Expect also the odd power-up, such as score multipliers and bricks that will apply a uniform colour to your current collection. Red blocks, which are worth the most points, come at more intense moments of songs, while cooler colours are more common and appear during calmer periods. Minimal German techno - a strange but compelling bedfellow for Audiosurf.Īs for the blocks themselves, much like the erratic courses, they work in timed accordance with the music that plays. These seem gimmicky at first, but they quickly open up their own unique benefits, and allow for a wide variety of play styles from relaxed to insane. Each has a unique function, such as Pointman's ability to pick up and store a block of a certain colour, or Eraser's useful skill of eliminating colours entirely. Ships themselves come in various sorts, spread over three difficulty levels. Overfill any one of the bars and it will be emptied, robbing the player of points rather than awarding them, as well as making their ship insubstantial and unable to collect new blocks for a short time. Match three or more blocks of the same colour and they will disappear, adding points to your score in accordance with the total combo, as well as what colour they were. With the course laid out, the music kicks in and it becomes necessary to use a ship-shaped avatar to collect the blocks of various colours that stream down the three lanes, storing them in a grid at the base of the track. The player picks a song, and then Audiosurf takes the desired track and turns it into a linear race-course of sorts, spread out over three primary lanes and two safety zones. So, how does it all work? Well, it's a bit like Columns disguised as a futuristic racing game where speed is controlled by the music rather than traditional acceleration. The player can surf any song they please, of course, and subtle differentiations in gameplay and difficulty help to accommodate this. The only restrictions lie frivolously in the visual presentation and a desire for tempo, something that guarantees that a track by Muse will always be more appropriate than most of Xavier Rudd's back catalogue (although Art of Fighting proved to be a surprising fit, so the impulse to experiment is certainly intact). Audiosurf does come with a select handful of pre-packaged tunes – it would be cruel for it not to –, but by and large it's been designed to take the music on your hard drive and re-interpret the audio dynamics as a slippery racecourse and a series of coloured bricks. It will probably help that Audiosurf doesn't force the pretensions of its creator's own vision and taste in music upon the public.
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