VVVVVV, Terry Cavanagh's gravity-flipping platformer, is a decade old, and to mark the occasion Cavanagh has decided to make it open source. The news was revealed at AGDQ today, and you can get your hands on the source code now via GitHub. 

In case you've somehow avoided it for a decade, VVVVVV's a smart, minimalist platformer with one simple but brilliant twist: instead of jumping, you need to reverse gravity. It's tricky but never cruel—you can turn off death entirely if you want, and there are plenty of checkpoints. 

Both the desktop and mobile source codes are available, and Cavanagh has provided some notes to accompany them. 

"I think even a peek of the source code will quickly reveal that VVVVVV is not a technically sophisticated game! Even by the standards of self taught indie devs, it’s kind of a mess," he warns. Little does he know, it's all equally indecipherable to me.

"I was young and more interested in getting something on the screen than implementing it properly," he writes. "Maybe the best thing about VVVVVV’s source code is that is stands as proof of what you can hack together even if you’re not much of a programmer."

 Check out the notes on Cavanaugh's blog.

‘Metal as fuck’ is a modern colloquialism used to indicate whether an object, idea, or action is verifiably rad. But calling something metal means much more than ‘cool, but edgy’. It’s a phrase that should be reserved for only the raddest and the saddest of shit, to be wielded precisely—break glass in case of impossible geometry. 

Which is why I want to avoid easy picks for our professional take on which PC games are the most metal. Any game can have skulls and Satan, and sport cool hats that say “Metal” on them. But a true metal designation comes from something beneath the surface. 

True metal is emotion that swells infinitely into a dead signal, a raw, sustained wall of noise that blots out everything else. Metal can also the the total inverse, a complete lack of emotion and the struggle or fascination that results from wrestling with the meaning of existence. Metal can be triumphant and transcendent, a screaming chorus against oblivion. Metal is also sometimes just some people screaming passages from Moby Dick, which I endorse. With that in mind, here are our picks for the most metal PC games, and some companion albums to get you into a similar headspace. Mute the trailers and play their song to hear and see for yourself. 

Neverending Nightmares 

Companion album: Moonlover by Ghost Bath

While the art looks right out of children's storybook, Neverending Nightmares is a blunt exploration of depression and suicidal thoughts. Designer Matt Gilgenbach would know—the game was inspired by his personal experiences with mental illness. Ultimately, it’s a hopeful tale, but finding that light requires tip-toeing through one eerie location after another, while getting harassed by monsters and extremely graphic visions—like, some seriously awful stuff. You’ve been warned. But it’s this plain, honest approach to mental illness that makes Neverending Nightmares so metal. Metal as fuck. It’s a game that addresses something very real and personal without flinching, taking a long soak in darkness to exfoliate the soul. 

VVVVVV + MMMMMM 

Companion album: Epicloud by Devin Townsend Project

VVVVVV’s vanilla form isn’t quite metal. It brushes against psychedelic rock with such bright coloring, but there’s something transcendent in overcoming its difficult platforming challenges. It’s not quite metal on its own, but a second, officially sanctioned soundtrack by the original composer SoulEye just pushes it over the edge. MMMMMM is a metal version of the VVVVVV score created as a collaboration between SoulEye and guitarist FamilyJules7x. After seeing a metal cover medley of VVVVVV’s tunes on YouTube, SoulEye reached out and immediately went to work on a louder, brasher, more triumphant recreation of his original songs. Even better, with every download, he included a mod file that inserts the MMMMMM compositions into the game. It’s the only way I can play it anymore.

Yankai’s Triangle 

Companion album: The Direction of Last Things by Intronaut

Yankai’s Triangle is an eerie, psychedelic puzzle game about spinning triangles to form triangles so you can keep making triangles. Some of them have eyes. Some make squishy sounds. Some of them whisper. 100 puzzles in and little has changed, but I’m still going, hypnotized by the rote act of spinning shapes. If I didn’t need to eat or sleep and didn’t need to work, I might be content spinning shapes forever. A pointless existence? Nah, we’re talking triangles here.

The Cat Lady 

Companion album: Commitment to Complications by Youth Code

I’ve never played a game as bleak as The Cat Lady. You play as Susan, a woman who commits suicide and is transported to a strange nether world where the ‘Queen of Maggots’ makes her immortal until she rids the world of five psychopaths. It’s one hell of an opener, but nothing about the game is pleasant. Susan is severely depressed, and interfacing with a character that wants nothing more than to die, while tasked with murdering murderers—well, it’s an uncomfortable journey through terrifying, true aspects of human experience. The Cat Lady reflects some of the darkest metal out there, trashed up in the slightest by a scribbly, industrial aesthetic that prevents it from being too dour to play. It’s still sad as hell, offers little in the way of hope, and doesn’t care much about how much fun you’re having. In other words, it’s metal.

American Truck Simulator 

Companion album: Four Phantoms by Bell Witch

Peak solitude is best experienced on dead silent freeway in rural Nevada. I know the mountains are out there, but I can’t see them. Tiny lights flicker on and off in the distance, either the occasional porch light or a blinking LED on some strange power station. If I tell myself I’m driving on a highway through the ocean, or nothing at all, I’m there. The experience isn’t painful or aggressive—it’s wonderful, and a bit overwhelming. Look at all that darkness. Look at everything we can’t see. Just make sure to stay under the speed limit. Fee notices crowding the screen take me out of it.

