Bit.Trip Beat

• Made By: Gaijin Games
• Cost: $6
• Where to get it: Wii Shop Channel

Bit.Trip Beat is a perfect example of why indie games are so great. A large publisher would never release a product like this game, rightly deeming it too risky and not profitable enough to bother with. To a small developer like Gaijin, however, this kind of small, focused project is what they thrive on. A larger publisher would, by their nature, spend too much money on art assets and overall game length, and then would have to charge around 15 to 20 dollars or more just to get a return on their investment. Gaijin keeps the game small and tight and is able to charge a mere 6 dollars while (presumably) still maintaining a profit. Without indie developers, fun games like this simply wouldn’t exist.

Bit.Trip Beat is a rhythm-action game that combines concepts from Pong, Activision’s classic Atari game Kaboom!, side-scrolling shooters like Gradius and R-Type and Sega’s whacked-out musical shooter Rez. Now that you’re thoroughly confused I’ll explain it in better detail: you hold the Wii remote NES-style and then tilt it back and forth (like the old Atari paddle controllers) to move a very Pong-like paddle on the left side of the screen up and down. It’s very intuitive and responsive. In classic scrolling-shooter style, pixels will fly from the right side of the screen to the rhythm of the music and it’s your job to knock them back.

It starts off really simple, with pixels just following the 4/4 beat, but it only takes about a minute before the designers start throwing completely counter-intuitive patterns at you (in a good way). Pixels will come at you in various formations and you must use a combination of reflexes and pattern memorization to make sure nothing gets past your paddle.

Your goal in this is to achieve a high score. Get enough consecutive hits and the game goes into ‘mega,’ a state in which the music becomes more dramatic and consecutive hits add to a point multiplier. Miss too many and you enter ‘nether,’ a monochromatic state that you must crawl your way out of in order to start scoring points again. Too many more misses in the ‘nether’ state will end your game. Trying to maintain a high multiplier is a heart-attack inducing experience and, along with the pumping tunes, is the main draw of the game.

All this musical action is accomplished with some truly wicked 8-bit chiptunes. A curious genre that didn’t exist 10 years ago, chip-style music works best in a situation like this, a self-referential ode to a bygone era. Modern style and synthesis has been mixed in with the old, making for a very stylish and cutting-edge sound.

There are only three levels, but like the old Atari games that it’s based on, the challenge lies not in the length, but in developing absolute perfection with what is given to you. According to Alex Neuse of Gaijin Games, this is the first in a series of retro-themed music games, so be on the lookout for the next ones. If you have a Wii, buy this game and support the indie scene. It’s games like this that make that scene so cool.

AudioSurf

• Made by: Dylan Fitterer
• Cost: $10
• Where to get it: AudioSurf website

Music games fall into two categories. One is the rhythm game, familiar to all: Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero are rhythm games. DDR was a hit and now Guitar Hero is so wildly popular that every developer and his grandma is running to catch up with their own design. The other, more rare and almost forgotten type is the action game designed around music. These eccentric games, like Rez and Vib Ribbon, labors of love from their creators, are sadly often mystifying and alienating to the average player.

AudioSurf falls into this latter category of music games but avoids the pitfall of obscure limited appeal by employing a few seemingly simple but important design choices. It’s a indie game developed by Dylan Fitterer in which the player controls a hover…thing of some sort, moving along three parallel tracks in a vaguely Tron-ish universe. The player collects and matches up different colored blocks and drops them in well that follows the hovercraft. When four or more of the same color are touching, then they’ll disappear and the player receives points. Different colors have different point values, which adds some strategy to all the zipping along and grabbing. 

The color matching is the first great decision that Fitterer made: everyone has played at least one puzzle game and is already comfortable with the concept. But the color matching merely a vehicle to display the true genius of the game: the amazingly inventive integration of music. 

In this game, you don’t just start from the beginning of a series of pre-made levels. Instead, you give AudioSurf an mp3 file from your hard drive and it actually builds a level out of it. As you speed along, collecting blocks, every last bit of geometry on the screen vibrates to the beat of the music, the track rises and falls based on the musical tension in the song, and more valuable blocks will appear during more intense parts in the song. 

When the song is in a softer, more lethargic section, the track moves slower and the blocks are easier to get, making for a more thoughtful experience. When the music gets louder or more dense, the track will dip down, roller coaster-like, colors explode on the screen, and catching blocks becomes a panicked, twitchy affair. When a song is manipulating your emotions and shaping your environment at the same time, it will resonate much deeper, and songs that work particularly well become more memorable. Having this gaming experience combined with the emotional output of your favorite music is what sets AudioSurf apart from other music games. 

The actual puzzle aspect of the game, while satisfying to a degree, is pretty simplistic and, again, only exists as a framework for the player to zoom around inside their favorite songs. If you are looking for a deep puzzle game, you might want to look elsewhere. Anyone else, however, who has the slightest appreciation for the resonating, emotional power of music and would enjoy appreciating it in a new way should check this out.