Chime Sharp

What do you get when you cross Tetris with an audio sequencer? An addiction. For those who like puzzle games while listening to some good mellow tunes, Chime Sharp should be among your first picks. It’s a music puzzle game that lets you directly influence its soundtrack while you play it.

Chime Sharp is based on a very simple and elegant concept. You have a grid, and using randomly provided tetriminos you have to fill the entire thing. However, not in the Tetris way, but in a way that’s specific to this game.

Each cluster of tetriminos or shapes you create forms a quad that gets stamped on the grid as the beatline passed through it. This way you add new stuff to the song and obviously get points. It’s exactly like playing Tetris on a step sequencer except that each piece you place isn’t an individual sound or note. But it’s very close, and that’s relaxingly interesting.

That’s what’s going to happen when you get your hands on Chime Sharp; not all the time, but in most cases. And it gets ‘worse’ for those who enjoy puzzle games and good electronic music. The demo has just one level for you to enjoy and one mode to go with it but it’s enough to convince you that this game is a good idea, that it has a pleasant experience to offer.

The gameplay comes intuitively, and right from the first few seconds of gameplay you just want to kick back your chair and soak in the sound. Hopefully, the full game’s score features a good variety in terms of audio style and what you can actually do to influence the songs. But there’s no doubt about that. The first Chime featured audio from Moby, and that means something.

Moreover, they have a successful Kickstarter campaign running, and it’s mostly aimed for music purchases, one more reason to appreciate what Chime Sharp is and what it wants to offer. Feel free to stop by the Chime Sharp Kickstarter page to show your support, to drop a comment or just to get additional information about this project.

Regardless of how much of a hardcore gamer you are, everyone has that casual game they go to when there’s not enough time to do launch a new campaign mission in an RTS or beat a boss in an RPG. That’s where Chime Sharp comes in. It looks good, it’s relaxing to play, the music is sure to be great, and it might be your zen-mode enhancer.