Devil Daggers 

Companion album: All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood by The Body

The game is set in an abyss and you shoot daggers out of your fingertips against an endless stream of flying skulls and abyssal centipedes. Devil Daggers is PC gaming’s cursed arcade cabinet, so oppressive and indifferent to the player it feels evil. It’s an FPS that feels dangerous to play and impossible to conquer. There’s nihilism in throwing yourself against the demonic horde time and time again, only to gain a few more seconds or inch up the leaderboard. To what end? None. Just more demons, more darkness, and infinite, guaranteed failure. But buried beneath all the failure is a graceful, entertaining shooter. Hold onto the fun. Never let go.

Dark Souls 2 

Companion album: NO by Old Man Gloom

Every Souls game is metal, but Dark Souls 2 puts on a clinic. Some of its set pieces feel more tongue in cheek than the other games (see the ghost ship in No-man’s Wharf), but if that means we get to fall hundreds of feed through a tear in time and space onto a throne room suspended in a chaos realm before taking on an ancient king and his cronies with a litany of soldier friends at our back—it’s straight up Paradise Lost fan-fiction—then I don’t mind some cheese on occasion.

Darkest Dungeon 

Companion album: 777 - The Desanctification by Blut Aus Nord

Fill out the soundscape with metal instrumentation and Darkest Dungeon’s narrator will fit right in. He’s already the vocalist to your dungeoneers’ inevitable demise, commenting on the impurity of the land and describing enemies with sticky, odorous prose—so why not? He’s right though, about how awful everything is. Darkest Dungeon’s unforgiving turn-based combat will build a pile of corpses to heaven in no time. Go ahead, climb it. There’s nothing up there.

The Banner Saga 

Companion album: Times of Grace by Neurosis

Darkest Dungeon doesn’t give a damn about the player, but The Banner Saga sets up interesting, sympathetic characters and then proceeds to not give a damn about them. You just get to their lives get progressively worse through the medium of grid-based combat. Congratulations, you just beat the level—oh, and by the way, you’re starving and everyone you know is dead, including the gods. So where do you want to allocate those stat points?

Doom 

Companion album: Koloss by Meshuggah

Chugga-lugga-lug. No, I’m not drinking chocolate milk, I’m drinking blood. Hell yeah! It’s the sound Doom makes, chugga-lugga-lug, both in the soundtrack and the sound of demons turning to gristle beneath DoomGuy’s fist or a light red mist from direct super shotgun buckshot to the general face area. Doom is a self-aware montage of blood and pulpy demonic imagery, an ode to angsty trapper keeper doodles and a reminder that, damn, church is boring. Instead, go to hell. Doom is loud and fun and dumb in the first five minutes and all the reading is optional. You’re going to have the insides of a demon splashed all over your mug—and into your mug, if you have one handy like I always do. Drinking blood is metal. Do it. Drink blood.

“Drinking blood is metal. Do it. Drink blood.” — James Davenport, 2017

Night in the Woods 

Companion album: Grind your bones to dust by Exoskelett

Night in the Woods contains and addresses: witches, rural decay, the failures of capitalism, existentialism, and pizza. It’s metal. If you’ve ever seen your favorite food place’s windows boarded up with a sign that says ‘Going out of business!’ hanging from the front door, then you’ve experienced metal. Metal is sad, but true. Metal kind of sucks, really. So why play or listen to anything intended to be such a bummer? For some, it’s a helpful exercise that helps them overcome feelings of listlessness in tough times. Everything is slowly weathering away, including ourselves. Might as well hang out with our friends, break shit, eat some hot pies, and chip away at the man. There might be a happier ending somewhere down the line, but this isn’t it. Not yet.

Second Life 

Companion album: Monoliths and Dimensions by Sunn O)))

Metal often addresses transcendence, a means to escape our plane of existence, though not always literally. At the very least, good metal is a temporary vessel through which you can perceive the world in a new light, from above or far below. And Second Life has it right there in the name, a new world, a new life. But what truly makes it the most metal MMO is that upon shedding this mortal coil and Logging In, you’re not necessarily granted a clean slate. You’re bombarded with everything that every was and ever could be rendered in 3D engine from 2003. 

Second Life is a better life for many and a horrifying mirror for others. If you want to be a tall rabbit who fucks, you can. If you want to be a beauty blogger, you can. If you want to be a Chad and raise your seven sons in a quiet suburb, you can. It’s the time stream continuum compressed to exist on server farm. It contains the most primitive forms of good and evil, the big bang happening all at once, history remixed, terror, love, joy, unicorns with boobs—Second Life is more metal than we can comprehend.

Thumper 

Companion album: Teethed Glory and Injury by Altar of Plagues

I’ve already written at length about how much I love Thumper’s insistence on feeling awful: “I’ve been waiting for a game to bend my arm past my elbow for years now. That’s Thumper’s specialty, using the familiarity of a traditional music game ‘note highway’ to make the player feel anything but groovy.” If it wasn’t obvious, ‘awful’ is a compliment. Thumper is sustained discomfort in music game form, condensing the sense of tumbling down a hillside and barely staying fully conscious into a small metal scarab flying down an cosmic highway. It leaves me feeling exhausted and tense, but better prepared to face the pain again. 

By the late ‘90s, with Street Fighter 2’s impact on arcades receding in the West, the beautiful rows of wooden cabinets and the glow of their CRTs suffered a commercial deforestation. With their dwindling ranks went the heyday for genres built around a quick play and immediate gratification. Genres like the shoot-em-up, which predates all the rest with links back to 1962’s pioneering Spacewar!

