“Game Over,” that’s a phrase I haven’t heard in a while. I’m not trying to toot my own horn but usually when I play a game I really enjoy, I tend to figure out how not to die or fail in them. And then came Velocibox, a twitch-based endless runner that puts you in control of a, you guessed it, box. Developed by Shawn Beck, a one man development team who decided he had nothing better to do but ruin the lives of gamers everywhere by creating one of the most addicting games I’ve ever played. As this box you’re tasked with collecting other boxes while you hurtle through endless corridors with insta-killing obstacles in your way. It’s a simple game, but I don’t think I want to ever stop playing it. Hit the jump to read on.
“Level one…Begin!” An upbeat electronica song starts playing, as an orange box appears on screen in a white corridor that stretches into eternity. Suddenly, blue pillars charge rapidly into view. Dodging left, dodging right, hitting the “X” button to flip the entire corridor upside down and putting the box on the “ceiling” which is now the floor. Scattered randomly among the pillars and other obstacles along the walls are smaller orange cubes. Collecting these cubes elicits a satisfying ploink every time you pick one up, and as you grab more and more the pitch of each ploink gets higher pitched. Higher and higher, the pitch goes until you collect the sixth cube and bam! Like a bubble bursting, the level pops and changes color as a familiar voice announces “Level two”.
This time the cubes are a dark blue color, matching the color on the box that you control. The obstacles are more complex now, your reactions need to be a bit more tight. Half of the ground will kill you, the other half is littered with obstacles. There’s no escape other than avoiding each and every obstacle, and just when you think things are getting to complicated. Ploink. Bam! The level bursts around and you hear “Level three”. The obstacles are even more complex. Now the obstacles are moving. Everything seems fine and manageable and then, out of no where, a wall springs out of the ground! The pillar that you thought was a minor inconvenience now expands into a much thicker partition that nearly kills you. You dodge right, dodge left, you flip the stage, you avoid every obstacle and you make it to “Level four”.
Obstacles move and spring out of the ground, 3/4 of the surface will kill you, everything is working against you but you succeed in collecting six more cubes. “Level five” erupts around you, you slide into a spiral along all four walls to stay alive and you literally jump through hoops to collect cubes. “Level six” obstacles pop up out of no where in mid-air, everything is moving, your vision is blocked by floating walls, you think you’re about to die but you grab that 6th cube and “Level seven” begins. Everything you’ve faced has trained you for this level. The obstacles are constantly moving, small slivers of the floor is safe, the music keeps pumping. Your adrenaline rushes through you, you’re avoiding everything that kills you and you collect all of the cubes. “Level eight”. A straight corridor, cubes lazily placed. You grab five cubes before reaching that sixth and final cube. It’s done, you did it! You pat yourself on the back when a life of text pops up on the screen, “Super Velocibox Unlocked”.
I see Velocibox in my dreams. I imagine myself expertly navigating every level. I pretend I am the box. I collect the cubes, I dodge the obstacles, I flip the world around me. All the while numbers form above my head, tracking my score. With each consecutive cube grab my score increases, and a number appears on the back of the box to denote how many cubes you’ve collected. This number also acts as a multiplier of sorts, but there’s only a short amount of time to grab another cube before it disappears. Velocibox is a simple game, avoid the obstacles and grab the cubes. But it’s complex in it’s level design, and it’s subtlety in teaching you its rules. But of course, all of this pales in comparison to Super Velocibox, the game’s hard mode.
Velocibox isn’t a game that can be beaten, it can only be mastered. And as it stands right now, there’s one person is the current master of Velocibox and Super Velocibox. I don’t know who it is, but he or she is at the top of the leader boards by an extremely high margin. I’m not worried about it though, nor am I particularly envious. I enjoy a challenge. And that’s why I enjoy Velocibox. If you haven’t tried it, and you’re into endless runners, you’re really missing out. Oh, and I never mentioned “Level 9”, did I?
Velocibox is available now on PC, Linux, Mac, PS4, and PS Vita.
