Games you may wanna try : Audiosurf 2

The time of the big rhythm games is over. Although I was a big fan of what games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero offered, an over-saturation of the market was their downfall. Who knew big pieces of plastic and licensed music was so damn expensive?

Audio arrival

Today, there are replacements for these games, although one must look into the indie market to find these. Thumper and Rez are awesome examples but I want to talk about Audiosurf 2. Unlike the other games, Audiosurf uses licensed music, in fact you can play any track you have on your computer thanks to this game.

Once you have your have your track selected (there is even an option to find any song on YouTube) the game generates a "map" along with the notes and spikes you must avoid. The main gameplay mode, mono, is simple, press right and left to make your little spaceship move between 3 lanes while hitting colors (notes) and avoiding spikes (wrong notes). You have a combo tracker which you can fill to maximize your score even further.

The algorithm can be faulty at times, the colors and the spikes can be disposed randomly. But the moments of pure synchronicity make the experience worth it. Other game elements are the power blocks, similar to star power from Guitar Hero which give you bonus points.

Because, yes, Audiosurf provides a score at end of every song and combines this with an online leaderboard. This part can vary as some songs are very popular while for others, you may be the first to ever play it. Generating a new track however never takes very long.

A personalized experience

Once you're in the "level", you experience a song, rather than play it. The drops and breaks in the track reflect the bumps and waves in the course and the tempo of the music determines your speed. This part is enhanced in songs with changing rhythms.

The difficulty of a song is not very regular, as the generation algorithm is not explicitly described or explained. The game sort of has a bias towards electronic music, but you can throw pretty much anything at it just to see what happens.

One of the big features of the game is its cutomizability. The songs are one thing but there are in-game and user created gameplay modes and skins which can really enhance the way you play.

Dylan Fitterer, the game designer of Audiosurf is currently working on a new project, Audioshield, the gameplay of which combines music and VR. It was released in 2016 and I look forward to trying it out.

In the meantime, Audiosurf 2 is available on Steam and the Humble store for 14.99€ and while it is a great way to experience music, it doesn't include all music availble on YouTube and there isn't Spotify integration as of this time. So, for some tracks you will have to get your hands on an mp3 file.

Happy surfing!