Negative Space Games

Game: Audiosurf
Developer: Best Game Ever
Released: Febuary 15, 2007
Platform: Steam
Price: 9.95$
Rating: 8/10

Imagine a world where you can see sound.  Not just see it, but feel it like a physical thing on your skin.  Every song would be not just a combination of notes, but an intricate wave ebbing and flowing with the music.  If you lived in such a world what would you do?  Would you sit back and just let the waves wash over you?  Or would you be the first one to grab your surfboard and ride the waves of Pink Floyd?

It’s fun just racing along and, if you’re anything at all like me, singing loudly and in the process making the cat run for cover.  
The game Audiosurf lets you enter a world just like the one described above.  And no matter how you answered the above question Audiosurf will let you play out the answer.  Screenshots of Audiosurf show off a simple looking racing game along the lines of F-Zero or Wipeout, but the actual experience owes little to those games beyond the initial coat of paint.

The game owes much more to three different pieces of software, one of which isn’t even a game at all.  Those games are Bejeweled and Guitar Hero, and the third piece is the visualizations that come prepackaged with most media players.  By now you should be intrigued, and probably a little bit confused.  Never fear though, as the game is very easy to pick up and get into.

Let me describe a song for you and I think it’ll start to make sense.  Song selection more than any other factor determines the kind of experience you’re going to have with the game.  When starting a round the game asks you to choose a song from your computer.  It recognizes almost every audio format you can think of, so don’t worry about something not working.

The game analyzes your song and creates a track from it.  Before the match starts the game will show you a map of the song, along with how many points you need to score in order to get different medals (more on the scoring system later).  Taking a close look at the map gives you a good idea what to expect from a song.  Slow songs will be uphill, fast songs a steep hill that you’re going to be racing down at the speed of light.  Depending on your taste you may prefer one or the other, or (my personal favorite) songs that have a good mix.

Once the song starts you’ll find yourself in control of a car running down the track created by your song.  You can not accelerate or slow down—your speed is directly determined by the tempo of the song.  Directly under you car is a grid filled with squares.  This is the puzzle playing field where you’ll be making matches.  The track is divided into lanes, and each lane represents a column on the puzzle grid.

As you may expect the track is not empty.  As you race towards the conclusion of the song you will find that the road is occupied by static blocks—called vehicles by the game—of various different colors.  The location of these vehicles, just like the track, is determined by the beat of the song.  Every time you touch one of these blocks it will take a spot in the puzzle grid under you—its location determined by the lane it was in.

Your goal is to make matches of at least three on that grid.  The larger the match the more points you’ll be making.  Also determining your score is the color of the match.  Red blocks are worth the most points, whereas cool colors like purple, blue, and green, are worth fewer points.  If the grid fills up with unmatched blocks then you’ll be punished, either by losing points (casual mode) or being taken off the track for a limited amount of time.

Those are the basics of the game, so by now you’re probably wondering if it all comes together in a way that actually works.  The answer is yes, but with some minor reservations that I’m going to explain now.  As I said before the most important choice you make in the game is what song to play.  In my opinion varied songs are the most successful at showing off the connection between the music and the game.  This isn’t precisely a problem with the game, but you should be aware that your mileage will vary depending on what you like to listen to.

The biggest issue I’ve personally had with the gameplay is that the difficulty isn’t very balanced—probably due to the way the game generates the tracks.  Most songs with any kind of tempo create a track that flies by faster then you can think.  This is especially noticeable when you first start playing the game.  Compared to the methodical pace of many puzzle games of this nature you are given very little time to think through your next move.  For strategic thinkers this will be annoying.  Audiosurf is mostly a game about reacting, not planning.

That’s not to say that the game designers have entirely ignored the strategic gamer.  The second most important choice after song selection, is character selection.  There are a variety of different vehicles to choose, and each has its own unique style of play.  These vehicles will allow you to store up pieces, shuffle the playing board, erase all blocks of a certain color, play as two vehicles at the same time (this can be used to create a very interesting multiplayer game) and even play a non-puzzle mode that truly embraces the twitch based nature of the game.

Thanks to these vehicles it is possible to play the game strategically despite the game’s frantic pace, but you’re still going to need to spend a lot of time practicing to get truly good at the game.  A look at the high scores on certain songs convinces me that some players have mastered the game in ways I can’t even begin to imagine.

Speaking of scoring, I should mention that the game has a good set of rewards for playing the game well.  It’s possible to get through songs just not trying very hard, but only players at the top of their game will get score bonuses added into their total score at the end of the song.

Graphically the game is more than competent with a slick yet basic graphical design that looks fantastic going at high speeds and allows the game to keep up a steady framerate.  Believe me, you’ll be glad it does.  

In terms of presentation the game is equally well done in most respects. Especially nice is the score board system which lets you compare your score to everyone in the world, people in your state, or even with just your friends.  By hovering over a person’s score you can even see which bonuses with which they finished the song.  

My only complaint here is that scores are not segregated based on which character you use.  They are segregated by three skill categories, but that doesn’t change the fact that players using certain characters will inevitably get a much higher score then those playing with others.  The Double Vision character is especially bad. Because it allows the player two cars it is possible for them to rack up larger combos then with almost any other character.

I have two other minor issues with the game’s presentation.  One: it has a meager options menu that doesn’t even let you set up your own controls.  Mouse and keyboard both work fine, but I have a feeling that a good analog stick controller would be superior.  Guess players will just have to rely on joy 2 key if they want to try it out.

My second complaint is larger and revolves around the game’s song selection screen.  For some reason this screen does not show me all my folders, and even stranger still does not show my songs/folders in alphabetical order like windows explorer does.  This makes it next to impossible to find a song I want using the game’s song explorer.  Luckily the game designers do allow you to use the default windows file browser, which works like a charm.  This makes me wonder why they didn’t just go with that instead of their half-assed approach.

As you can probably tell all of my complaints with this game are small.  It is an incredibly solid experience that lovers of music (i.e. everyone) are sure to enjoy.  It also feels incredibly fresh.  Even if the steep difficulty curve is too much for you, as it was for me, you’ll still find an enjoyable experience.  The game even includes an un scored mode where you can just enjoy the visuals.  It’s fun just racing along and, if you’re anything at all like me, singing loudly and in the process making the cat run for cover.

Posted by Matt 2-17-08