Chime Sharp

TL; DR: HAS BUGGED UNLOCKS, BUGGED ACHIEVEMENTS. AND ACHIEVEMENTS THAT ARE HIGHLY DIFFICULT TO GET WHICH IS TABOO FOR CASUAL GAMES. PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK. Review updated again on 2023-April-3. New review: I sunk around 10 hrs into Chime Sharp when it was in early access for Kickstarter contributors and again on official release, and then never looked back. But being a completionist I've been hate-playing this game for close to 30 hrs for the achievements that had been added later. If removing a game from your steam library also removed it's achievements and play time on your profile, I would, that's how much I hate this game. Which is wild to me since Chime is in my top 3 most favorite games. ANYWAY, THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND UNLOCKABLE GAME MODES: You know how a game says "Clear 60% of the grid in Sharp Mode to unlock Strike Mode?" And then you think that as long as you get 60% in sharp mode, you'll get strike mode? Yeah, it doesn't happen and I have the screenshots to prove it. Either this is a rounding error and people are clearing, say, 59.8%, or the actual requirement is "Clear OVER 60%..." and let me be completely frank, both reasons are absolutely unacceptable. If you can't see the decimals (if 59.8) then it shouldn't be allowed to deny you the unlock. If it's that it's a greater than (instead of equal) then that needs communicated or just say clear 61%. Old review, slightly updated: I backed Chime Sharp on Kickstarter because of being a huge fan of the original game. I am a big fan of Chime; over 2000 hours played between Xbox360 and Steam. Believe me when I say it kills me to write that I do not recommend this game. I will eagerly change my review again when the current issues are addressed. I used to play with mouse and keyboard, now with a RetroFighters controller. PRO / CONS / NOTEWORTHY: You cannot access options during gameplay. This means any settings will have to be changed, then open a level and see its effect. Manageable but poor design for "qualify of life". The 3D effects make me nauseous, BUT there's now an option to turn it off. Whew! The colors of cleared squares are so matchy-matchy with the pieces that even after playing levels multiple times I still forget which color is which and waste time trying to color in grid I've already cleared. HOWEVER after a significant amount of time passing, this is now fixed with "colorblind mode" which is quite amusing to me since I'm not colorblind. Final result: Buy Chime instead of Chime Sharp. The sequel has nice songs but ultimately the game is not enjoyable. If you think you'll like this one as well, play a demo first and buy on discount. NOTE: Within a couple of hours of this review being on Steam, the dev released a notice to Kickstarter contributors asking them to review the game positively on Steam, and to note that some things just were not possible. As my review was the only one on Steam, I imagine my request for a "classic skin" or "basic skin" is what the dev will not devote time for. While I understand making a decision to not add features, I just can't agree. The visuals in this game are too frustratingly different than the original game. Different is fine if it does not detract from gameplay. The 3D effects can be turned off now which is amazing. I never knew this during my test runs as you can't access this except on splash screen. Having new colors in the game is a nice bonus to people who never played the first game, but for many people it causes the game to be frustrating and difficult. This is not what you want in a casual game. The entry point for casual games must be fairly low.

[h1][i]«Красив ли огонь? Да, когда горит не твой дом»[/i][/h1] Chime Sharp — это не просто игра, а настоящая симфония звуков и визуальных эффектов, в которой каждый ваш шаг и каждое движение по сетке превращается в мелодию, способную увлечь и затянуть в свой ритм. С первых минут вам предстоит запустить цепь загадочных комбинаций, где геометрические фигуры и музыкальные акценты соединяются в единое целое, создавая эффектное звучание. Здесь нет суеты — каждая деталь продумана, от аккуратного дизайна до лишь слегка заметного напряжения в атмосфере, которое подстегивает к исследованию и открытию нового. Погружаясь в мир Chime Sharp, вы ощутите, как ваше восприятие реальности начинает искажаться, ведь этот прекрасный симбиоз музыки и головоломок пробуждает в вас уникальный опыт. Когда фигурки заполняют сетку и начинают соединяться, вы на мгновение становитесь композитором — а каждая удачная комбинация отображает вашу внутреннюю гармонию, а не спешку к успеху. Благодаря умело подобранному звуковому оформлению, каждая совершенная комбинация дарит вам ощущение полета, словно вы создали новую музыкальную композицию, сольное выступление в мире звуковой визуализации. Графика в игре будто бы уходит корнями в абстрактное искусство — яркие, переливающиеся цвета создают гипнотизирующее зрелище, охватывающее сознание. Все вокруг меняется и кружится в танце, чем больше вы взаимодействуете с игровыми объектами — кристаллы и звезды, словно звуки, вызывают у вас ощущение возвышенности и вдохновения. Игра приглашает вас в своеобразный аудиовизуальный эксперимент, где мелодии и форма объектов переплетаются, даря удивительное чувство удовлетворения. Одна из сильных сторон Chime Sharp — это возможность расслабиться и отключиться от повседневной рутины. Здесь нет жесткой гонки за результатом, и каждое ваше действие начинает превращаться в медитацию, в которой желание создать идеальную комбинацию становится способом осознать собственное «я». Искусственно завышенные темпы и сложность уносятся в небытие, а взамен приходит гармония и умиротворение, позволяя вам руководствоваться лишь своим внутренним чувством ритма. Так что, если вы ищете не просто игру, а целый опыт, в котором соединяются музыка, искусство и головоломки, Chime Sharp — это то, что вам нужно. Откройте для себя пространство, где геометрия и мелодия сливаются в единый поток, и дайте музыке вести вас в этом увлекательном приключении. Погружение в Chime Sharp обязательно станет настоящим праздником для души и ушей! 6 непонятных правил из 10