In its prime, the shoot-em-up genre swelled with a distinctly Japanese form of game design, screens covered by hellish bullet patterns and anime girls—plus notable domestic off-shoots. Post-arcade, the shoot-em-up, the shooter, the shmup, or the STG (pick your acronym preference) receded into an enthusiast bubble, hidden from view after first and third-person action games captured the designation of 'shooter.'

In those dark years, shmup enthusiasts either contended with pricey, obscure late releases on the Dreamcast and Neo Geo, or by sheer will, discovered alternate venues, corners of the internet where potential classics like the enemy pile-on Cho Ren Sha resided prior to common digital distribution and Steam.

"I found an online resource of Japanese people, just basement devs, who would be posting shmups and posting updates every day online. Some of them were crap. Some of them were unbelievably cool," remembered Don Thacker, founder of Imagos Softworks, developers of the Kickstarted genre cross-over Starr Mazer.

Discovery comes easy when wandering a hall of video games, each churning attract screens. Without arcades, those random hubs found by curious Google hunters such as Thacker were it for the shmup’s exposure, outside of certain studios aiming at the die-hard audience. The genre, and with it the shmup’s myriad of sci-fi, fantasy, and military fetishism, fell into disrepair. The mainstream gaming public chewed on ever increasing polygon counts; the dedicated shmup fan sifted through what amounted to back alley digital dumpsters seeking anything of merit still made with scrappy 2D sprites, subwoofer crushing explosions, and mountainous end level bosses.

Then, a visible indie game movement, and more so, Steam. Consider the timing as the calendar turned to the 2010s: Kids who mastered joystick controls in front of CRTs burning phosphors, expertly navigating games at the height of shmup popularity—from Namco’s ageless Galaga to Capcom’s beautifully exaggerated, WWII "inspired" 194X series—plug into their nostalgia as developers. Thus a flurry of Steam activity, sizable enough to wear down even the hardened genre devotees, but also a sign of regeneration and visibility.Now developers like Mommy’s Best Games, developer of the neon obsessed heavy metal shmup Shoot 1UP, can find a home for their uniquely textured throwbacks.

"Steam has been great to release Shoot 1UP to, as it was very successful on Xbox 360 and now we can reach even more people. I love consoles but not everyone has one. With PCs, nearly every gamer has a machine that can run our 1990s style shooters," said Nathan Fouts of Mommy’s Best Games.

It’s a gold rush on Steam compared to the genre’s low point. The service afforded a substantial kick to the shmup, which at the turn of the decade saw a fleet of indies in such numbers, Don Thacker amusingly stated that for developers, "Steam is bullet hell."

The slow resurgence

Throughout the early 2000s, a few notable studios entered the space, some earning wide acclaim, including Treasure’s polarity swapping Ikaruga (no article on shmups is free from Ikaruga’s notable grasp). Aside from Treasure, popular Japanese developer Psikyo (notable for their raucous Strikers 1945 and the perky, daydream-like Gunbird) died off by 2003, vacating the space. Enter Japanese developer Cave.

Founded in 1994 but finding their footing as Psikyo neared shutdown, Cave’s numerous early entries include tongue twisting titles DoDonPachi, Espagaluda, and Guwange, the latter boasting a genre-exotic medieval Japan setting. Further efforts in the later 2000s brought on bullets in droves from Mushihimesama, Espagaluda II, and Deathsmiles, the latter fitted with anime witches and anime fantasy and anime tropes to saturated extremes. Each of Cave’s entries fell into a contemporary sub-genre affectionately coined 'bullet hell,' partly unsurprising since the studio’s formation is owed to former employees of the bankrupt Toaplan, arguably where the designation came from following Toaplan’s sci-fi dazzler Batsugun.

Bullet hell came to define the zest of a shmup, balancing an elegant ballet of colored weaponry and a playable protagonist with a single weak point, mere pixels (or even pixel) wide. They’re peak shmup, where pressure-driven, graceful movement meets a handsome (and ceaseless) display of enemy attack patterns. Steam is full of these gripping yet punishing games, including a back library of Cave’s work.

"There's a strong support for Cave and the bullet hell genre itself… The shooting game developers catered more to a dwindling audience who were demanding harder and harder games," noted James Wragg, Director of Publishing at Degica, responsible for bringing some of those Cave classics to Steam.

"Steam fills that gap and enables companies. They don't need to go through a publisher like us. They can publish independently," began Wragg. "It basically allows them to publish without all of the red tape of the platforms like PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo. In theory, it opens it up to a much wider audience because Steam's got such a huge user base."

"It's very encouraging to see a lot of indie circles start to release stuff on Steam. Back in my day, you wouldn't see that. But now you're seeing stuff like Crimzon Clover [and] Mecha Ritz [Steel Rondo]," said Danny 'danbo' Baxter of Stellar Circle, developer of 2016’s Blue Revolver, a suitably low-fi gem owing much to Cave’s turn-of-the-century design philosophy.

Influenced

Nostalgic influence feeds the listings on Steam, cultivating a collection of shmups which hit every classification in a varied genre—vertical, horizontal, traditional, even twin stick (although the hardcore community may find the inclusion dubious). Shmups even interject themselves elsewhere.

