Seriously why the hell is pattoo's shitty imitation here.
“Thedangerzonemoded” by Andrew Taylor - 15ish minutes. This level does genuinely have some cool ideas and I enjoyed a lot of the rooms the first time playing them, but
DEAR GOD DOES THIS LEVEL NEED CHECKPOINTS. Seriously, it's frustrating as SHIT without them. Also fix the title and do something about the “gimme” trinkets, probably.Untitled Level - damn i love this one, 11/10.
Seriously though you accidentally put two "A No Story Dimension"s in here and one of them is just a blank level file. Might wanna do somethin’ about that.Okay, uh, I think that's it. May or may not be doing parts 2-4 of this compilation, I'll try 'em but we'll see how far I get.