Almost seven years after its last patch, VVVVVV is getting support for higher framerates and more

The word YES floats in the air in platformer VVVVVV
(Image credit: Terry Cavanagh)

VVVVVV, the indie platformer that gives the finger to gravity as well as videogame naming conventions, went open-source to mark the 10-year anniversary of its release in 2020. As a direct result of that, it's about to be patched for the first time in almost seven years. 

Designer Terry Cavanagh explained on Twitter that, "As well as generally making the game run better on modern computers, the update finally adds 60fps support, new editor features (like ghosts) and fixes a huge number of longstanding bugs!" In response to a question about whether it will support framerates higher than that, Cavanagh said, "I think it's interpolated, so it might support 60+?" Since one player in the update's beta reports getting 2,406 fps, I'd say that's a yes.

If you'd like to try the beta version of this patch, and you own VVVVVV on Steam, you can. Right-click on it in your Steam library, select Properties then Betas and you should see it in the list of betas you can opt into. There may still be issues of course, which is why it notes you should, "BEVVVARE!"

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.