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Nate The Necromancer
If you are anything like me, you’ve tried to do well by your wallet and living space by not falling into the trend of buying the console-based music games, and subsequently, a glut of plastic instruments. I’ve got nothing against them as games, but they can be costly, so I have resigned myself to latching onto the fallout of the rhythm gaming revolution by playing the PC-born music games like Audiosurf or Frets On Fire instead of two or more Guitar Heroes per year.
This week I have finally gotten around to playing IGF’s 2007 winner of the Best Student Game award, Synaesthete. Created by four students at DigiPen, Synaesthete is something of an “action-rhythm” game set to electronic music. It received some press a few months ago when the awards were doled out, and I am sure there are others, like me, who downloaded it but just let it sit in a forgotten directory for all this time. Time to give it a look!
Synaesthete, at first glance, looks far more complicated to play than it actually is. It follows familiar principles that we have come to know in the mainstream rhythm games; watch for “notes” to descend to a certain point and then hit the corresponding button at the appropriate time. Missing a note in Guitar Hero will cause your music to skip and it won’t pick up again until you’ve gotten yourself back on track. In Synaesthete, however, missing a note does nothing to the flow of the music or the game itself, but it can still get you in trouble.
In Synaesthete, via the WASD keys, you control an avatar called the Zaikman. The object of the game is to navigate him from one side of the level to another via a series of rooms, each one locking him in until he has eliminated all of the enemies that will spawn inside. You help him accomplish this by hitting “notes” successfully via the J K and L keys, at which point he will fire energy beams at the enemies based on proximity. The Zaikman can be damaged and his health is indicated by a meter that is located just below your “note bar”. Like I said before, missing a note will not effect you negatively, but you also won’t fire any beams for that note, so the Zaikman can get in trouble rather quickly if you miss too many. As you progress through the rooms, the music becomes increasingly complex and thus you have more notes to deal with.
Also at your disposal is a variety of spells, and from what I have seen, you have three uses of it per level. This may change later on in the game or depending on which spell you have, I am not sure. At any rate, the number of icons at the top right of the screen during play indicates the number of times you can activate the spell. You are prompted to choose your spell each time you begin a level, and you unlock more as you progress through the game. The first spell available to you is called “Epiphany” and it will restore your health when activated as well as produce a very pretty light show.
I have recorded a video of the first as well as easiest level in the game. The level that comes right after this is entirely more impressive and complex, but I decided it would be better to simply show a demonstration of the base gameplay rather than possibly spoil the thrill you’d get from experiencing a later level first hand.
Synaesthete is available from a number of sources for free, including but not limited to the students’ official page at Digipen and the DoSu mirror.
May 21 2008 11:17 pm
I too was interested when I first saw this at IGF 2007 awards. I STILL HAVEN’T GOTTEN AROUND TO PLAYING IT. heh. It makes me want to play all games that way, firing only on the beats and groovin’ with the music of the particular game.
May 31 2008 2:12 pm
Holy schnikies, i’m going to have to give this a download.