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 Minimalist Indie 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
Resynth
sokoban is all about moving crates. music is all about rhythm, I guess. and resynth is all about moving crates, but thankfully not to the rhythm, you can take it as slow as you want, playing it as a regular, mostly stress-free puzzle game, but most of the 72 levels have additional goals besides level completion: move limit and time limit. there’s no numerical indicator for them, just lines getting shorter. ideally, you could switch between this and a more precise one.
– Real player with 11.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Minimalist Indie Games.
Fun, addictive puzzle game with nice twist on the Sokoban game. The game gives rotating blocks that create interesting dimensions on paths that force you to think ahead even more. The music you slowly build up by placing the blocks in their place give a nice progression indicator.
Each puzzle, except the introduction ones can be solved with a time constraint and move count restraint, giving even more replayability to give you the challenge to solve it with less moves or faster.
Then once you completed the first page you realize there is a second page with even more mechanics to explore!
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game
140
Most Recommended Game in My Library!
This is a beautiful beat platformer that sat in my library uninstalled for 3 years, now… I feel like a complete idiot. After completing Mirror Level 4 I can say that this game is just downright amazing. Levels that move and change to a beat and rhythm. Time your jumps and movement per the rhythm and move with solid tight controls. There is one issue with this game but it doesn’t crop up until the very end of the game so unless you’re a completionist this may seem like a perfect game in the end.
– Real player with 23.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Minimalist Indie Games.
TLDR
| Enjoyment |
★★☆☆☆
|
| 100% Difficulty |
★★★★☆
|
Experience
You may notice there are contradictory comments from different players talking about this game being either too easy or too challenging - that’s because this game has 3 “normal” stages and 3 “mirror” stages; the normal stages are littered with lots of save points while the mirror ones are the same levels with all the save points ripped away, essentially a 1-life mode. Usually, the normal part can be blasted through in no more than 2 hours, and then you’ll be presented with the ending sequence. If you’re not paying attention to the game’s “menu” afterward - or if you’re not interested in the mirror stages challenge at all - you’re seriously missing out. The 1-life nature of the challenge will force you to sync your mind with the rhythms, and that’s when the true nature of this game really shines.
– Real player with 11.9 hrs in game
ERSATZ
Summary:
Recommended if you are a masochist like me.
Details:
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Insanely difficult, but very rewarding once you understand a segment and can execute it without major errors.
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Chill music, and objects that move with the beat, makes it easy to get in the flow.
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Pleasant to look at
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Unique and fun bossfights (except the first one, fuck that flower)
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Multiple Unlockable Playstyles
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Liberal use of Checkpoints
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Colors sometimes make it hard to see tiny bullets
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Crashed once
~ Perfect for speedrunning. It’s easy to get high in the leaderboards because nobody plays the game (seriously, people come play this game)
– Real player with 185.9 hrs in game
Ersatz is a reflex oriented platformer with a heavy emphasis on speedruns. It is not a particularly punishing game because it has an abundance of checkpoints. About 80 percent of the features like extra modes require you to speedrun certain parts to unlock. So you do need at least some level of competent reflexes to get the full experience. As you can see I dropped 24+ hours into the game and I still have things to do. There are 3 regular modes that change mechanics, journey mode, and infinite mode. If you like that kind of gameplay where you have to learn the layout of the level it has a lot of replay value. As far as music and aesthetic part go I absolutely love it. I think for some $9 may seem a lot of a speedrun game but the price is well justified with content.
– Real player with 38.4 hrs in game
Kinacoustic
The line with many colours, and the ball bouncing at different speed and angles. This is Kinacoustic!!
First bought the game, opened it, well, nothing special, but now i am totally stick on it!!
Looking the ball bouncing around and making contact with the line is so satisfied, especially when you take time and decide to make a song, you can,t stop playing the game until you finish the song!! I am so sure that you will have incredible feeling of success and delight when you complete your works!
– Real player with 226.9 hrs in game
A very fun physics based music sandbox of sorts, if your a fan of music and like the animusic series this game is a must
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
oO
In similar vein to games like Super Hexagon, 140, Gauge and Duet, oO is a minimalistic game with simple objectives and simple controls - on the surface. But while things may look easy enough at first glance, the challenge comes in mastering the sparse mechanics you are given to get past whatever sadistic obstacles oO’s glowing, circular world cares to throw in your direction.
