glory glory

[Wisp]

this is an 8x8 open-world level we made when we were 13, slightly touched up and coupled with music we listened to when we were 18 (which is right now lol ). every room is filled, there are six crewmates, and there are 18 trinkets.
like 6x7 planet this should evoke some nostalgia for vvvvvv in ye olden days none of us were present for when internal scripting sounded like the name of a sci-fi novella at your local book swap that shut down due to covid.
unlike 6x7 planet it's rather absurdist and you're best off comparing it to something pilotredsun would cobble together at 2 am if he had school in the morning and was 13 years old.
see attachments for download.

screenshots:


-diane of wibi

[Wisp]

further info! this is structured like a 2.3 level so you should just be able to drop the zip right into the levels folder. this includes the custom music

[Balneor]

Cool level indeed ! It definitely has character of its own. And the overall level layout is interesting as well.
The "music" is honestly not bad for what it is. Definitely works out

Biggest gripe I had though was with the gameplay. Main culprit : severe lack of checkpoints in most of the overworld.
There are only like 4 c-spots in that area, and given you generally have to backtrack through several screens before getting to another checkpoint or anywhere else, this had me being frustrated.
And it isn't made easier with the entire level being a maze of some sort, and not stranger to death-based exploration.
I was shocked for instance that you had to walk through at least 7 screens of nothing off the c-point in (1,3), just to reach a slightly tricky part (6,2), then another one immediately after (6,3). That's just unreal. And that was the closest checkpoint, which I didn't know about before getting the trinket...

If that could be fixed, by at least putting one checkpoint in those room pockets that have none (1,2), (6,3), (6,5)... I'm sure the level would become a lot more bearable, in a welcoming way.

Still though, pretty impressive level overall  Was certainly glad to be able to play it, and enjoying a slight trip to the past along the way.

[Wisp]

thanx 4 playing!!! the music was definitely chosen to go with the general "weirdness" of the level. song info is available if you look at the ogg metadata after extracting it from the vvvvvvmusic.vvv with songflip or ved. there's also alternate versions of the songs if you have mmmmmm enabled

re: checkpoint starvation: there were several things we changed about the level when we were tidying it up and preparing to post it (such as rewriting scripts to refer to viridian as they/them, making the bottom-right portion of (2,2) and (6,2) possible, and (7,2)) but the bizarre placement of checkpoints took some weird, nostalgic place in my heart. it was some sort of very conscious choice, even knowing lack of checkpoints is typically a design flaw, to place the checkpoints so arbitrarily such that rarely you'd have to do a series of detours from a distant checkpoint to get back to where you were before you died. and this could just be the nostalgia speaking, but i feel like it sort of adds to the absurdist feel of the level? with checkpoints seemingly ignoring where they'd actually be most wanted and manifesting anywhere.
(6,2) in particular... making the bottom path possible may actually have been a mistake? originally the spike spam was so dense it was plain impossible, but there's actually a completely different way to get the trinket at (7,3) which i won't spoil. so making (6,2) impossible and not relevant as a challenge such that the closeness of the checkpoint didn't matter may have been some stroke of genius that we ignored during our revision... whoops

glad u enjoyed and thanks for replying

-diane