"If you click the bullet hell tab on Steam, you'll see a lot of games that bear no resemblance to something that I've been playing. Undertale had bullet patterns, Neir Automata is going to have them," said danbo a few weeks before Nier's release.

The rush of games—and those borrowing elements—has caused a touch of in-fighting between those passionate for the striking difficulty of bullet hell and those seeking something more passive. Like Degica’s Dariusburst, the continuation of a decades old franchise set in deep space as players set ablaze robotic, oceanic inspired creatures. In a genre of familiar routines, Darius is (and forgive the pun) in a sea of its own.

"There's a certain generation where their first encounter with shooting games was bullet hell. For them, bullet hell equals shooting games. We came across this when we released Dariusburst. Some of the reviews from users saying there's not enough bullets on screen, but it's like comparing Virtua Fighter to Street Fighter," said Wragg, noting the wide separation in shmup styles.

Steaming

Paging the community on hangout Shmupsforum, users expressed dismay surrounding imperfect ports, brought up fandom punching bag Sine Mora for a laugh, and tossed positive sentiments at the modern accessibility of the genre. "The recent deluge of shmups on Steam has been a great thing… The genre is finding a wider audience and there have been some great indie efforts. Shmups are alive and kicking and I hope it continues forever," noted one user."At the same time, especially in recent years, it also allows for a boatload of shovelware to gum up the works," countered one forum regular.

As with Steam in general, the visibility problem grows with each new game added to the service. "I think Steam is brilliant at making things accessible. I also think Steam added more games last year than Steam had previous," stated Thacker. "If you look at our little pie slice on Steam and you fill it 80% with Cave games, I think it's going to be hard for us to have the discussion about a genre a lot of indies are trying to put back together."

Wragg, however, welcomed the influx. "I'm happy to see competition in the market because competition is good for everybody. It makes people push harder and I'd rather see the shooting genre go somewhere other than just bullet hell and have somebody come up with crazy mechanics that push things in other directions. The only way that can happen is through new people with new ideas coming in."

I'd rather see the shooting genre go somewhere other than just bullet hell and have somebody come up with crazy mechanics that push things in other directions.

Bullet hell continues to dominate on Steam. Of the 15 pages of games listing themselves under shoot-em-up, nearly half pin themselves to bullet hell. "There's definitely a lot of games you could play, but I'm not sure how many of those are really geared to getting people into games like bullet hell," said danbo."For the beginner coming in, it is a very difficult place to start. But Steam again on that front allows people to, without much of a financial investment, pick up couple of shooting games in the sale or a couple of really well priced indies," said Wragg.

Games like Thacker’s gorgeous Starr Mazer, mixing horizontal shooting and point-and-click gameplay, come pre-designed for entry level play. "I've had 45, 50 year old guys come up and they'll be like, 'Oh, it's Galaga.' It's super not, but I understand that's all you can link it to so let's use that as a stepping stone."

Those looking to jump in on Steam might be turned away by Cave’s kinetic, even exuberant style, but can find solace elsewhere. "[Jamestown is] pretty simple to pick up. You can sit around with two, three, four players locally, enjoy it with your friends and the mechanics work very well for multiple players," said Wragg. He’s right: Jamestown’s friendly H.G. Wells-meets-American-Western aesthetic marries to a charming entry level pixel adventure without being first baptized by Cave.

If nothing else, the genre remains alive, and in good hands. The indie surge brought on by Steam, for its inevitable faults in saturation, allows developers to find a home. “If you haven't gone to the shmup section on Steam, check out some indies. You're missing a lot," began Thacker. "Also if you grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s and you liked shmups, they're there. They exist. It didn't go away with arcades. They survived."

And Steam certainly helped.

You guys really love hard games, or at least, you love whichever game you remember as the hardest. In my latest survey, I asked respondents to rank the hardest game they've played on a scale of 1-10. Over 40% scored their most challenging experience a 10, and 70% scored it an 8 or higher.

You also love a lot of different hard games, and have different ideas about what makes a game 'hard.' Among 2,660 respondents, the top game cited as the hardest they've ever played was only mentioned 385 times—around 14% of the total. (Actually, one person wrote in SEGA Bass Fishing 1,006 times, but I've cut that from the results, along with several variations of "your mom.")

What's the hardest PC game you've played?

Unsurprisingly, Dark Souls got the most mentions, with 14% saying it was the hardest game they've ever played. It was followed by Dark Souls 2, which took in about 5% of the results. From there, though, the results are immediately diverse, with shooters, platformers, puzzle games, strategy games, and MOBAs all bunched together. When I cut out jokes, console games, games with specific caveats, and those that received only one or two mentions, I was still left with over 70 games. (Here's my curated list of the top 77.)

The top 10, naturally, are the most popular hard games—and games that are arguably best known for being hard—so the results actually get more interesting the deeper into the list I go. At number 11, for instance, you'll find I Wanna Be The Boshy, a fan game based on number six, I Wanna Be The Guy, an intentionally difficult tribute to early platformers.

Further down (and I'm skipping around a bit), we find StarCraft II, STALKER, Insurgency, Alien Isolation, Kerbal Space Program, the Touhou series, VVVVVV, Volgarr the Viking, SpaceChem, Dustforce, Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, and, of course, Bad Rats, a notoriously awful game which has accrued a positive rating on Steam, because ironic Steam reviews are all the rage.

It's good to see the Touhou Project's bullet-hell games earn some mentions. We recently published an introduction to the series, which is currently being localized by Playism.

