While the oversaturated world of PC gaming may be at a stalemate for those producing First Person shooters, for those who prefer a more casual game, with a dash of “old school spirit” there is a saving grace; Audiosurf. Audiosurf was first shown in beta at the Independent Games Festival, and now is available to purchase through the Digital Distribution Network, Steam. This outlet has proved influential for those bedroom coders who require a distribution outlet without going through traditional publishing methods. It can be downloaded by anyone with $9.95 USD available and Dylan Fitterer the talented programmer responsible for the games creation, sets to make a huge leap into the commercial games production scene.
Anyone who has played Audiosurf will know it is a bit like Amplitude, a bit like Tetris, a bit like Rez, and slightly like Vib Ribbon. However instead of coming across like a bastardised mash-up of all these existing concepts, it ingeniously takes the best ideas from each game and creates something that’s both incredibly fresh with a familiar feel.
The user controls a vehicle speeding along an undulating race track. The track is divided into three lanes, each containing colour-coded blocks that reach your vehicle in time with the music. Shoulder lanes on either side have no blocks at all times, allowing the user to transfer into the hard shoulder to catch their breath. Superimposed on the race track is a grid three across and seven squares down. Any blocks your vehicle passes through appear in the grid relative to the lane you went through to hit them. This means that if you pick up a yellow block in the right hand lane, it is collected in the right hand column of the grid. The idea of the game is match blocks in groups of three, which like Tetris removes them from the grid and allows space for others. However like Tetris, if any of the columns become full and overflow, the blocks are destroyed and the user cannot pick up new blocks for five seconds.
The users score depends on how many blocks they manage to chain together, and the colour of the blocks they collect. The colour scheme is explained in terms of heat. Hot reds and yellows earn the highest points per block, colder blues and purples are worth less. There are also score modifiers, from x4 multiplers to percentage bonuses for completing the course with an empty grid, or for collecting the most of the red and yellow blocks along the way. The score system is what provides one aspect of the games addictive playability. There is always the urge to go back and try and improve on your best score.
The actual content and pace of the game is completely down to the player. This is because Audiosurf’s trick is to let the user choose MP3s from their collection to generate its tracks(levels). Faster more intense music with a higher BPM results in action packed downhill rushes, comparable to expert-level Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution, with blocks galore. A less upbeat more chilled out musical choice will find you gently proceeding uphill, with plenty of time to see what’s coming up on the track.
However unlike other rhythm games such as Guitar Hero, there's no penalty for missing blocks or messing things up. However poorly you do, you will reach the end of every song you play, just with a low score. This is a good concept and it gives the user the responsibility of driving their own urge to play the game, without adding the feature of punishments and failure to try and provide an incentive to play again. This means that whether you’re obsessed with beating all your friends and being the best, you can play till you can’t take anymore, or if you’re happy to have a quick play and get back to the real world, the game is happy to provide an adequate level of amusement without failure.
If you really want to test yourself, there are also different ships across three difficulty levels, which change the gameplay in amusing ways. The Vegas has the ability to re-arrange the blocks on your grid into winning combinations, should you cruise along the shoulder lane for a short time. The Eraser can delete all the blocks of the next block colour you collect.
Control is via the arrow keys or a mouse. The arrow keys move you in a slightly different way to the mouse, shunting you from lane to lane while the mouse allows you to move smoothly across the whole track. Additional functionality and abilities are available on the mouse buttons, so this rules out keyboard use after a certain level.
There is even a two-player mode where there is an extra lane added to the track and you each control your side of the grid. The Mono craft element completely changes the game again, instead of colour-matching the blocks the user must now collect as many blocks as possible whilst avoiding harmful grey block that clog up your grid. This game mode offers a huge 30% score increase for avoiding all the grey blocks, and with no shoulder lanes and a hurtling pace, this is where the user will find himself chasing those seemingly unattainable scores.
This concept hangs heavily on the actual translation of music tracks to racetrack. Amazingly AudioSurf handles this well, and in great speed too. Most tracks only take five seconds or so to analyse and convert into a track, yet many details go into producing an individual and specific track that is relative to the music selected. The beats are translated into blocks and the feel and tempo of the music is recreated in the track layout. As tempo increases the levels point downwards, so that the user may not see far in front to make it harder to navigate across the lanes to collect blocks. Long curving tunnels are constructed at changing points in tempo enhancing the intense periods of a track, whilst loops, bumps and barrel rolls and mapped onto the tune with great accuracy.
No matter what mode you play, you are submerged within a 3D map of your top songs, and it is easy to waste hours and hours going through your music collection to see how each track translates. It may not be as visually pleasing and immersive as Rez, most likely because the gameplay requires more intense focus on the centre of the screen rather than allowing the user time to look around, however the minimalistic graphics are still impressive in their own right, especially because of the games amateur heritage. For those displeased by the aesthetics you can change background colours, screen effects and even modify the colours of the blocks to match your taste.
When you purchase the game you are encourage to create your own Audiosurf account, allowing you to collate your scores on the online database. This creates competition between online players, with leaderboards that show you what tracks other people are playing along to, and the option to check other peoples scores on the same songs. Its a good idea combining online competitive play and creative individuality. The score system will even email you if someone beats your top score, providing an incentive to have another go at beating your personal best. You can also check what songs are most popular throughout the Audiosurf community and within 24 hours of the game being released scores were already going over 150,000.
There are a few hitches, but these do not affect the game detrimentally enough to warrant focus. The instructions and tutorial are vague meaning that the best way to learn the aspects of the game is to actually play. The whole track selection front end requires tweaking too, as sifting through huge C drive folders stacked with music can become time consuming. The game already takes advantage of MP3 tags to pull artist and track info so it wouldn’t be too demanding to be able to sort by genre. Its also a shame that you can’t construct your own mix-tape esque tournaments by compiling the best tracks one after another. Basically the game requires a more functional media player and with this addition I cannot see any problems with usability. However Dylan’s roots as a bedroom programmer, these imperfections are to be expected because this production has not had a huge budget backing it from day one. The games roots allow the user to forgive minor issues like these, and in time will hopefully be eradicated by updates and patches. At $9.95 USD I can’t see many music games lovers not purchasing this. Even for those completely overt to the idea of a music game, Audiosurf should not be ignored, both as an ingenious multimedia toy and a very playable game. At the least Audiosurf will have you dusting off the untouched classics lying around in the corners of your MP3 collection, and in time could easily become a developed obsession owing to its quick and addictive game play and ever changing content.
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