By Dave
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I stumbled across Audiosurf almost by complete accident – hiding in the Steam collection for $10. It’s basically the PC equivalent of a live arcade game for the Xbox 360, although the control scheme is definitely PC-centric, using the sensitivity of the mouse to its fullest. And what a find Audiosurf has turned out to be.
Based around the idea that each level is made from the rhythm and feel of a song (of which literally anything can be a level – any audio format that may be lying around your hard drive), you play a ship that moves through each musical level. There are numerous modes for you to play, although all use similar mechanics. Every level has three ‘pathways’ that pan out in front of you, each filled with coloured blocks that are placed in time with the song that the level is based on. Depending on the mode, you either have to dodge the blocks or collect different coloured blocks in order to arrange them on a grid around your ship to score points.
The idea itself is both ridiculously awkward to describe (as I think I may have just proved very well), but also stupidly simple as a play mechanic. Not to say that Audiosurf isn’t a deep game; indeed, it’s only as limited as your music collection. On top of this, Audiosurf is one addictive little game. The simple, ultra-violet graphics, the accessible but ultimately deep and rewarding gameplay and the fact you can listen and play along to your favourite music makes this a small, appealing chunk of gaming crack.
Probably the best feature of Audiosurf though, is that every single song has its very own online leaderboard scores, making every song a challenge to prove you’re the best, or even the thrill of finding a song that no one else has ever played is brilliant. On top of that, if you own a high score for a song and someone else beats it, you receive an email telling you that you’ve been ‘dethroned’ on that particular song, and urges you to try and reclaim your title. Which is brilliant.
So overall, Audiosurf is a fantastic little package that’s worth anyone’s time and money. Also, buying it through steam also means you get the Orange box soundtrack, which is almost the worth the entrance fee alone.