VVVVVV, Volgarr the Viking, Dustforce, and SpaceChem all come recommended (I don't think I ever made it past Vogarr's first stage, though). I did expect to see a few more puzzle games. One game no one mentioned, I presume because it's newer and a bit more niche, is TIS-100. It's made by the creators of SpaceChem and Infinifactory, and might be one of the most challenging puzzle games I've played (though it's presumably easier for experienced programmers, and anyone who paid more attention in school than I did). Print out the manual if you can.

Choosing difficulty

All of the games I mentioned up there can easily be described as 'hard,' if for different reasons. Against skilled opponents, CS:GO, Dota 2, League of Legends, and StarCraft 2 are very hard, and they're complex. Dwarf Fortress and Kerbal Space Program require a lot of learning. Super Hexagon, and the bullet-hell games and platformers, require precision control.

But plenty of games which aren't known for being hard can be very hard. The Witcher 2, for instance, came in at 19, in part due to its permadeath mode and first boss. Those damn RC missions from GTA: San Andreas also came up. Civilization V on Diety difficulty, too.

In the survey, I asked which difficulty setting (based on four generic settings) the takers were most likely to choose when starting a new game. The distribution is about as I expected: almost no one takes the easy route, the most people (39.8%) leave it on the normal difficulty, and slightly fewer choose the hard (28.7%) or the hardest modes (26%).

Broken mice and broken bones

When asked to tell us the worst thing they've done to express frustration with a game, plenty said that they don't react physically—they curse, uninstall the game, go outside, or do other healthy-sounding things. "[I] stopped playing for few months to get over my anger and hopefully renew my interest," said King_Matt. A calm and wise king is Matt. We can all learn from the great King_Matt.

And apparently, a lot of us need to. The word "broke" came up 222 times and "smash" was included in over 100 responses. Banana peels came up an awful lot, too. Here are a few examples:

I chucked my keyboard at my brick wall. It dragged the desktop with it. It corrupted my hard drive, broke my keyboard and most functions on the case didn't work properly. - Abernath

Thrown a banana peel out the window. But I picked it up later. - Kenu

I once got so frustrated while just trying to get fuel up to my ship [in Kerbal Space Program] that was trying to get to Mun that I decided to fly all my rockets into Kerbol (the sun). I spent about 5 hours just designing the booster/fuel ships to help get my whole fleet there and give them the last push into its blinding embrace. Once every single one was burned to ash, and all the crew with it, I deleted the save and went to bed. It was only after I woke up that I realized what I had done. To say the least, I cried. - Nerd__Guy

 Threw my lamp out the window. It was a damn good lamp too. - Anonymous

Literally ripped out a chunk of hair in frustration once. - Nate Dogg

I actually broke my grandfather's trackball mouse while playing when I was a kid on his PC. I had to buy him a new mouse from Walmart. - Brain

Threw more money at it. This is a recurring theme with me in multiplayer games. - Ryan Daniels

In my grandest fit of frustration, I suppressed my volatile feelings with the warm, cheesy comfort of Hot Pockets. A lot of them. It turns out one man can eat a lot of Hot Pockets. They come out a lot faster than they go in. - Chudbunkis

Threw a banana peel at the screen. - As7iX

Broke a finger. - Dodie

So is Dark Souls really that hard?

I predicted that Dark Souls would be the most popular game in the survey, so I added an extra question. I asked everyone, regardless of which game they put down as the hardest, to agree or disagree with the statement "Dark Souls isn't even that hard, ugh." I think we can all agree that I chose an extremely unscientific way to phrase the question, but we definitely can't all agree on whether or not Dark Souls is hard. 

Speedruns are artistry. Not only do they demonstrate complete mastery over a game, but they also poke away at the edges of what a game intends you to do. Watching a perfect speedrun is similar, I imagine, to watching good gymnastics, but they're more than just skill-based. They're borne of a curiosity about the edges of games: the things we're not meant to see and the things we aren't supposed to do.

There's a whole science behind speedruns. Players spend weeks and sometimes years chiselling a perfect path through a game. They exploit minor traversal bugs to gain speed, they tap away at the outer limits of a game world in search of hidden routes, and then they move to execute all these tricks in one graceful swoop. There's a strong collaborative spirit among speedrun communities, because in the end, it's all about what's possible, not who wins.

There are lots of different speedruns, and the rules vary depending on the type of speedrun a player hopes to achieve. Most of the runs I've featured below are Any% runs, which simply require the player to complete the game under any difficulty setting as quickly as possible. These contrast with 100% runs, which as the name suggests requires full completion of the game (any secret worlds or any optional collectibles, for example). 

What follows aren't "the best speedruns of all time" but instead a selection of especially impressive runs. I've tried to collect those most suited to spectating, so there are a lot of shooters and platformers. Meanwhile, I've generally avoided speedruns too heavily reliant on glitches that bypass huge sections of a game (like this Pillars of Eternity run, for example). I'm not arguing these aren't legitimate: just that they're not as fun to watch.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Bethesda made a big deal of Skyrim's 100 hour potential back in 2011, but I'm sure they're not surprised that speedrunner gr3yscale has beaten the game in less than 40 minutes. After all, Skyrim QA guy Sam Bernstein managed to complete the whole game, glitch and cheat free, in two hours and 16 minutes. If you know what you're doing, the biggest games can be reduced to a series of carefully timed leaps.

