Soundfall showed off its trailer in December 2018 when the small indie studio Drastic Games started a crowdfunding campaign for the development of the game. The wait was quite long – after the colorful, entertaining trailer of the game, potential players received minimal information about Soundfall, usually amounting to “The game is in development, please wait”.
Finally, Soundfall released in May – but the occasion was not supported with advertisement or interviews or even loud announcements. The launch turned out to be a very quiet deal. For me, a person who has been waiting for the game all this time since I’m a fan of rhythm games with great music, story and gameplay, the decision seemed quite strange.
However, after a dozen hours in-game, I think I understand why the developers have gone about this way.
The plot of the game strongly reminded me of the widespread isekai genre – a traveler between realms that were a loser in their own home becomes successful and significant once given a chance in a new world.
The protagonist of the game is an insecure, stage-frightened musician that gave up on her dream of becoming famous to stick with the job that barely keeps her going. However, after a typical chat with her friend, she puts on headphones to listen to her favorite music, dissolve in it, distract herself from troubles and… the music transfers her to a different reality.
The realm of Symphony is the world of music. The world where every little thing, every plant, every building and every living soul has its own tone, note or an entire music piece. The world of Symphony is under attack by the forces of Discord. It is up to the heroine to save this world from the invasion and in the process meet new friends, rivals and just amusing acquaintances, unravel the mysteries and ancient history and so much more.
As you go through the game, you will see that our heroes learn new things, change for the better and develop as characters. This is an overall overview of the plot, but playing through the game itself expands it with a myriad of details – the arcs of your enemies are written no worse than the ones for the main characters.
The visual component of the game is bombastic, stylish, colorful and bright. The graphics and aesthetics are really one of the strongest points of the game: screensavers, level design, enemies and bosses, heroes, animated cutscenes, small chats, all of it is presented on a decent level.
From the first few minutes in the world of Symphonia, you will fall in love with its captivating visual side. Harmonious levels will feature enemies that stand out from the general atmosphere, living, singing locations will clash against the Discord corruption.
The second you meet enemies, you can immediately tell that they are aliens to this beautiful world, giving an extra satisfaction to clean out and save the songs from Discord.
Every hero is uniquely drawn in their own style and their own music theme. Each location also has its own visual style, be it inspired by pop-culture, rock, techno and other styles.
But, while the graphical part is a big deal for any game, what really matters for the rhythm genre is the music. We will talk about the gameplay a little bit later, at the moment let’s take a look at the audio component of the title.
Every level has its own tracks, and there are a lot of them. Various music styles are matched to a number of biomes featured in the locations. In the first biome, we have mostly pop music, then it switches to orchestral, changes into rock or techno and so on.
Every song has its own beat-rate and sometimes it is hard to feel it right away. Personally, I wasn’t taken by all of the tracks, but some would feel right at home in my playlist. Sometimes the music left me a bit unsettled – I could clearly hear the beat-rate, but I couldn’t match it in any way which left me to rely on the light indicator at the bottom of the screen in order to synchronize my moves with the music. On the other hand, sometimes I won’t pay attention to that very same indicator for multiple levels in row.
The music of Soundfall is breathtaking, high-quality tracks are perfectly selected to fit with their chosen biomes/locations and add to the overall aesthetic of the game, expanding on the visuals’ part in it. It won’t always be pleasant, but it will always be emotional and memorable.
When the game started playing the remix of Frank Klepacki, I was shocked to the core and replayed the level a few times to enjoy this awesome track over and over again. The game does feature the player that allows you to listen to the music without having to fight for your life – but I wanted to experience it that way.
Now, for the biggest and juiciest part of Soundfall: gameplay.
And here lies the main problem of the game. Soundfall positions itself as a rhythm game, and the idea is great but the execution is very strange and sometimes even lacking. At the very beginning, the game will offer you to set up a metronome crystal, which is incredibly convenient. It allows you to see the delay when trying to match the beat, later you can change it by going through the setup process again. At first, I had a delay of about 50 to 100, but once I adjusted to zero delay it affected my gameplay greatly.
