The Steam Files #A.1: Audiosurf

Developer/Publisher: Dylan Fitterer
Release: 15th Feb 2008 (Steam)

So, wow. I actually haven't picked this game up in quite a while, largely because most of the songs I played on it tend to induce near heart attacks towards the end.

There are quite a few choices for characters

It's actually quite difficult to play Double Vision by yourself.

Ok, so let's step back a little. Audiosurf is a game based on music. That much is quite obvious. The game takes music tracks and uses the instrument data to construct 'race tracks' that are then populated with blocks, which are called cars whilst on the track, that you either avoid or pick up. My favourite mode is Ninja Mono, where Mono is a gametype where the blocks that are coloured must be picked up, and the grey blocks must be avoided. I like it because of the simplicity and the manic wrist mangling often involved. There are a bunch of other characters though, like Double Vision, which allows you to play with a partner at the same PC, or with yourself if you're insane enough, and Pointman, which allows you to store blocks for later.

It's quite common to get valleys or mountains in tracks.

Once you've picked a song and a character, the game generates the track, and gives you a preview of the track you'll play. The game represents slow tempo as the ascending portions up to the peak, and the high tempo as the descents to the troughs. This gives you an indication of how fast your vehicle moves, but doesn't always represent the volume of blocks you can expect, which varies wildly between songs and difficulty levels. As mentioned before, you pick up or avoid these blocks depending on their colour and the game mode, but when you have any three or more blocks of the same colour touching in the buffer, they will flash and eventually disappear, giving you points.

A group of linked blocks are blinking in gripping anticipation

The game is graphically beautiful, with the scenery changing with every different song played. And whilst I cannot, obviously, judge the game on the quality of it's music, it offers a range of types of tones for actions like picking up blocks or using powerups, but also gives you the option to mute the sounds too, if you'd rather hear the song. A nice feature of the game is that everything responds to the beat of the music, the colours change from a cool green to a fiery red-orange as the tempo speeds up, and the vehicles bounce more merrily in their lanes.

Overall, this is a simple, but addictive and well-executed musical arcade game. It is also somewhat responsible for the large number of similar games that followed (like Beat Hazard among others), no doubt eager to capitalise in the unexploited niche mixing user provided music with addictive and procedural gameplay mechanics.



Most people reading this review, probably have this game. If you don't, go get it. If you never understood the hype behind this emerging genre, then you will after this game.

Note: The music used in this playthrough was from the Planetary Confinement - Bitscape set, by Sterling McKay. You can check it out here, and you'd make my friend very happy if you went and purchased it here.