Gr3yscale's world record time of 39:24 uses a number of built-in exploits, but arguably more interesting than the run itself is this accompanying tutorial video on how he achieved it. The lengthy video is a step-by-step instructional, detailing everything from the graphics settings you should use (as low as possible) through to how to steal the Blank Lexicon from Septimus Signus in less than five seconds. If you've got any interest in the painstaking process of routefinding for a speedrun, it's a must watch.

Dark Souls

For the best example of speedrunner Kahmul78 s thoroughness, look no further than the 1:56 mark below. The way he switches his inventory load out in the middle of a plunge attack demonstrates that every second is precious for an adept speedrunner. He won t need those newly equipped arrows for a while, but when you re looking to shave off precious seconds in a notoriously difficult game, you don t waste time.

After clearing the tutorial area, Kahmul78 takes a very unconventional route through Lordran. Using the Skeleton Key starting item he passes through New Londo Ruins and Valley of the Drakes into Darkroot Basin, then onto Undead Parish. This not only skips the second boss encounter, but it also means facing off against the first mandatory boss battle by the eight minute mark. 

For the average first time player it s likely to take up to five hours to make that much progress (or about ten, if you re like me). The fact that this whole run wraps up in under 48 minutes naturally  attracted a lot of attention when it was first posted. There are quicker Dark Souls speedruns out there which exploit a major glitch, but this is the real deal.

Dishonored

With so many tools at his disposal it's little wonder that Corvo Attano can get the job done quickly. He's not really meant to do it this quickly though, with speedrunner TheWalrusMovement completing the stealth adventure in 34:35. Attano's Blink ability a lightning quick dash mainly used for covert operations is utilised a lot in this run, to the extent that it's difficult to keep track of TheWalrusMovement's routing. 

Nonetheless, Dishonored is a surprisingly enjoyable game to spectate, and TheWalrusMovement is forthcoming with his secrets. This world record run can probably be improved the runner's commentary points out a couple of areas of improvement but this is the best out there in the meantime.

Doom 2

Picture this: you ve just returned from Hell only to find that Earth is in worse shape. You were really looking forward to having a beer though, so you want to save the world as quickly as possible. But how quickly is as quickly as possible? How s 23 minutes and three seconds sound? Not bad at all! Start pouring.

The work of speedrunner Zero-Master, this Ultra-Violent mode playthrough managed to topple a record set in 2010 by Looper. That s a long time in speedrun years and it only managed to come out on top by 22 seconds. A backseat speedrunner will no doubt see areas of improvement in the below video, which Zero-Master concedes to in his YouTube description, but for the time being this is the quickest run there is.

While Doom 2 is probably the most popular speedrunning instalment in the series, it s worth checking out speedruns of the two Final Doom WAD packs too. These outings upped the difficulty dramatically, and if you want to see a run with a few clever rocket jumps, look no further.

Duke Nukem 3D

Duke 3D s Build engine is home to a lot of glitches very handy to speedrunners. As Duke speedrunner LLCoolDave explains in this video, a major one is crouchjumping . If you crouch while freefalling and then hit the jump key before touching the ground, Duke can clip through certain walls and structures. The engine in Duke 3D is less than stable, allowing for switches to be triggered from unintended vantage points and whole regions of levels to be skipped.

As in most glitchy speedruns, triggering the engine s limitations at just the right moment is an impressive skill in itself. Speedrunner Mr_Wiggelz manages to complete the game in 9:19 below, though it s worth noting that only the first three episodes of the Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition feature (the fourth episode didn t appear in the original game).

Mr_Wiggelz admits that he messed up a couple of times during this run, so it probably won t be long before we see it bettered.

Click here to watch on Twitch

Fallout 3

Some genres, especially platformers and shooters, are particularly suited to the speedrun. Others, like the open world RPG, definitely are not. That doesn t stop people from trying to beat the likes of Pillars of Eternity, Skyrim and Fallout 3 in the time it takes to prepare an English breakfast, but there s inevitably glitches involved. Games like these are designed to eat up your time and life.

Rydou s 18:53 speedrun of Fallout 3 (that s 18 minutes, not hours) utilises a few glitches, but no cheats or third-party programs. As he explains on his YouTube page, this run makes liberal use of a quicksave bug. Basically, if you rapidly quicksave and then quickload you ll briefly have the ability to clip through walls. In this way, the player-character goes from birth to saving Washington in less than 20 minutes.

After a bit of publicity off the back of this speedrun, Rydou moved to emphasise the difference between cheating and exploiting glitches. For those who wonder about the legitimacy of the run, using and exploiting glitches have always been a part of the speedrun community. This is a way to push the game even further, and [is] not considered cheating.

Half-Life 2

An hour and 32 minutes might not sound impressive for a Half-Life 2 speedrun: the game's an all time classic and ten years old to boot. You can blame the game's regular unskippable dialogue sequences for that record, but hey, at least it gives record holder Gocn k some time to take a break. He needs it.

There are some interesting strategies in this video. GocAk makes liberal use of two traversal glitches common in Valve's Source Engine, namely Accelerated Back Hopping and Accelerated Side Hopping. For a stunning example of the former skip to the 29 minute mark, where a sequence of careful jumps actually propels the player into the air. 

Sourceruns.org has a more detailed description: "When you exceed the game's speed limit, the game tries to slow you down whenever you jump, back to the desired speed. By default the game thinks that you're moving forwards, so when you exceed the speed limit, it'll accelerate you backwards. If you are facing backwards, this will only increase your speed. So, the faster you're going - the more you will get accelerated."

