FRACT OSC

FRACT OSC

You’re dropped in a barren, alien world with no real idea of what’s going on, but as you explore and interact with the strange world around you, you begin to return music and colour to the world and bring it back to life. The soundscape builds around you, taking your own solutions and weaving them into the music of the world.

FRACT is a game that gives you a brief starting tutorial that is completely free of explanatory text. Not only that, the environment is altogether alien and bewildering, and suddenly animated at unpredictable times. Once you’ve completed the tutorial, the game throws you headfirst into the world without any further hand-holding.

Real player with 60.4 hrs in game


Read More: Best Indie Puzzle Games.


I’ve owned this game for well over a year. Purchased it due to the “Tron” look it seemed to have. As you progress through the puzzles and terrain, its gets harder and harder, almost exponentially. Sorta' like if you take a penny, and double it every day, by the end of the month, you will be astronomically rich. Fract OSC is a lot like that. You’ll get through a handful of the early puzzles before you start pulling your hair out. Finishing the game without either looking up puzzle resolves, or some kind of cheating, its pretty much impossible. May very well be I’m not real good at this kind of game.

Real player with 49.6 hrs in game

FRACT OSC on Steam

Symphony

Symphony

This is a bullet hell style vertical shooter but with a very casual difficulty curve. You basically can’t fail (you will play until the end of a song), but your score and rewards will depend on your overall performance so there’s still a reason to try. The higher difficulty options can offer quite a challenge, but you can take as much time as you want before ever attempting anything above easy while still getting the play value from all of your music.

Basically the game is designed to be relaxing and let you browse your entire music collection while using elements of the song to customize the game play. Things like the tempo of the song determine how fast the game scrolls or the beats can determine some number of the enemies in each wave and then your difficulty selection magnifies these customizations. I don’t know all the specifics and the customization differences are often minor, but it does mean every song you play will be slightly different.

Real player with 103.6 hrs in game


Read More: Best Indie Shoot 'Em Up Games.


In Short:

This game is for those who like 2D plane slightly angled from top-down shoot em' ups in which one is predominantly dodging and destroying enemies that move and act in response to the tempo and all else of ones' (favorite) audio over a minute and thirty seconds long (that is on the computer you are playing on), then this game is for you.

Note: The enemies rarely fire at you, but unlike bullet-hells, you’re entire ship is the hitbox, so enemies can be smashed into, but it will damage your ship. Luckily you can repair it via collecting “Music Notes” (dropped points) from enemies one has shot to death after your ship lost part of itself (took damage).

Real player with 48.0 hrs in game

Symphony on Steam

Circuits

Circuits

If you are the one audience member clapping out of sync with everyone else, then this game is not for you. That doesn’t mean, however, that this is Dance Dance Revolution episode 99. This is quite a different and innovative little game.

The gameplay is about first listening to a track as it should sound, and then reconstructing it using sound bites that you place on the “circuit” in order to finish and play the track.

As in any other puzzle game you have to use your brain, but your “input” for solving it isn’t so much visual elements on a board, but instead sounds, recognition of small variations, and utilizing your short term memory from when you listen to the track (you can do that at any time) to finding the right sound bite/puzzle piece. This gameplay mechanic is quite innovative!

Real player with 10.1 hrs in game


Read More: Best Indie Puzzle Games.


Introduction:

Circuits is an independent masterpiece. It is highly original, and I have never seen another game like it! While it’s mechanics are deceitfully simple, you will come to find Circuits both stimulating and satisfying. The objective is to string together various segments of a song in the correct order… Easy, right? =)

Story:

If you only play games with a primary focus on storytelling, Circuits might not be the game for you. If you can, however, enjoy a game without a tale to tell, I really implore you to try this game.

Real player with 5.6 hrs in game

Circuits on Steam

Frederic: Resurrection of Music

Frederic: Resurrection of Music

I love this game. I keep coming back to it, because it has great gameplay. STEEP learning curve: the game expects you to master nine keyboard keys AND remember the rhythm of each song. But once you get it, the game is great fun. Solid cutscene animation and funny characters keeps the gameplay from getting dry. Works really well on ubuntu linux desktop versions. Also, be aware that there is a “Directors Version” on steam, sold separately, which seems to have additional features. I think it has some additional levels and multiplayer, but reviews say that the gameplay may not be as responsive. I decided on getting this version, and I would recommend others to do the same.

Real player with 17.9 hrs in game

With over 230 compositions under his belt, Frederic Chopin was one of the world’s leading musicians in the 1800’s. He’s been referenced and even starred in multiple video games in the past, and Resurrection of Music is the latest in that trend. It’s probably the best fit, being a rhythm game full of imagination and heart. This is an easy recommendation to anyone who enjoys music.

In Frederic: RoM you play as Chopin himself, recently raised from the dead, and musically battle other musicians across the globe. Armed with nothing but a magical piano, it is up to you to show that you are still relevant in an age of Auto Tuners, Synthesizers, and Pro Tools.

