Hey team! We're doing an Indiegogo campaign to supplement our Kickstarter funding. The game's being made but we fell a little short of a stretch goal everyone seemed to want. So our promise is this: if we hit £3,000 on Indiegogo we'll make two games instead of one, and all our backers (both here and from Kickstarter) will get this new 8-bit version of the game, Chime Flat, for free.
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Chime is a music puzzle game, initially prototyped by "The Lab", a team I ran while I worked at Zoë Mode. People have compared it to
Lumines, but I always describe it as part-sequencer, part-Tetris. You place pieces on a grid and those pieces are read as sounds by a beatline. As you tessellate the pieces to cover the playfield you both augment and progress through a piece of music.
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Gamespot called it "captivating and inventive"; IGN said it was "easy to get sucked into"; and I gave it 7/10 on my radio show, the highest score we've given anything! How's that for ethics?
Chime is both addictive and ambient, competitive and relaxing. But this is a music game -- words can't do it justice -- and the best way to understand is to play. So we've made that possible: you can spend some time with an early alpha build of Chime Sharp right here. Hopefully you've already done that. Hi.
[And hopefully you want more than one level, one mode, one piece of music and one set of blocks. Get this: there's already more. If you back Chime Sharp right now you'll receive a download of the three-level version of the game as it stands, the moment the Indiegogo campaign finishes. That means a playable PC version with two more levels and two more tracks, by the brilliant Chipzel (Super Hexagon) and the equally amazing Andy Hung (F*** Buttons), and you'll continue to receive updates as we move towards release. There are also tiers that allow you access to the work-in-progress dev version and access to the design group.]
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OK. Good question. I've been playing the "hypothetical sequel to Chime" game in my head for five years. As soon as the chance to do this arrived I knew exactly what I wanted:
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Chime Sharp needs new music (How many? Minimum 12 new artists, 12 new grids)
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Chime Sharp needs a new aesthetic (It does? Sure: blocks don't have to be boring, and neon is so 2009)
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Chime Sharp needs new rules and ways to play (What are they? Hm. I have some ideas, but we need some time to try them)
The last bullet point is a bit vague, I know. I can be more specific: I want to fix some of the things I still find broken and dissonant in Chime -- balance the Fragments, encourage Perfect Quads, improve the relationship between the music and the game -- and try some new rules too. That's the part of the future I can't see yet. I'd like a ruleset that removes the timer, I'd like a shorter form of the game, but we need some space to see what works, and that isn't as simple as it sounds. The most important thing is to not break what makes Chime Chime.
So: Chime Sharp will be a prettier version of the game that everyone loves, distilled, with extra game modes and all new music. And again, you can already get a glimpse by playing the demo you've already played. Right? RIGHT? Right.
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It's a standalone version of Chime with 2D visuals and a chiptune soundtrack. Like 8bit Chime, if 8bit meant "hey, this is all a bit pixelly and has a reduced palette" which it seems to, these days.
Chime Flat was initially a stretch goal that we didn't reach during our Kickstarter campaign but it's such a good idea and I really don't want to let go of it. It's an opportunity to try something different with Chime -- a shorter version of the game with an arcade spirit. We know everyone wants more levels, more songs, and we also know some people prefer straight-up 2D visuals to Chime Sharp's new 3D thing.
We've also had a lot of chiptune artists contact us with a view to getting their music in the game. That genre of music works really well with Chime and anyone who's ever heard One Life Left will know how fond I am of wonky bleeps and bass-y saw waves. It's important that Chime Sharp's soundtrack stays cross-genre and diverse, but producing a themed, light version of the game with that sort of music in mind feels like the good idea.
We didn't make the stretch goal. We still want to do it. So what happens now?
Here's the deal; we finished about £3k short of that goal on Kickstarter. If we reach £3,000 here then every backer -- on Indiegogo or on Kickstarter -- will receive a DRM-free PC version of Chime Flat for free.
