The rhythm is literally trying to get you in Soundodger+
Have you ever wanted to have a really cool audio visualizer try to kill you? If so, I have the perfect game for you! Soundodger+ wants to play you some music and murder you with spiky doom shivs. This quasi-new game from Adult Swim and Studio Bean pits your reflexes against phat beats and pounding bass. What I mean is that it’s new in its downloadable and portable Steam friendly form. Soundodger+ is an expanded version of the flash game, Soundodger. Regardless of which version you play, I’m sure you’ll agree that this game is certainly something awesome.
Soundodger+ is basically a “bullet hell” style shooter; emphasis on the bullets and drop the shooting part. Each level is one song and you spend it dodging out of the way of waves of bullets being fired at you from the outside of your small circular arena. The death being hurled at you is done in time with the music and can be a bit distracting. This game is downright hypnotic. The goal is to successfully dodge all of the projectiles in the myriad of forms and achieve a score of 100% at the end of each level. Besides which, getting hit or slowing down the stage to aid in dodging screws up the music as well as your score. However, after completing a stage you can always revisit it in zen mode to more thoroughly appreciate the audio and visual feast without worrying about dodging. Unless you, like me, feel compelled to at least try anyway to avoid seeing the shapes turn red from hitting you.
Unlike the free online version of the game, Soundodger+ has a really fun feature that will auto-generate levels from mp3 files on your computer. Note to self: try out Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries later on. This lets you play the game using any genre of music suits your personal tastes. And if the auto-generated levels aren’t enough for you, the game comes with a level editor so that you can craft your own sadistic levels of impaling and share them with your “friends”. One thing to note is that you probably shouldn’t try to auto-generate to files as large as, say a Dorkadia podcast just as an example. It takes a while for the game to analyze a 45 minute long track and you’d have to be a masochist to endure that kind of grueling trial. I absolutely did not try doing that; why would you think that?
About here is where I would normally try to point out something that I think could use some improvement just to keep my reviews grounded and balanced. I can’t really think of a single thing that is wrong with Soundodger+ as it stands. The simple, yet engaging graphic style is absolutely great. The music, which is the centerpiece of the game, is fantastic. It even has controller support if you’d rather play with an analog stick instead of a mouse. You’d be crazy to abandon the tight, precision movement that using the mouse provides, but that’s up to you. My only million dollar suggestion for Studio Bean is to try adding Pandora, Spotify, Last.fm, etc support to create some kind of awesome endless mode. That and adjustable difficulty for the auto-generation feature.
When people say that video games improve hand-eye coordination, they should be thinking of Soundodger+. The fusion of simple geometric bullets and an incredible soundtrack with crisp, responsive controls is absolutely perfect. It goes way beyond your normal rhythm game. A review and some images will never really do it justice, but there is a trailer here to help give some clarity to my description. I don’t know what else I can say about it, so I’m just going to end with a couple gameplay tips. You can track how close you are to the end of a stage by checking out the expanding circle in your arena of play. It’s either a solid circle or, if you’ve been hit, it’s the ring just beyond the solid colored circle. It’s also worth noting that it’s just the tip of each projectile that’s dangerous to you. Though watch out for that in dubstep style songs as they may just jump back and hit you if you’re not careful. Finally, the diamonds will chase you for a while, so don’t stop moving. Now go play the free version on the web and then jump over to Steam and buy Soundodger+.
