Vividlope Is a Puzzle Platformer From a Better Time

Published on Aug 20, 2024

The moment you boot up Vividlope for the first time, you are transported to another era of video game history. A better era. One before micro-transactions and DLC character skins, where "online play" was a novel idea, and menu buttons bleeped with loud bloops to let you know they had been pressed. You can easily imagine its OST ringing out amid the din of a noisy arcade. It's got the vibes on lock.

I've been conceptualizing the gameplay of Vividlope in my head as, "like if Q-Bert was Super Monkey Ball." I think that's the clearest, most concise description I can offer. It has the touch-em-all-to-win color-changing tiles and enemy avoidance of Q-Bert, and the moving around a 3D shape suspended above an infinite skybox and Y2K arcade vibes of Super Monkey Ball. Throw in a few more mechanics, and that's Vividlope!

In case none of that made sense to you: Vividlope is a puzzle platformer in which you are a little guy running all over a big 3D shape that is divided into square tiles. When you walk over a tile, it changes color. In order to complete a level, you need to change all of its shape's tiles to the correct color.

Then comes the depth. There are enemies walking around every level that you need to avoid, items you can use to both defeat those enemies and change the color of a level's tiles, trap tiles that you need to jump over or otherwise be wary of, and level types where you can walk over tiles to turn them the color you want and also walk back over them to turn them back to the color you don't want.

Then come the Sweeteners, so called (by me) because they sweeten an already sweet pot, and take things to the next level. For instance, that gauge on the left side of all these screenshots. It increases while you're consistently moving over unchanged tiles and changing them to the right color. When you've increased the gauge enough, you get a little boost to your movement speed. Keep going, and you'll gain a defense boost that allows you to touch an enemy or hazard once without losing a life (in exchange for emptying the gauge). Keep going even more, and you'll max out your speed, which is communicated to you by a more high-pitched sound when walking over tiles (a nice touch). If you move over too many already-changed tiles, or stay still too long, or move too slowly, or touch an enemy or hazard, you'll lose all the progress on the gauge, your speed will reset, and you'll be vulnerable to enemies.

Then there's my favorite feature, which is that each level requires you to touch a different percentage of its tiles to be considered complete, and none of them (that I've seen so far) are 100% (yes, when I said you needed to touch all of a level's tiles to win before, I was half-lying in order to simplify a high-level explanation, it's called writing).

So in one level, you might need to touch 80% of all tiles in order to win, but rather than just end right away, once you've touched that 80% the level enters "Bonus Mode." All enemies are cleared from the board, and touching any previously touched tiles incurs a massive penalty to your speed gauge. Now, once your gauge runs out, the level immediately ends, and you get a rank based on your performance.

The reason I love this so much is that rather than take a hard stance of, "100% every level or perish," Vividlope's designers recognized that it's actually more fun and arcadey to leave that last little bit as a bonus for sickos and perfectionists, both giving an out to someone who might have already had their fill of what might have been a tough level, and making the very end of a level an extra challenge. It makes that last 20% or however much feel like a different level.

I also love that this percentage split ends up adding an extra strategic layer to gameplay. Many, many times, I have found myself entering a level's bonus phase, and the only remaining tiles are on the exact opposite end of the level. I would need to traverse too many already-touched tiles to reach them, so I just have to take the hit to my rank. Thereby, if you want to complete that bonus phase, you need to keep your route in mind, and make sure you're leaving yourself a viable path to any tiles you missed by the time the bonus phase rolls around. This becomes a real challenge in later levels when the shape you're traversing is a giant labyrinth covered in hazards to avoid.

This strikes me as a really elegant piece of design, because it feels good when I'm completely locked in and giving a level everything and I'm able to hit that 100%, and it also feels good when I reach the end of a particularly taxing level and I can just go, "oh who gives a shit," and walk across a couple of tiles to finish things off.

I've been pleasantly surprised with the pace at which Vividlope continues introducing new mechanics throughout the game's Story Mode. It introduces a lot of things up front (obviously), and then maybe once or twice per each of the game's 15-level worlds. There are new enemy types, new types of tiles, and other little twists to keep things interesting as you go.

You're also accruing some kind of currency in every level, which can be spent at a shop on the world map. You can buy different colors of your character's outfit—though these have no bearing on the gameplay—and also health and items that you can deploy inside a level by bringing up the item menu. This is super useful in later levels when it feels like item spawn rates have been turned way down, and enemy spawn rates turned way up, though activating a purchased weapon will lower the maximum rank you can achieve for that level. There isn't too much to say about this because you'll very quickly have enough money to buy out the whole store several times over.

Up top, I talked about Vividlope's arcadey, Y2K vibes being off the charts. A lot of that is wrought by a killer soundtrack from Baycun and ViRiX. Each track is distinct, but the whole remains cohesive. There are some chill Picross vibes, some faster Super Monkey Ball fare, there's some 3DS eShop in there, some Wii Sports for sure, it's got breakcore beats, and even some Daft Punk-y, house-y tracks. It's ten bucks on Bandcamp (the same price as the game), and it's worth every penny. My favorite track is still "Vividvoice," the first world's background track. It's just such a video game-y bop.

As for the visuals, again, Y2K to the max in font choice and beyond. The backgrounds are pretty without being distracting, and nice-looking enough to have warranted their own "BG Viewer" mode, which plays some chill music over whichever level background you'd like to stare at while getting drugs high with your friends.

Level action is readable even when ratcheting up the frantic chaos of "hey that's a lot of enemies." And the UI easily lets you know the status of a half-dozen mechanics at a glance. I especially love the Drop Queue–a thing I barely have time to look at but am glad it exists–which shows you how many more enemies will spawn before an item does, simultaneously confirming that, "yes, this is a lot of enemies," and "we promise an item is coming at some point." It's very funny while I'm sitting here writing, and maddening when I'm actually playing.

Story Mode is beefy, and will easily keep you coming back to try and max out your level ranks. After that, there's an Endless Mode for sickos whose only true language is now The Tiles.

All in all, Vividlope is an absolute joy. This is arcadey, pick-up-and-play video games at their best. Easy to pick up, difficult to master. All of that.

It's at once a callback and a whole new thing. It stands tall on the shoulders of all the puzzle platformers that came before and reaches for excellence. There isn't a single part of Vividlope that feels half-baked or under-thought. It feels like a complete package. At $10, it easily deserves a place in everyone's video game collection.

There simply aren't enough games like Vividlope in the world, but at least now there's one more.