Somehow seems...bland compared to the original. Still lots of fun, though. I can't recommend this game due to it not having ANY volume options. It's a game built around music and there are no options for volume levels, simple on/off, effects, etc. I want to listen to my own music while I play since the soundtrack is....ehh.

I love music games! Chime was one of the first Steam games I ever played, and I'm so glad to see that it's finally gotten a sequel! If you've never played Chime before, it's not a rhythm game, but an action-puzzle game with a heavy emphasis on music. The idea for the original Chime was conceived one day when the creator was messing around in FL Studio (or some similar tracking software) and thought of making a game based on re-arranging the blocks on a sample track as the loop was playing live. In fact, the game board of Chime heavily resembles an old version of FL Studio in its visual design, complete with the scrubber-line looping in the background. You're given a grid and a time limit. You will need to place pentominoes (tetris blocks, but with 5 squares instead of 4) to form rectangles (or “quads” as the game calls them). Once a rectangle is formed, it will be destroyed sometime later when the scrubber-line hits it, turning the grid cells underneath them a different color and counting them as “covered”. For every 10% of the board you successfully cover, the song progresses to the next loop and you get additional time added to the clock. Mechanically, the songs differ in which kinds of pentominoes appear, and the overall shape of the game grid. But be careful: when a rectangle is formed, it might chop some pieces of your pentominoes apart, leaving behind “shards”. If the scrubber-line passes over a shard too many times, all of the shards on the entire board will disappear and you will lose your score multiplier. Playing skillfully requires quickly covering the board while minimizing the shards left behind, and babysitting any shards to keep them from decaying. Despite the simplicity of the game mechanics, the skills required to succeed at this game are surprisingly unintuitive! Being good at Tetris-likes won’t guarantee that you’ll be any good at Chime, and it’s going to take you some practice to climb the skill curve. And that’s not a bad thing! The gameplay is very innovative and really works, and I’ve always appreciated it, even when I’ve been terrible at it. If you’ve played the old Chime, there are some new additions here: [list] [*]Where the old Chime had only 6 songs, Chime Sharp has over 12. [*]The game board is now rendered in isometric 3D! If you don’t like it, you can switch the camera to “classic” to make things look like the old Chime. [*]There are several new game modes focusing on different combinations of speed and skillful planning. [*] A new game mechanic where making a “perfect quad” -- a rectangle which leaves behind no shards -- will award additional points, as well as other rewards in certain game modes. [*] In what is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite change, the progression system has been overhauled, as explained below… [/list] In the old Chime, attaining 100% coverage on a board would make the whole board reset while letting you keep your remaining time on the clock. You could conceivably keep playing a board forever (or at least a very long time) as long as you made fast coverage and kept getting those time bonuses. Chime Sharp changes this completely, adding some intense pressure for perfectionists: when you attain 90% coverage on a board, the timer will freeze, the scrubber will take two additional victory laps through the board, and then [i]the song will end[/i] – meaning, you only have those final two victory laps to cover the last 10% of the board! If you want that 100%, it requires some quick thinking and careful planning, as it’s very easy to drop the ball at the end of a great run and fail to get that final bit of coverage. (Also, once the song ends, the board will reset, but it will be a slightly harder version of the same board with more corners and obstacles. If you beat the 5th version of the board, your session’s done and you’re stuck with your score.) On one hand, it’s a brilliant change that fixes the problem of the old Chime requiring huge marathons of play to get a high score (and feeling pointless after a while). On the other hand, the game’s really tough now! Some of the achievements, such as the one for getting 500% coverage in a single session, take some serious skill and persistence! For achievement hunters, Chime is no longer a relaxing ordeal – you’ve really gotta git gud! As for my criticisms: the biggest one, probably, is that the tracklist is rather terrible, or at the very least, not memorable. The original Chime had 6 very distinctive, memorable tracks which felt professional-quality and covered a small range of different genres. In Chime Sharp, the tracklist feels scraped from soundcloud composers, with an overrepresentation of chiptune, chip-step, indie-wave, chip-wave, indie-step, and… well, basically just a whole lot of abrasive electronica. (On the other hand, it has Psychonaut by Chipzel, which is far-and-away my favorite song in the game, and I almost wouldn’t mind if it were the only song in the game, I love it that much.) But hey, maybe you’ll like the music; your mileage may vary. My other main problem with this game is the color scheme. Like the original game, each song has its own color palette. But whereas the original Chime used very dark and high-contrast colors, some of the new color choices are rather awful (even if you turn on colorblind mode)! In some songs, the game board becomes an utter visual mess where it’s impossible to tell pentominoes from completed quads from decaying shards from covered spaces, at least without a major headache. Again, your mileage may vary, and I only found it a problem on a handful of the tracks – some of them looked just fine. As a small note, while the game has Steam Cloud [i]enabled[/i], it doesn't seem to work, and your game progress won't sync between computers. Overall, Chime Sharp is mostly the same game as before, with more levels and a handful of good improvements, and a refreshing difficulty spike. If you loved the original Chime, you’ll probably love this game. If you hate this game, it’ll be because you hate the new music, and that’s perfectly acceptable – if you’re not the kind of person who easily acquires new tastes, you might want to give the soundtrack a listen before deciding to invest in this. As for me, I’ll give it 8 / 10, which would have been the same score I’d have given the original Chime, had I reviewed it. Achievement hunters: I’d estimate this will take 20-25 hours. Some of the achievements are very tricky and require getting really good at the game.