Hotline Miami

No big tricks or glitches here, just an exceptionally talented player. Speedrunner Dingodrole completes Hotline Miami in 20 minutes and seven seconds, but his ultimate goal is to get below the 20 minute mark. If you watch the whole run you'll notice there's very little room for improvement, and Dingodrole seems to have the routing down pat. He's been steadily chipping away at the time for a while now, so it's probably inevitable that this will be beaten some day.

I Wanna Be The Guy

It pays to know a game intimately before embarking on a speedrun, but that rule has a different meaning when it comes to I Wanna Be The Guy. A parodic love letter to 8-bit platformers, I Wanna Be The Guy subverts every reliable trope in the platformer rule book. Shiny red apples aren t collectibles: they ll kill you. Don t worry about reaching those spikes: they ll come to you. Nothing is predictable, and everything is learnt from the experience of dying. You can t learn this game, you have to memorise it.

So it s always fun to monitor the speedrunning community s progress with I Wanna Be The Guy (as well as its many follow-ups). You need a great memory and superhuman dexterity to complete the game once, let alone in 28 minutes and 40 seconds without glitches, as Tesivonius has done.

Click here to watch on Twitch

Portal

A few caveats: this is a segmented Portal speedrun, which means the game wasn't completed from beginning to end in a single playthrough. Instead, the best level times were stitched together for the final video. Additionally, there were four different speedrunners involved: Nick "Z1mb0bw4y" Roth, Josh "Inexistence" Peaker, Nick "Gocnak" Kerns, and Sebastian "Xebaz" Dressler. Some would argue a segmented speedrun is illegitimate, but wherever you stand on that matter, it's still interesting to see what's possible.

This run uses neither cheats or hacks, but it does exploit a number of glitches. "This run first started after the discovery of a new glitch, which snowballed into a whirlwind of discoveries of new tricks, skips, and glitches," the team writes. As you'll see below, the glitches make for a disorientating watch, but its fascinating nonetheless.

Quake

The Quake speedrun scene used to be massive, boasting its own highly organised community in the form of Quake Done Quick. The below video sees all four episodes of the game completed in 11 minutes and 29 seconds (on Nightmare difficulty!) and demonstrates world class bunny hopping and rocket jumping skills. The occasional glitch is implemented and whole chunks of certain maps are skipped with the help of rocket jumps, but no cheats were used.

Spelunky

Twitch streamer Bananasaurus Rex is, or was, the world authority on Spelunky. It was he who figured out how to kill the game s invincible ghost. It was he who achieved a solo Eggplant run (this involves carrying an Eggplant to the end of the game, obviously). It was he who collected $3.1 million worth of gold in a single playthrough. Arguably the highest bar he set was the legendary 5:02 Hell speedrun. Simply reaching Hell is difficult enough on its own, but completing the whole game using this route is punishment. Doing it in five minutes is God tier.

Unfortunately for Bananasaurus Rex, someone managed to beat his Hell run, and not by a measly couple of seconds. Youtuber Latedog beat secret boss Yama in 4:36, creating a new record which let s face it will probably only be beaten by accident. Like Bananasaurus Rex he utilises the warp device, which is somewhat reliant on luck but pretty much crucial if you want to shear minutes off a playthrough.

Super Meat Boy

When humankind is wiped off the face of the earth by some malevolent alien society, the planet s new inhabitants will learn a couple of things as they sift through the rubble. First, we really liked bottled water. Secondly, Coca-Cola was an especially totalitarian leader. Thirdly, we were really bloody good at Super Meat Boy.

Speedrunner Vorpal has been chipping away at the world record for a while, but this is the best he/she has managed so far: the base game completed in 17 minutes and 54 seconds. That stat doesn t include the dark levels or any of the retro themed ones, but anyone who has spent half-an-hour with Team Meat s punishing platformer will peek through fingers as Vorpal passes the final boss run by the skin of his teeth.

VVVVV

Speedruns can be beautiful. Twitch streamer sheilalpoint completes VVVVV in 12:12 in the below video, and watching it (with the sound down) can be like watching a weird 1970s art film about a little man s efforts to euthanise himself in outer space.

The beauty of this run is that there aren t really any major tricks, just a thorough knowledge of the game s layout. Sheilalpoint pulls some interesting maneuvers with the game s checkpoints particularly in one sequence where hitting them as they collide with spikes actually increases the momentum of the player character but otherwise, this is plain old fashioned mastery.

For more awesome speedruns, speedrun.com and speeddemosarchive.com are invaluable resources. Think we've missed something important? Leave it in the comment section below.

Apotheon is the game that looks a bit like a Grecian urn - yes it is a bit weird comparing games to pottery - and now a new trailer has been released to remind us that it totally still exists. More than that, it's still one of the most striking indie games on the horizon, and one that looks faintly stunning in motion too. We don't learn a lot from the following trailer, but we do see a bunch of new, neatly colour-themed environments and lots of very 2D, physics-based combat. The open world action platformer (with multiplayer modes) is still on track for an early 2014 release.



I'm not entirely sold on the physics at the moment - everything seems a little floaty/lacking in gravity - but it's obviously hard to judge how a game feels until you're pushing the pixels around with your own hands. I'm most intrigued by the words "open world Mount Olympus" on the official site, which suggest that this may be a more substantial game than it initially appears. Also: multiplayer? Yep, in the form of online "deathmatch and team-based game modes".