Real player with 10.4 hrs in game

Frederic: Resurrection of Music on Steam

The Polynomial - Space of the music

The Polynomial - Space of the music

I do NOT recommend this game to discerning gamers. I HIGHLY recommend this game to someone who is looking for a cool thing to have on one’s LED Projector wallscreen while playing phat beats or haunting melodies from one’s “altered states of consciousness special music” folder.

I use Winamp’s milkdrop for the beginning of the party, and then when guests are looking to relax and play simple mindless no-consequence gaming in the smoking room we switch to the Polynomial and the music never skips a beat.

Real player with 16.8 hrs in game

  • ‘Be your own DJ.’ -

The Polynomial catapults you into a space arena, with colorful stars and lights illuminating your endless surroundings.

Controlling your own little spaceship, shooting ‘enemy’ objectives and gather power-up items makes it feel like an all classic space-shooter game.

It’s more a case of floating around, attacking anything that comes in your direction, exploring the intriguing and trippy world.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=602627619

Customize your own playlists while navigating along gorgeous environments, tweaking the settings to the style of music, flying around and listening to your favorite songs.

Real player with 15.2 hrs in game

The Polynomial - Space of the music on Steam

Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians

Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians

Dance-eJay music ?

Pros

  • some story (save the princess :D)

  • nice art and animation

Cons

  • framerate up to 800 really drives the gpu up and

consumes allot of power and no way to stop not even

from the nVidia control panel, awful

  • clunky menu system

  • beat based movement is way too annoying and cumbersome,

just leave me to go already, i have faster reactions

and button presses than this beat

  • the constant zoom in and out

without player controlling it is horrible

  • the scenery constantly getting in my way obstructing my vision,

Real player with 12.5 hrs in game

I wouldn’t recommend this game even for the low price of 1,79€ as it’s priced during this steam sale (2017). I got this game in a humble bundle for years ago but couldn’t get myself to finish it until now for several reasons

Firstly, the good parts: The soundtrack. It’s excellent, no doubt about it. Also the game got some rather nice backgorunds and coloring for the most part, The humor kind of works for the most parts and the “sound” the characters does is charming. The story serves it’s purpose but not much beyond that. Everything else is a mess with this game.

Real player with 8.5 hrs in game

Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians on Steam

AliveInVR

AliveInVR

If you own a vr headset and ableton live, this simply is a must have! It’s like being in a meditation room with your music. Nothing’s gonna distract you. It’s you and the sound! Also the company who made this embraces all your suggestions in how to enhance this app… 10/10!

Btw it’s way too cheap!

Real player with 4.8 hrs in game

What a fantastic idea. I’ll be using this to do spacial mixing on my tracks. Thank you for making this.

Real player with 0.8 hrs in game

AliveInVR on Steam

Audioship

Audioship

Very nice game to play in your spare time, when you take a break or anything that lets you have time to play one song.

The aesthetics are very simple, but the gameplay feels polished.

Pro:

Play whatever song you have on your hard drives

Fast and action based

Test your Luck mode

Random generated enemies

Behaivor changes to the music

Couch Multiplayer

Easy to learn, hard to master

Contra:

Kinda hard getting a score over 600

300 played games for an achivement, ain’t nobody got time for that

Online muliplayer is missing by the time I write this review, maybe the developer will add it

Real player with 9.6 hrs in game

It is really a simple and complex gem, only make sure, if you play this on Windows 10

you need set the game to Windows 7/8 compatibility to choose your own music.

Audioship is not as complex a shooter as Beat Hazard or Waves but its controls are more complex…

This is good if you want to play in simplicity using a complex approach.

To add that dimension its controls are using different colors for ammunition and colliding objects.

It is a minimalist game that include co-op, multiplayer, leaderboards and music based game play.

Real player with 2.1 hrs in game

Audioship on Steam

Beat the Song

Beat the Song

Beat the song je zajímavá chytlavá hra, která určitě zabaví. Doporučuju.

Real player with 13.1 hrs in game

This is a great game. There are quite a few songs, some segmented in multiple difficulty levels. You first have to beat the easy level of a song, to unlock the medium/hard version, and let me tell you, hard means freaking hard as it’s easy to get overwhelmed with a storm of notes flying down from all directions.

As for controls, it seems complicated at first, but as you play, you realize it makes sense. I can’t really imagine playing this game on a gamepad, because some notes come almost at the same time, so you need more fingers ready on the keys.

Real player with 8.4 hrs in game

Beat the Song on Steam

BeatBeat

BeatBeat

I received the full game for free through the “beat BeatBeat” Promo where if you beat the level “do my thing” on suffer you where given a free copy of the game (though you can not get it for free anymore but I bileave there will be future promotions, join the discord for more info), and I have, and will continue to, thoroughly enjoy it.

This game is difficult and doesn’t scale to well between the Resolve to Suffer difficulties (hard and super-hard), so be prepared. There is currently a level creating system were you can use your own music, create a level, and share it to steam for others to play. The level editor currently is pretty decent but I have not tested it out since any updates.

Real player with 86.0 hrs in game

This game is actually incredibly fun, I highly recommend buying this game and supporting the people behind this because I can easily see this becoming the next big rhythm game.

Real player with 5.3 hrs in game

BeatBeat on Steam