Brought to you by the letter C and the numbers 6 and 4

Last spring I mentioned Don't Look Back, created by Terry Cavanagh. Well, there's good news as Terry's first commercial game, the interestingly titled VVVVVV, is now available.

It provided me with an excellent evening's entertainment - for less than the price of three pints and a bag of crisps (£9). Overall it's simple, coherent, lovingly presented (with nods to Dizzy and other C64-era classics) and difficulty-wise (with the exception of one blip) perfectedly pitched. For those with truly amazing platforming skills there are time trials and the challenge of completing the game with the minimum number of deaths. I took around 660 to complete the game but that was up to over 1100 by the time I'd bagged all twenty collectable trinkets. A couple of them will really test you and the "Veni, Vidi, Vici" series of rooms are already going down in gaming legend. Tough, but worth it for the elation you feel when you nail it.

Superb is too weak a word to describe the chiptune soundtrack, that is handily available here, Eurogamer have a more detailed (or just longer?) review here and there's a good interview with Terry here. One question remains - is the game named for the six crewmembers in the game, the look of the "www" in a URL or the ever-present rows of spikes that will be your doom so many, many times?