The game is interesting to play from the get-go: each weapon has its own sound and its effect on enemies. Indeed, each weapon has its own sound and by changing it you change the songs to match your style. Heroes have inventories that store weapons (two per level), armor and a special slot, unique per each hero. Melody, the first hero you will have access to, uses a sword that allows her to shred enemies mixed with shooting, stunning, slowing and even AoE on hit. Other heroes have their own devices. What do you think of an ax-guitar with crazy damage but lengthy reload cooldown?
Each item has its own characteristics, rarity and special effects. White items are the weakest and simplest and don’t feature additional effects at all, green gear gives weak bonuses to stats and light effects such as a small slow on hit or a lightning that does barely any damage. The higher the difficulty, the more interesting the bonuses.
Items drop out of enemies, can be hidden in boxes or chests or even secret parts of the map or will be granted for finishing a task. To feel comfortable as you progress through a level, you might have to slow down and grind from time to time to get items with the effects you want.
For example, weapons have a variety of corresponding elements: Fire, Frost, Earth, Light and Darkness. The Fire is weak against Frost but strong against Earth, on the other hand Earth is strong against Frost. Light and Darkness deal increased damage to one another. All of it needs to be taken into account when selecting equipment for the later stages of the game.
Those elements have an increased chance to drop in the areas corresponding with their respective theme: funk, rock, pop, etc., each one increases the chance of dropping an item with a certain affinity. By the end of the game, grinding can be a bit suffocating but all the same music and visuals brighten it up a bit.
Soundfall also features the multiplayer mode that allows up to 4 players to join up together. This way, the game becomes even more interesting, you can hear the sounds of all four party members, play together and enjoy the end result.
The weakest part of the game to me is the beat-mechanic. Each song has its own rhythm, its own frequency of beats per minute. The crystal at the bottom of the screen will demonstrate the rhythm of the melody for the current level, which helps out in case you can’t feel the rhythm right away.
Following the beat of the music, you can use certain actions: shoot from guns, hit enemies with the sword or ax or other devices, dodge or jump out of the way of attacks, start your ultimate abilities and more. And this is where the biggest headache of Soundfall lies.
While following the rhythm and attacking is usually nothing special, incorporating dodges and ultimates into the beat is not quite so easy. You can’t dodge twice without losing the rhythm and it can be difficult to perform and ultimate and get back into the rhythm for the combo. Doing sequences like dodge-attack-dodge is the only way to remain true to the rhythm. Jumping from island to island faces the same problem.
And the last headache: every level has its own rewards at the end. Completing the level, not getting damaged through the entire location, perfectly fitting the rhythm and the last, platinum reward: playing the level without receiving damage and by performing 100% of your actions following the beat.
Through 50+ levels that have been played and replayed again with changes to difficulty and swaps to equipment, I have only managed to get it one single time. I have seen the 99% score more often than anything else. With the developers deciding that the Platinum score requires straight 100%, I only had an option of ignoring those rewards, which, in turn, affected the overall in-game achievements related to them.
This part of the game was quite frustrating and even demoralizing: non-stop rhythm combo, zero mistakes and yet, 99% and Gold. And again. And again. Do you know the definition of madness?
To sum it up, the game has a bombastic design, visual and audio aesthetics, plot and mechanics – but the way those mechanics turn into gameplay can leave a sour aftertaste. When it comes to the music-driven rhythm game, you expect something less than perfect from anything but the beat mechanics. Soundfall’s competitors such as No Straight Roads, Crypt of the Necrodancer and others have the rhythm mechanics polished to the highest level.
The game features a variety of music styles that will fit every taste, the visual part is striking and harmonious at the same time, the level design is pleasant and the story is strong. But when it comes to gameplay, the system is interesting but not without a few rough edges that you don’t expect from a rhythm game.
If you are not competitive about collecting rewards in your games and prefer calm, quiet playthrough to enjoy a variety of music, Soundfall is well worth it. Different styles will keep you from getting bored while you save the lands of Symphony.
Note: the Steam key is a verified purchase by the author
Similar to: No Straight Roads, Crypt of the Necrodancer