Audiosurf Comments by Jim Rossignol

This looks pretty cool. I wonder how the tracks would look like with some death metal blasting? :)

That looks a bit like Frequency on the PS2

Yep, looks alot like Frequency and Amplitude. Now time to read the wordzzzzz.

Let's see how this handles t3h technical death methul

Any bets on how long until some record industry asshats proclaim that this game 'enables piracy' or some such shit because they're not getting a cut on this novel use of music we've already paid for?

Could be ideal for XBLA, PSN, WiiWare...

thejeek, i bet that never happens, its a game made by 1 person that isnt getting a commerical release.

good squarepusher reference btw, i guess ill start this game off with some nice chilled electronica, then work my way up to venetian snares >:D

@retrend

Hmmm. You may be right since there's probably no money in it for them... I'm just an incurable cynic, me!

yeh its fair enuf tbh, not like they have done anything to earn anything but the harshest of cynicism aimed at them in our lifetime. warner (i think) have just pulled out of funding the RIAA tho, so maybe its the beginning of the end for the twats who have been suing their customers at least.

ooooo Unknown Artist! I love his music!

@thejeek: did any recording industry-types get upset about Every Extend 360?

I hadn't thought of that. Obviously you can listen to your own music in games in the 360 anyway but I hadn't realised that EEE(E...) could sync to your own music, so I guess that's a precedent. Anyway, as pointed out by retrend, there's no money in it, which reduces any incentive to try any potentially expensive legal nonsense.

Still, having said all this, I still reckon there's an outside chance that some bright spark will claim that generating levels from music is a derivative work or some such constructive bollocks and claim the end user or the game developer need some special (and naturally extremely costly) license. If this were to happen, it would be a clear sign that we really are living in the last days before the bloody apocolypse and that a prompt massacre of lawyers is all that would save us...

Perhaps more interesting than the game, is the method by which it synchronizes with the music. If it really is that advanced, perhaps they could license it out to other developers of rhythm action games?

In my experience, games that let you use your own soundtrack usually don't sync up at all with the music.

I can quite easily see Sony jumping on this, selling it through PSN but crucially linking it to the whole Singstar music download feature - You've sung your favourite tracks now fly down them! :P

Edit - In fact why both sticking to just the Singstar music, dump their entire music library on there so you can "interact" with your favourite music by buying it... again :P

Is this a further expansion of "Web 2.0" into games? We give you the game framework, you provide the content that generates the levels - play it how you want to play it. Its certainly an interesting creative road to go down, just as long as we don't get swamped with ideas like this.

But kudos to the guy that has created it - no matter what his influences are. At least its not just another FPS/RTS/MMPORPG......

It really is as Dan (the developer) is saying. The fact that it's a game makes it a better music visualization and the fact that it's a music visualization makes it a better game.

I mean - we all play computer games (otherwise - what are we doing here? ;-) and we all listen to music, don't we? Now you can combine these two elements into one - your game has your own soundtrack that is reflected in the gameplay and the gameplay is reflected in the soundtrack - it's a huge, never-ending spiral of joy. :-D

True - we had music games games before but they were all very scripted and relied on certain genres and very specific gameplay mechanics. Here you can concentrate on beating the high-score or simply on "surfing" your favorite songs. This could be the indie Guitar Hero (OK, I know and love Frets on Fire - I bought a guitar controller just for it =) and judging by the number of videos that have been uploaded just during the beta weekends this will be a major hit.

I've dumped over 15 hours into this after 2 days of playing. My friends haven't played it *quite* as much, but alot of them are into it. It's utterly hypnotic, especially since the tracks are generated by your favourite music. I have to agree on the puzzle aspect, though. If you want to juggle all of what's going on then playing fast songs is right out. That said, the Mono modes exist for a reason. There's far less strategy to handle (single colour blocks only, avoid grey blocks) so you can focus on dodging and racking up combos. The leaderboards certainly seem to indicate that most people favour the mono crafts.

I haven't ventured much past the mono modes mainly because a lot of my songs are too quick and thinking about which colours to pick up just makes you lose it completely.

This game is absolutely wonderful. At first the novelty of trying different songs will keep you interested (you'll think of a song and realize how amazing it would be with the peaks and valleys), and once you get good at it, the gameplay is more than enough to keep you hooked and have you trying to beat your high scores, or the high scores on the global leaderboard.

The cool thing is there's so many different songs out there, it's easy to set new records for some of the more obscure ones, even if you're not very good. It can also be a really relaxing game if you choose a mellow track.

EDIT:
It's also great fun to try spoken-word tracks. "Fitter Happier" is great. :D