I think that I am going to start blogging once a week spotlighting some random, cool Indie Game that I’ve found. There are a lot of bad ass little games being developed by brilliant people, and the whole Indie movement has become pretty amazing with the advent of Steam, 360Live, WiiWare and PSN.

If you happen to see some cool Indie game, drop me a line and I’ll look at it, and probably write about here. Yay for small innovative games. They make me happy.

Synaesthete

Where: Download Full game Here
Cost: Free.
Play Time: Few hours.
Platform: PC

The Indie game of the week this week is Synaesthete.

At it’s core Synaesthete is a combination of rhythm button mashing and dungeon crawling with a dash of zen. The basic game play model is that you maneuver your avatar through a surreal, almost tron-esque landscape with your left hand, while pattern matching with your right hand. You need to keep the beat and pattern match along to the trance/electronica beat in order to shoot lasers at the stampede of hostile abstract creatures.

Visually, the game is awe-inspiring. Playing through this game on a big screen with the sound up was a quick way to lose myself in a sensory experience that lasted for an hour or longer. The music is great, I left a few of the songs from the levels looping for a while because they were just that catchy.

The story of the game doesn’t change much, the environment and songs become far less forgiving, and there are some very fun boss battles.

Where does the game fall a little short?

• I would say first off in the difficulty of the first two difficulty levels could use a little tweaking. The unlockable 72bpm mode is much harder and the shift in difficulty was a little annoying. It’s not impossible by any means, but I’m a fan of linear difficulty progression.
• I also think that the more complex rhythm matching at times seems overly complex and annoying. Granted, you do not need to hit every note, and in fact are encouraged not to hit every note. However, at times it feels a little unresponsive and frustrating.
• The landscapes and environment, while initially amazing and beautiful can become redundant and simple and will lose some of their visual punch, but I felt that only distracted from the experience slightly.

Do any of the minor faults in this student project detract from it’s overall class, quality or demand to be played? Not in the least. Give it a run if you can, it’s well worth your time.