There are plenty of great games out there that don’t get the publicity of a Madden, a Halo, or a Grand Theft Auto, but deserve your attention anyway.  From time to time, I’m going to look at some of these games, typically independently produced and free or cheap to buy.

I’ll kick things off with a wonderful music game for Windows called Audiosurf.  If you enjoy games like Guitar Hero but wish the soundtrack was more exactly suited to your taste, keep reading;  Audiosurf is strictly BYOB – Bring Your Own Beats – and thus is as family-friendly as your music collection.

The game itself is best described as a “futuristic puzzle racer”, putting you in control of a spacecraft hurtling down a track filled with brightly cubes.  You first choose your spacecraft, which determines the game type you’ll be playing (more on that in a minute), and then you choose any song from your own collection of music (the common MP3 format is supported as well as several more esoteric file types).  Audiosurf then analyzes the piece of music you’ve chosen and generates a “racetrack” from that – a slower song will give you a more thoughtful experience with a gradual uphill slope, while fast songs have you speeding downhill.  If your song changes tempo, the generated landscape reflects that.  Individual notes and passages are turned into cubes that populate the track.  Once you set off, everything leaps into life, dancing around in synchronization with your music.

How you play the game itself depends on the ship type you choose, and this really allows you to define your experience.  You’ll always be trying to collect some cubes and avoid others, with the simplest mode being simply “get the colored cubes, avoid the gray ones”, while the more advanced game types have you collecting groups of like colors to best exploit the scoring mechanism.

And scoring is a big deal.  While head-to-head competition is limited to two people sitting at the same computer, scores for every piece of music are tracked online so you’re in competition with the rest of the world.  If you lose your ranking, the game emails you to let you know, goading you into playing again to regain the top spot.  The only flaw in this system is that there’s no way to ensure that each player has exactly the same music file, and small differences can produce quite different tracks.  Hopefully this can be worked out in the future to allow for an assured level playing field.

While the visuals and concept may seem to indicate that this is just for the dance music kids, the ability to throw any genre of music you desire at the generator opens up a world of different gameplay, appealing to a wide audience.  My two-year-old and I were bopping around to a variety of Jingle Bells covers for example, and the intricacies of an extended classical piece result in a delightful landscape.  You really can lose yourself in the music.

It’s practically impossible to convey how fun Audiosurf is with mere words.  Download the free demo.  It’s limited to 5 songs and only gives you a couple of the play modes, but before long you’ll be paying the measly $10 to unlock the full game, which will also give you the entire soundtrack to Valve’s Orange Box collection of games to get you started if you’re one of those people who still buys their music on CD.

Tags: Game Reviews