Cavanagh's VVVVVV Lucked Out, Humbly Bundled At 'Last Minute'

The third Humble Indie Bundle continued the past success of the initiative this week, hitting the $1 million in sales mark less than a week after launching. For those developers involved, being part of these most famous of bundles must be a dream come true. Indeed, for VVVVVV designer Terry Cavanagh, he simply cannot believe his luck. "It was very last minute," he told Gamasutra. "They had the other four games decided before they approached me." Besides VVVVVV, the other games available in the bundle are Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, And Yet It Moves and Hammerfight, while a sixth, Steel Storm, was added this week. Cavanagh bumped into John Graham, one of the organizers behind the Humble Indie Bundle, at GDC in San Francisco, and the two discussed the idea of VVVVVV being part of a future bundle. "I told him about the big update I wanted to do for VVVVVV, with the level editor and the proper C++ port," said Cavanagh. "It was kind of on the long finger [postponed indefinitely] for a while, but having the deadline of the bundle launch gave me the push to finally make it happen." As part of the bundle, Cavanagh released a big update for VVVVVV which not only added a new Linux version of the game, but also a level editor for allowing anyone to create their own worlds in the game and share their creations with friends. Cavanagh asked just under a dozen indie developers whether they'd be interested in creating special worlds for the upcoming VVVVVV update, and 10 new levels were ready for launch. He has since also been highlighting levels made by other notable indie developers on his blog. "There were a few other people I talked to that liked the idea of making a level for it, but unfortunately they were busy with other things," he noted. In terms of the Linux version of VVVVVV, this was something Cavanagh had had in the back of his mind for a good while. "It was the main motivation for making a C++ port," he told us. "Every time Adobe released a new beta of Flash on Linux I'd give it a try, but it never worked well enough for me to be happy releasing it." "The Linux version felt like unfinished business for me, since it's something I promised when I originally launched the game." Having released this array of new features, Cavanagh told us he isn't finished with the game quite yet. "I'm hoping to get another big patch out before the end of the bundle that'll add the stuff from the game that's missing from the editor," he explained. He's also planning on released a new level created by himself - his first since the game was released at the start of 2010.