Better than the original! Lots of great songs. There's a new feature I haven't tried out yet. You have to get a certain percentage coverage to unlock things. As for price, originally it was $20 (US) when it was in Early Access. Now it's $10, so it's definitely worth that and much more so when on sale!

WOW! Chime, the original, was released six years ago?!? Where did the time go? I had no idea a sequel was even on the horizon. I loved the original, this was a no brainer - buy it! I don't need a demo or to read reviews. I know I am going to love it. Sure enough. It is a fantastic successor to the original title. This is more of the same, essentially - which is NOT a bad thing - but with much prettier graphics and now a more three dimensional feel to the musicscapes. Music is totally subjective. So this is a non-argument - but I felt like Chime had a kind of shoegazer jazz vibe to it. Not my cup of tea, but I enjoyed it. I loved For Silence (Orbital fan) but the rest felt lacking to me. This one feels much more vibrant and the music has more of a variation to it. The first also felt a little short. The price was fine. But the replayability was dependent on your love of a particular song or gameboard. This looks like it is going to keep me far more entertained than the repeated sessions of For Silence of old. Good stuff! If you like Tetis style puzzlers, this is right up your alley. It lacks the stress of a failed level - which suits me fine - and trades it for a clock. You can race the clock and cloak the board with your pieces or you can go at it slow and just enjoy yourself. There is no punishment and the reward for filling the board is just additional time - that can be dismissed if you are not feeling competitive. Well worth the buy!