You might remember developers Alien Trap for their shooty sidescroller Capsized, which we liked to the tune of 86% back in 2011.

Ta, Destructoid.

Summer has always been a bit of a lull when it comes to video game releases. It’s the time of year where we hear more about the upcoming fall releases rather than actually, you know, playing games. Luckily, we have the Humble Indie Bundle 8 to keep boredom, UV rays, and those treacherous, shark-filled oceans at bay.

The Humble Indie Bundle traditionally features recent indie darlings for the low, low price of “whatever the hell you want”, and this year is no exception. No matter what you pay, you’ll get access to Little Inferno, Awesomenauts, Capsized, Thomas Was Alone, Dear Esther and their soundtracks (and Steam keys if throw in a dollar or more). Linux users should be happy to know that the Linux versions of these games are also debuting with the bundle.

Forking over more than the average purchase price (a modest $5.72 as of this writing) will net you Hotline Miami and Proteus plus its soundtrack. Yes, you might be saving up for the pricey GTX 780 that your annoying friend already has, but maybe you could skip eating today?

Like always, you can choose where your money goes, rationing out which developers and charities get your hard-earned bitcoins. You have a full two weeks to decide who gets what while stocking up on harpoons for the inevitable shark invasion.

As part of Steam's regularly awesome Midweek Madness sales, the Best of British Indie Bundle packages seven indie games crafted by the skilled folks across the pond. Lasting until 4pm PDT Thursday, the $10 deal provides a sampler of excellent strategy and action timesinks, including Introversion Software's DEFCON, Alex May and Rudolf Kremers' Eufloria, Mode 7's Frozen Synapse, Positech Games' Gratuitous Space Battles, Puppy Games' Revenge of the Titans, and a double-whammy finisher of Size Five Games' Time Gentlemen, Please! and Ben There, Dan That! The value-candy gets even sweeter as most of the included games (with the exception of Gratuitous Space Battles and Size Five's goods) carry Steam Achievements for your hunting pleasure in addition to saving nearly $70 in your still-recovering-from-Summer-Sale wallet.

The PC's indie gaming scene is a wonderful thing, but there are so many bite-sized pieces of pure brilliance skittering about that it's near-impossible to keep track. Enter Steam. In its never-ending quest to win our hearts and devour our wallets (not the other way around, happily), Valve's storefront has bundled together a bunch of the best indie games on the block. Not only that, it's given them a whopping 80 percent discount.

Both bundles clock in at $9.99 a piece - one focusing on strategy games and the other on 2D, well, anything. This isn't just some bottom-of-the-barrel bargain bin deal, either. Among many others, the bundles include the likes of Bit.Trip Runner, World of Goo, Revenge of the Titans, and Sanctum. Basically, if you're looking to dive into indie gaming's deep waters but don't know where to start, look no further. Now then, go! The deal only lasts until September 22, at which point the games will turn back into pumpkins. Or, you know, get their normal price tags back. One of those.

I’ve got to get to my crewmate! I’m flying through the jungle canopy toward his transponder when a spear bursts from the undergrowth. I dodge it with a burst from my jetpack, spin, and snipe the head from the masked native who hurled it. This leaves me facing the wrong way, heading fast for a wall. I ram a baby pincer-blob out of the way, fire my grapnel at a passing outcrop, and use my momentum to swing up the wall toward the transponder signal. And into a huge pack of pincer-blobs of all sizes. The screen cracks as I’m devoured.

Capsized is a 2D platformer, where you’re an astronaut shipwrecked on a hostile planet. In order to escape you must first gather any surviving crew and any communications systems that have survived the crash. The Harry Harrison-style deathworld is inhabited by all sorts of beasties, ranging from a wide variety of angular natives equipped with primitive weaponry to the local fauna, which crawls, buzzes or leaps, but is always deadly.



Getting through this world is a matter of learning to use the various tools – grappling hook, kinetic ram (knocks enemies and objects away) – and large arsenal of weapons, to navigate the mostly non-linear levels. All the tools work exactly as anyone raised on platform shooters would expect. The grapnel enables you to swing around like a heavilyarmed Tarzan. The jetpack’s gentle lift has limited fuel. The ram knocks you back a bit, but the subject of its kinetic affections back a lot. And the ammo-hungry guns kill things.

The only flaw is that switching to the right weapon using the mousewheel, when the natives are raining spears on you, is like trying to find a pencil-sharpener in a geek’s satchel of techno-crap. The game is so reaction-based that having the wrong weapon out tends to hasten your death, so instead of being agreeably gung-ho, you find yourself creeping slowly forward and running away lots.



There’s always non-hostile fauna moving in the scenery too: stiltlegged spiders, overgrown hermit crabs and anenome-funnels that shy away on your approach. Even the internal texturing on the landscape resembles the organic, fecund drawings of surrealists like Max Ernst. Electronic music, an oldfashioned interface and hand-drawn layered backgrounds conjure memories of such ’80s platform shooters as Metal Slug or Contra, but stepped up to HD and buffed until the game is 90% polish.

The varied, well-designed levels range from flashlit tomb-crawls to low-gravity atmosphere exploration. With these, and variety of secondary game modes – co-op, deathmatch, time trials, survival and a wonderful no-guns race – Capsized is an example of what can be done with a handful of old-school game mechanics if a developer has excellent taste.