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Pimping: Audiosurf
Jan. 8th, 2011 04:35 amOne of the things I wanted to do with this blogdeal was actively pimp indie/lesser known games out to my friends. I started to do it with Minecraft… but then I tapered off as other things intervened. There’s a lot of games I still want to shamelessly plug because I think they deserve it, and one of them is Audiosurf.
Audiosurf is to put it simply, a game where you ride your music. While there are a lot of modes, it basically either comes down to either a) matching up rows of colored blocks for maximum points, or b) dodging grey blocks and picking up the other blocks in something like a musically timed bullet hell game. It’s ridiculously loads of fun. Visually, it’s a bit like those Wipeout games during the grand old psx days. A little spaceship rockets down a twisting, turning racetrack while things hover off in the distance, sometimes change color, and fireworks go off whenever you hit a block. If you’re playing Mono (the “dodge things” mode) the colors of the entire racetrack will change colors according to how fast you’re going, and yes, you can change said colors.
Another feature is the tag system. Much like In n’ Out, there’s an awesome secret set of naming tags that add modes on top of modes. Thankfully third party developers have released freeware that’ll tag things for you. For what the game is, you can customize a lot. Tech-wise, the game doesn’t need much, running pretty well on my system with about 2gb of ram. Even when I was recording, had firefox open, and had IRC going it was still playable. Tiny robust game is tiny and robust. In addition the only time I’ve seen the thing crash is when you try to make it play Russian or Japanese-character’d songs.
The good news is that the game is freaking cheap, just about ten bucks off of steam when I got it. If you’re a Mac user it’s even cheaper because… well. You need to get the unofficial port or emulate it in parallels. The other OTHER good news is that there’s a full-featured demo for the first four songs you play. But hey, you’re not here to listen to me blather about it. Go get the demo off of steam, get the mac port kerhere: http://forum.portingteam.com/viewtopic.php?f=157&t=3859 , or just look at these pretty videos before you make the download.
Video 1: Through the fire and the flames.
-Yes, audiosurfers are kind of meme whores. It doesn’t help that this song makes for a really great ride. In addition it’s on full blast, so you can see all the visual effects in highdef
Video 2: Silent Death
This one’s a bit of a legend among mono players. Someone made a 11 minute song to see what the game’s algorithm did to it, and it completely broke the engine. The result is the twistist, fastest, hardest level the game can spit out. The end part in the video is actually the easiest part of the level. The fact that eleven minutes of pure silence with no music clues to go on is also a bit disjointing. Try it, it’s freaking awesome.
Video 3: Crash Tactics
This is my failure of an attempt to record something with the custom colors and settings turned on. Moreover nobody’s recorded this yet, so I wanted to share an amazingly fun track. For those people who are judging/mocking me for the colors, shush. I did them for an AC run I never did and the settings just work for me.
So there you go! If you’re interested I can recommend both some slow songs and fast-paced ones that are just a pure, wild ride.
Audiosurf is to put it simply, a game where you ride your music. While there are a lot of modes, it basically either comes down to either a) matching up rows of colored blocks for maximum points, or b) dodging grey blocks and picking up the other blocks in something like a musically timed bullet hell game. It’s ridiculously loads of fun. Visually, it’s a bit like those Wipeout games during the grand old psx days. A little spaceship rockets down a twisting, turning racetrack while things hover off in the distance, sometimes change color, and fireworks go off whenever you hit a block. If you’re playing Mono (the “dodge things” mode) the colors of the entire racetrack will change colors according to how fast you’re going, and yes, you can change said colors.
Another feature is the tag system. Much like In n’ Out, there’s an awesome secret set of naming tags that add modes on top of modes. Thankfully third party developers have released freeware that’ll tag things for you. For what the game is, you can customize a lot. Tech-wise, the game doesn’t need much, running pretty well on my system with about 2gb of ram. Even when I was recording, had firefox open, and had IRC going it was still playable. Tiny robust game is tiny and robust. In addition the only time I’ve seen the thing crash is when you try to make it play Russian or Japanese-character’d songs.
The good news is that the game is freaking cheap, just about ten bucks off of steam when I got it. If you’re a Mac user it’s even cheaper because… well. You need to get the unofficial port or emulate it in parallels. The other OTHER good news is that there’s a full-featured demo for the first four songs you play. But hey, you’re not here to listen to me blather about it. Go get the demo off of steam, get the mac port kerhere: http://forum.portingteam.com/viewtopic.php?f=157&t=3859 , or just look at these pretty videos before you make the download.
Video 1: Through the fire and the flames.
-Yes, audiosurfers are kind of meme whores. It doesn’t help that this song makes for a really great ride. In addition it’s on full blast, so you can see all the visual effects in highdef
Video 2: Silent Death
This one’s a bit of a legend among mono players. Someone made a 11 minute song to see what the game’s algorithm did to it, and it completely broke the engine. The result is the twistist, fastest, hardest level the game can spit out. The end part in the video is actually the easiest part of the level. The fact that eleven minutes of pure silence with no music clues to go on is also a bit disjointing. Try it, it’s freaking awesome.
Video 3: Crash Tactics
This is my failure of an attempt to record something with the custom colors and settings turned on. Moreover nobody’s recorded this yet, so I wanted to share an amazingly fun track. For those people who are judging/mocking me for the colors, shush. I did them for an AC run I never did and the settings just work for me.
So there you go! If you’re interested I can recommend both some slow songs and fast-paced ones that are just a pure, wild ride.