Audiosurf

There's a bit of buzz about a new game called Audiosurf that was just released on Steam. Apparently it's been in beta for a few months, so a lot of people already knew about it, but I first heard about it today. Basically, Audiosurf reads an mp3 file and then generates a "level" from the song - similar to visualization plug-ins for Windows Media Player and Winamp and shit, only instead of generating it "on the fly," it takes a few seconds to pre-render it before you play it, so it comes off as a bit less random. Once the level is rendered, you then control a little spaceship and try to maximize your points by collecting colored blocks. It probably fits into the same genre as Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero and Rock Band, in terms of being a "rhythm game" where you try to hit things in time with the music.

It essentially has three "modes," of play; Mono, "not-mono" and co-op. Mono is where there are colored blocks and gray blocks, and you want to collect the colored blocks and avoid the gray blocks. The colored blocks are always the same color, so the player doesn't need to worry about color matching. "Not-mono" is simply my term for what seems to be the "regular" style of play, where the blocks are different colors and you have to match them, kind of like Bejeweled or some shit. There are a handful of different "not-mono" spaceships to choose from, each with its own special ability, such as the ability to shuffle the colored blocks you've collected or the ability to pick up a colored block and put it down later, when it will have a better impact on your score. Finally, co-op is what it sounds like; you need a partner and one person has the left two lanes, the other person the right two lanes.

Here are some YouTubes:

Mono - NIN "The Wretched" (remix)
Mono - Rick Astley "Never Gonna Give You Up"
Mono - A-ha "Take On Me"
Colors - Daft Punk "Around the World"
Colors - Dethklok "Murder Train"


It's loads of fun, and only $10 on Steam. I've found that Haujobb songs make the best race tracks. In fact, "Faith in Chaos" from Vertical Theory was so cool, I wanted to make my own video capture and put it on YouTube, but it appears that recording my own video with sound without spending any money is just not going to happen. (I did try a freeware program called CamStudio and it says my soundcard lacks the ability to capture the sound playing out of my speakers. *shrug*)

So if you have $10, thinks this looks fun, and want an excuse to sit in front of the computer listening to music all day, check out Audiosurf.