I loved Chime from Zoe mode (OneBigGame Publisher). Spent hours with it, despite its small music library. Somehow it was weirdly satisfying to watch a block go “puff” to complete an enjoyable soundtrack. It put me into the flow with the music. Also the “still alive” soundtrack from portal was amazing. You’re looking for a good music game, go by Chime… …skip on Chime Sharp though. The biggest issue is the music selection. There is no workshop resp. no possibility to add own soundtracks (although that is probably due to copyright laws). However they got… well how do I put it… I want to rip my ears off on some tracks. There are certainly people liking it, but I strongly recommend to first check the play list. I should have and you can do it here. http://steamcommunity.com/app/326520/discussions/0/359543951714333829/ Now some minor flaws. - 3D is not necessary and in my case I don’t like it. The slight tilt of the grid upwards makes the block placing a bit wonky. That is a huge issue in a speed game. Switched to keyboard, but placing is only possible with the mouse and key-binding can’t be configured (or at least I didn’t find this feature). For me important because using a CH keyboard the Y and Z key are across the Atlantic from the X for my small hands. - Also please remove the track unlock. It is ok to have challenges, but I want to play the tracks I like and not force myself through some ugly chaotic assemblies of noises. - What’s that google analytics part? It states in the configuration “Opt Out of Google Analytics” with the drop down option “In” and “Out”. Now wait!!??? Do I select In to Opt In for the Opt Out or Out to reconfirm the Opt Out? Wahhh??? Language ambiguity. I’m not native English, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one left confused. Overall not enjoyable. I could only take halve an hour of it. I might reconsider buying it after some major updates, but until then I unfortunately can’t recommend it.

I have to admit, Im not enjoying this game. I loved the first game. This one misses the magic. The music is annoying and repetitive. the songs go from sounding like Old 8 bit NES music to sounding like a rejected Mass Effect sound track... maybe Im just getting old.

Updated Review: This game would be another "meh" review if I could. It's good and all, but it doesn't really excel above what the original Chime did. In fact, the main draw (the music) is actually worse in my opinion, though I haven't seen everything the game has to offer (maybe). The original Chime wasn't very colorful, but that was fine. I liked the understated aesthetic. The new Chime has brighter colors and honestly I find it far harder to look at than the original. So that's one mark against this game. There are two other themes that offer alternatives: color blind mode which is more muted but still kinda ugly on the colors, and BWR which is just Black white and red... that's a bit TOO understated. Make the backgrounds darker and that'd be a good move in my opinion. The original Chime had some really good music in it, stuff you'd find yourself thinking about or humming later. This game? So far there's nothing really great. Only one song even sounded like something I'd want to listen to later and that 's the song by Chipzel. The gameplay is mostly unchanged from Chime, so if you liked Chime's gameplay you'll like this one too, though Chime Sharp has some extra game modes to unlock. I've managed to unlock the "Sharp" mode in the 2nd level and it's a bit more challenging than the standard game. In Sharp mode, you don't have to worry about a timer counting down. Instead you have a set number of lives and every time a stray block gets removed from the board you lose a life. If you play like you do in normal mode, you'll die pretty quickly. Instead Sharp mode rewards players who take the time to think out the best places to set the pieces. Also if you have lost any lives, apparently you replenish them by making perfect quads (which is not easy on some levels) I've heard all but 5 songs in the game so far and I still stand by the comment about the music. Most of the music is kinda lame, or maybe it takes quite a while to build up... Either way the only song that I liked was Chipzel's "Psychonaut" and even that takes a while to build up The BEST addition is the little bar graph at the bottom showing you how much more you have to go to get your next time bonus. If you fail to get the amount of space cleared when the timer runs down, the game is over and your score is presented. If you DO make it though, the game gives you a new timer and you keep going. I actually forget how the original Chime handled it, but I like the graph better anyway. Things I liked: [list] [*] The Bar graph showing how much more space you needed to claim to get your next time bonus [*] It's still chime (with some extras) [*] It worked well with 4K resolutions (I don't even think the original chime had many options for graphics) [*] They updated the scoring so you get bonus points for making a "perfect quad" which leaves no dangly bits behind when it vanishes [/list] Things I didn't really care too much for: [list] [*] Most of the music I heard wasn't that great. Absolutely none of it really stood out and only one song that I can't even remember the name of would deserve to be in the original Chime [*] I'm not a fan of the color scheme. I wouldn't care if it was an option but I didn't see a "classic chime" color scheme option. If I find one though I'll edit this out. [*] I feel like some levels had too few shapes to make the game interesting. [/list] Ultimately it's still got most of what made Chime fun to play, and maybe you'll like the music better than I did. For me, the best level of Chime was "For Silence" by Paul Hartnoll of Orbital. If there had been one song in this game that hit that level of good to me, I would be far more enthusiastic about this game.

