Thread: XBLA Review: Chime

Well, for your perusal, I decided to turn my short post about Chime into a full-on review. Feedback is welcome, and hopefully I'll get some time to do a few more.


Chime is a neat little musical puzzle game, developed by Zoë Mode, and released on the Xbox Live Arcade.

Gameplay-wise, it’s fairly straightforward – you place Tetris-style blocks on a grid, to make quads. Quads are groups of blocks, the size of which has to be 3x3 grid squares or larger. Every time you place a block, or make a quad, you score points, and every block you place affects the music in some way, as it gets passed over by the beatline.

There are two different game modes: Timed Mode, where you can select a time limit of 3, 6, or 9 minutes in which to score as many points as possible, unlocking new songs once you cover enough of the grid in your chosen time (known as coverage); and Free Mode, where you’re given unlimited time to cover as much of the grid as possible. The two differing game modes are nicely contrasted. Timed allows the competitive folk among you to see how they stack up on the leaderboard, whereas Free gives you a more relaxed experience.

There are five songs in total, by various artists. The music in the game is nice, overall, and can change depending on how you place your blocks, so you’re never listening to exactly the same song twice. The little flourishes added to the music by your quads give the music a level of intricacy, but never feel out of place, and it’s interesting to see how many quads you can get going at once, in order to hear various different passages playing off against one another. But this may just appeal to the music geek in me, and to be fair, there are only a set number of additions to each song, so you will hear the same ones repeated if you’re playing for any length of time. This is true of all the songs though, that while they are constantly changing, there aren’t very many of them, so I can see them getting tired after several playthroughs.

Graphically, the game is very, very simple. There are a few variations going on in the background, to reflect the music, but much in the same vein as the Guitar Hero series, chances are you’ll be too engrossed in your game to notice.

My one major gripe with this game, however, is the brightness. Whenever you make a decent looking quad, you are rewarded by a blinding flash of light. Due to the darkness in the rest of the game – you’re basically staring at neon blocks on a black background, which is already going to take it’s toll on your eyes – these moments can be quite jarring, and I found they actually gave me headaches after a while. Obviously this won’t be true for everyone, but it’s worth noting that there is no brightness control, and no option to remove this feature, which would have been nice for others out there who found it unnecessary.

Achievement-wise, this game has a nice mix. For example, you get one achievement simply for buying the game, and then a fair few of the others can be gained without too much trouble (playing all of the levels in Timed Mode and Free Mode, filling the grid in Free Mode, etc.). At the other end of the spectrum, some achievements are geared towards more expert players, such as getting 100% coverage in 3 minute mode.

So, Chime is a decent puzzle game, with an interesting twist. It shouldn’t draw you back for many repeated playthroughs, but for 400, it’s well worth a look. And hey, if nothing else, some of the profit is going to charity.

7/10

Nice review mate

Cheers, already started putting together my next one for Left 4 Dead 2. Although I should get some work done, really, lol...