With ever more complex patterns to overcome and a faster and faster rate of play, the simple “push space to flip” mechanic might only be one button but will eventually build to challenge even the fastest of reflexes. You will die again, and again, and again
! and again, and again, and again, and again, and again; but unlike some other punishing titles of similar ilk, the deaths here don’t tend to feel cheap. You’ll always know why you died, and what you need to do to avoid death next time.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
Too frustrating to be much fun. I do like the deceptively-simple concept and the wobbly-screen mode you can unlock each time you clear a level… but the overall charm wears off very quickly. It doesn’t take long for things to start to feel mindless, and this is not the kind of game where mindless gameplay will get you anywhere.
I’m surprised at the glowing reviews this game has gotten. (And of course anyone who doesn’t recommend the game gets slammed with downvotes, I’m sure I’ll be no different.) Scrolling through the positive reviews, hardly any of the users seem to have played for more than a couple hours - probably because the ragequit is strong with this one; I imagine many of these people played it once and haven’t touched it since - so again, it’s tough to understand the positive feedback. For the novelty, sure. Everything else… hm.
– Real player with 7.6 hrs in game
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
Intralism
Intralism is a rhythm based music game that requires precise and precision note hitting to get the highest possible scores and ranks for charts using the w,a,s,d or the arrow keys (can rebind them to anything you want in the options still). The game has a very steady community that makes charts for various genres like anime, blues, children, classical, jazz, rap, metal, rock and more so there is something for everyone. Charts range from easy to hard, slow to fast even one/two handed charts. There are community events for summer, winter, Halloween, Valentines day and so on that allow anyone to make charts then are chosen to be in the event that can get you special Steam inventory items and regular users can play the event charts and obtain event only items too.
– Real player with 15462.5 hrs in game
Intralism
A fun rhythm game quite similar, but not the same as other Beatmania’ish games.
The circular layout can be hard to get used to, primarily if you are used to playing other rhythm games, but I believe it is much more pleasant to the eye and can result in more impressive maps/storyboards (while that is obviously up to the mapper).
Some pros:
There are official (==ranked) maps for various levels of skill and a diversity of genres available.
New official maps are (at the time of writing this) chosen every week.
– Real player with 1244.4 hrs in game
Linea, the Game
Best music game I’ve played since The Impossible Game .
I would recommend it to anyone who likes those up-to-the-beat type of games. You get to play 4 levels (as of March 2019) with increasing difficulty. The objective is to dodge colored blocks while proceeding forward. Once you learn the core mechanics and are able to move around in different situations that’s where the fun begins, because the music plays in sync with the level, most of the time. It’s not an easy game, so you will fail a lot. But fear not, you will keep trying and finish the level so you can finally loop the whole song. I guess from that point is where the addiction kicks in. Enjoy it.
– Real player with 7.9 hrs in game
Pese a haber jugado un total de 5.7 horas nada más, he de reconocer que es uno de mis videojuegos indies favoritos.
El concepto del juego es muy sencillo, pero consigue su objetivo a la perfección: Mantenerte frente a la pantalla unos segundos (o según tu habilidad, minutos) plenamente concentrado en una actividad tan simple como sea posible.
El arte del juego es capaz de minimizar las distracciones que puedan afectar al jugador empleando únicamente figuras geométricas y colores y fondos hipnóticamente sencillos.
– Real player with 7.8 hrs in game
BIT.TRIP BEAT
I’ll start off by saying I’m a pretty big fanatic of the “BIT.TRIP” series. I have most of the games and have played all of them to completion, albeit not perfected. “BIT.TRIP BEAT” is up there as one of my favourites of the series along with “BIT.TRIP FLUX” which came later with a more graphical enhancement. This game although very simple in graphical quality offers a great rhythm experience along with some nice 8-bit music to accompany it. You essentially play as a rectangular stick reflecting a variety of different squares called “beats” ping pong style, obviously to the beat of the music that plays. And that’s pretty much the gist of it.
– Real player with 39.8 hrs in game
BIT.TRIP BEAT is a game that will only appeal to a certain kind of person; one who likes a challenge, is accepting of unorthodox game design (i.e. intentionally making the screen difficult to see / misdirecting the player), doesn’t mind playing a small amount of content focussed on the gameplay and likes the music (because it’s essentially a rhythm game, you’ll be hearing the game’s music the whole time). I don’t think it’s fair to criticise a game for being hard or ‘not for everyone’ because the exact same logic can be applied to every single game, some people don’t want to play a game that feels babyproofed. A lot of people don’t like this game, I personally love it.
– Real player with 38.2 hrs in game