Video Game / VVVVVV Custom Levels

Since an in-game Level Editor was added to VVVVVV in version 2.0, it was inevitable that many players would create their own little maps with it and share them. Later, when it was found that a bug in the editor's simplified scripting system could allow creators to use any command from the main game, custom levels suddenly became far larger with more in-depth plots, more possibilities within cutscenes, and even new mechanics solely using the internal scripting.

The standards for player-made levels only shot higher when version 2.2 released, which allowed custom graphics, music, and sound effects to be inserted, and then even higher in 2018, when the VVVVVV Discord server started holding levelmaking contests, leading to levels with their own completely new characters, graphics, and even soundtracks.

Some of these entries are just as long as the main game, and some even longer, so it's hard to exactly call them "levels" at this point.

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Levels:

General

• Added Alliterative Appeal: This is a given, looking at what game these levels are made for. For the most part, every single original character that's the same species as the main crew has a name that starts with V.
• Apocalypse How: Class X-5 is a common one used in level plots, particularly to poor Dimension VVVVVV, and it's implied that it'll happen to the crew's home dimension if they don't do something about it. Notably, Class Z via a Reality-Breaking Paradox happens at the end of The Cuest.
• Auto-Scrolling Level: Averted, as opposed to the main game; since autoscrolling rooms are hard-coded into the main game, player levels simply can't use them without extensive modding.
• Brutal Bonus Level: Every one of these can count as this, but notable mention goes to the eighteen that are packaged with the main game, as well as Nova.
• Excuse Plot: Since the internal scripting system is rather hard to get used to for making cutscenes, many of the custom levels sport this type of plot, if any.
• Filler: A common sight in many of the larger custom maps, which usually feature their own overworlds similar to Dimension VVVVVV's.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Pressing 'r' to die and respawn is an extremely broken feature in custom levels, especially during cutscenes that move the player around.
• Interface Spoiler: When levels or areas disable the map on the menu, it's frequently done to hide nearly identical copies of rooms that are used alongside the "gotoroom" command to create the illusion of a single room that changes, either in cutscenes or during gameplay.
• Justified Save Point: An entire levelmaking contest was held in 2018 with the theme that the crew (sans Captain Viridian) tries to figure out what the checkpoints do, as a reference to the similar moment with Vitellary in the main game.
• Promoted to Playable: Starting in Dimension Open, quite a few levels have made use of a command to change the player character's color in order to allow playing as crew members other than Viridian, or completely original characters.
• Shout-Out: Naturally, the levels being fan works, these are all over the place, particularly in room names.

Levels included with the main game

Eighteen levels that Terry Cavanagh saw fit to bundle with the game due to their quality. Notably, the Nintendo Switch and 3DS versions include a level, Gordian Knot, that other versions do not have.

Generation 1 (2011 to mid-2012)

The first generation of custom levels. Due to the simplicity of the editor's default scripting, these levels rarely had cohesive plots, and more often than not were simple linear challenges like the main game's separate areas.

Generation 2 (late 2012 to 2016)

Defined by the advent of internal scripting in Back to VVVVVV, this era of levels saw users experimenting with the newfound levelmaking capabilities in order to do things like seamlessly warp between rooms, or make NPCs more dynamic.

Subpages:

• Bracketed Backslash

Generation 3 (2016 to 2021)

After Overdose opened people's eyes to the power of custom assets in 2016, levels began to see a dramatic increase in quality and depth. This movement was only furthered by the periodic levelmaking contests that the VVVVVV Discord server began hosting in 2018.

ATMOSFEAR

An entrant of the 2019 VVVVVV Discord level contest, ATMOSFEAR by Team Verdigris is a satire of horror levels created for VVVVVV, following Chief Verdigris as he investigates the disappearance of the crew and a mysterious murderer out to get them, snarking at the Cliché Storm of horror tropes along the way. Here is the latest version of the level.

ATMOSFEAR contains examples of...

• And Now for Someone Completely Different: At two different points, the game switches to Professor Vitellary and Officer Vermillion respectively for their own segments, though Verdigris interrupts Vitellary's segment not long after it begins and forces the game to move back to the main narrative.
• Blatant Lies: The bridge troll puts emphasis on how he lost fifty coins in Vermilion's section, when you can only find thirty in the area. The remaining twenty are located right behind him.
• Cliché Storm:invoked Lampshaded:
  Verdigris: god i don't know how much more of this this shit i can take. jesus it's like all the most fuckshitting terrible level cliches all came together in this massive maelstrom of idiot fuckery for idiot babies
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Trying to clip through the first line in the temple's final puzzle room causes Verdigris to no-clip through the floor and enter the Backrooms as a gag. It can be escaped by pressing 'R' to respawn, though.
  • If invincibility mode is enabled, Verdigris's dialogue will change accordingly in the ending, referencing the retextured spike tiles that are normally used to kill him in the scene.
• Expy: The Yes Man temple is one to the Mirror Temple from Celeste, though in appearance only.
• Shmuck Bait: Walking towards the killer at the beginning of the chase has Verdigris call out the player for it, before kicking you back to the title screen. Better hope you made a quick save beforehand...
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: One of Verdigris's characterizations in this level.

Don't eat yellow snow

Don't eat yellow snow, posted by user pixelator on August 5, 2018, was the second-place entry in round 2 of the VVVVVV Discord's levelmaking contest celebrating 100 members. In it, Professor Vitellary has invented a force field device, but it requires a potent power source to work, which he doesn't have. After coming to the conclusion that raw elecanium from dimension Zepharace could fit the bill, he sneaks the ship out on an expedition to said dimension to find some.

The level can be downloaded here, and the original forum post containing the level can be found here.

Don't eat yellow snow contains examples of...

• Big Damn Heroes: The rest of the crew arrives at just the right time to stop Vondo in his tracks before he gets away with the force field device, and possibly also their ship.
• Call-Back:
  • Vitellary's transmission ringtone is the same one first heard in Dimension Polar.
  • Just like in the main game's intermission 1 cutscene, Viridian gets noticeably uncomfortable when Vitellary expresses curiosity at the fact that the ice isn't melting in direct contact with molten magma.
  • Vondo, an OC from both of pixelator's previous levels, makes a return. Judging by the dialogue, he recognizes Vitellary as belonging to Viridian's crew from those encounters, too.
  • At the end of the level, the crew combines to beat up Vondo in the same way as in the main game. In addition, the sequence immediately prior is similar to a moment from the ending of Lemons for Victoria.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: One at the end of the level happens between the combined crew and Vondo, in the crew's favor.
• Hailfire Peaks: Zepharace is completely frosted over on the surface, but as Vitellary goes deeper into the ice caves, he encounters magma alongside the ice.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Since Vitellary took the ship to Zepharace alone, the crew manages to take a chain of space-buses and other public transportation and reach the dimension in record time.
• Painting the Medium: In the opening cutscene, the other crew members interrupt Vitellary by obscuring his text box with their own ones.

Generation 4 (late 2021 onwards)

The release of version 2.3 was notable for removing almost every arbitrary limit from the level editor: trinkets and crewmates are capped at 100 per level rather than twenty, levels can have unlimited scripts as opposed to being limited to 500, both the per-room entity caps and global entity caps (which would crash the game if exceeded) were removed, and the maximum size for tile sheets was removed. Naturally, this opens up even more possibilities with the level editor than there were before.

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