[i]Chime Sharp[/i] is an interesting improvement of [url=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris]Tetris[/url]: instead of the simple block-dropping formula, we have to place randomly coming different shaped rotatable blocks on a board, but instead of completing just simple lines, we must form at least 3x3 blocks to make the formations disappear. While it advertises itself as a "music puzzle game", the role of music is an overexaggeration, all it does that it speeds up slightly when we are about to fail... The main problem with the game is its heavy reliance on luck: the shape of the next block that comes determines our outcome completely. No matter how quickly we can make decisions or how fast our fingers are - with 5-6 T-shapes in a row, there'll always be fragments left, no matter what, ruining our chances as time runs out. I even tried to forget about the bad experience I had with another [url=steamcommunity.com/id/atisz2/recommended/326670/]game[/url] of this developer, but the same dependence on luck and the simplified, unpolished gameplay just all came back to me. Another (although minor) problematic thing is the lack of information. I usually don't consider this a shortcoming, I believe trial & error prevails - unless of course there are complex rules involved (like AD&D), but still, some basic instructions should always be attached, instead of just saying "it's the good old Chime, that everyone knows"... While it has received updates over the years and descriptions to the various game modes had been added, the core mechanics are still unexplained to those who did not play the - according to the developer - "much-loved" prequel. So, there are various shaped blocks, just like in tetris - made of different number of cubes, depending on the level. These formations only disappear after a vertical sweeping line coming from the left of the screen passes them, 'activating' the correctly placed (at least a 3x3 square) shapes, while leaving the fragments that 'stick out'. The activated tiles - which the game calls 'coverage' - must reach at least 60% of the entire board to unlock new levels and modes, while 90% is required for successful completion, within the time limit. The left out fragments however - after the line passes over them several times - will eventually disappear without progress/coverage AND making us lose time. Therefore we must try and shape rectangles (so we won't leave fragments behind) and - even better - squares, since these perfect 3x3, 4x4 formations provide us bonus time. These apply to the normal/standard mode, but these core rules are present in all the other ones. Practice mode does what it says: it's standard mode with a very generous time limit, but unfortunately it really is just for practice, only the "create" type of achievements can be unlocked here + we don't lose time if we leave fragments. The titular 'Sharp mode' is actually something I personally found easier than standard mode: there's no time limit, instead we have 10 lives - from which we lose 1 for every left fragments and for perfect quads we receive lives (instead of extra time). Strike mode is a strange (/pointless) one, since it's impossible to complete: we have 90 seconds to cover as much of the board as we can, BUT remaining fragments can destroy (!) adjacent (and some random) coverage with the line moving much faster than in the other modes and fragments disappear faster too. The final mode is called 'Challenge' and surprisingly it isn't hard at all: all there is to it is the mazelike board, so we have to take extra care when placing pieces, but otherwise feels and plays just like standard mode. The first thing we should do is switching to simple view in the options menu, because the '3D' just presents the table in a distorted manner, adding some unnecessary difficulty... unfortunately the crazy colour palette (bright orange + bright blue + white combinations) can't be changed, so good luck with that. A stage/level counts as completed whenever we reach 90% coverage, but it keeps on going for 2 more loops (the line passes the screen 2 more times). The line itself is the source of several bugs on standard mode (maybe that's why standard is the hardest): 1 affects success, so it's quite serious - sometimes it fails to register the progress we made and we're not given the bonus time necessary for continuing (even though we managed to cover some new areas of the board). The other is related to an achievement: I reached 100% coverage several times, yet it failed to register since the game counted the level as completed, before the line reached the right edge of the screen. The luck related issue, the 'T-shape anomaly' could have been prevented by slightly restricting these abnormal randomizations by default. While the game apparently aims to be casual and chill, the tight time limit (of the standard mode) makes it a hectic race against time, preventing the player from thinking and planning which should have been the goal, I think. But that's not all: sadly this is one of those games, where once we've played one level, we’ve pretty much played them all - and this is a pretty serious issue, one of the biggest one a game with multiple levels can have. The overemphasized role of the 'dynamic soundtrack' is nonsense: as mentioned before, its speed just increases slightly as we are about to run out of time/lives. That's it. And about the soundtrack itself? After unlocking them all (37 hours) I can say I've heard better, far better and can find more likeable in about 5 seconds with similar style. Initially a modest casual game, but after actually completing (90+%) a level, its shortcomings quickly show and turn it into a hectic, buggy and boring rush, which requires more luck than thinking and/or speed. PROS + interesting concept for a tetris clone + some annoying things can be changed in the options... CONS - ...and some can't be - very much luck dependent - becomes boring fast despite the 4 game modes - standard mode seems to have bugs - terrible colour combinations - music plays next to 0 role contrary to what the game claims RATING 2/10