Five Dollar Review – Chime
The realm of musical puzzle games is inhabited by few games intrepid enough to meld quick wits and adaptive audio. Last week, another title graced this hallowed land with its presence on the XBox Live Arcade. Chime, developed by Zoe Mode and published by the non-profit publisher OneBigGame, is now available for the paltry sum of 400 MS points.
Find out more after the jump.
Many of the game mechanics follow in the footsteps of musical puzzle giant Lumines. The player is tasked with placing Tetris-like blocks across a large grid as a bar moves across the screen to the tempo of the audio track. Placing these pieces in a manner that creates at least a 3×3 square will form what is known as a “quad”. These quads will fill up slowly and can be expanded for as long as the quad continues to fill up. Once the quad fills completely, it is stamped into the grid, gaining Coverage of the board. The goal is to attain as close to 100% coverage to gain points and unlock new levels.
Each level features a unique track donated pro-bono by musical artists Moby, Phillip Glass, Paul Hartnoll, Fred Deakin, and Marcus Schulz. Depending on the size and shape of active quads, a variety of audio layers will be added to the audio track. Meanwhile, the rest of your inactive bricks will provide different chime effects as the bar scans across them on the grid. This builds up slowly in the beginning, but once you start keeping up with multiple active quads at one time and covering the board with bricks, the audio experience intensifies.
There are two play modes, Timed Mode and Free Mode. Timed mode gives you either three, six, or nine minutes to cover the board as many times as possible, with coverage earning you more time. Free Mode lets you handle things at your own pace, giving you no time frame to cover the board.
Multiple leaderboards are the only Live capable portion of the game right now, but if this version is successful, future iterations could potentially include multiplayer.
All in all, the price is right at only 5 dollars considering there are only 5 tracks to play with right now. If you’ve got the points burning a hole in your pocket, and you’re a fan of musical games like Lumines and Frequency, by all means give Chime a shot. Also, you’ll be met with a rather cute achievement as soon as you purchase the game.
<EDIT> Thanks to Retodon8 from Gamerdna for linking to this Youtube tutorial by game developers Zoe Mode. The vid does a great job emphasizing all above points made. </EDIT>
Tags: musical, non-profit, puzzle, XBLA
