It sounds like "Trine" and is equally amazing.
Before I destroy my keyboard out of the frustration of trying to get past 100 percent on the fifth level of this game, I thought I'd write about why it was good enough for me to drop five of my dollars and six hours of my life the first day I even knew this game existed.
Chime is a perfect combination of Lumines and Tetris, usually the combination of anything and Tetris is enough to garner my attention and luckily enough it just so happens that this one's a keeper. The mindset required to excel at Chime is much more similar to that required to excel at Tetris more-so than that required to excel at Lumines; the strategic placement of blocks to form quads is very reminiscent of creating four rows of tetrominoes to create a tetris (these are all the correct terms, take my word). Combine this game mechanic which is already insanely unfairly targeted towards obsessive-compulsive perfectionists such as myself, with an incredible soundtrack that organically responds to your placement of the blocks within the grid and you have yourself a recipe for addiction.
It must be a testament to the incredible gameplay that I barely care that there only six playable levels in Chime, each with its own unique grid-shape, set of blocks and more importantly its own song which plays consistently throughout your time in the level and while I don't plan on downloading any of these songs onto my iPod any time soon that does not necessarily mean that they're bad songs, in fact, it doesn't mean that at all. What it does mean, however, is that they are symbiotically infused with the levels in a way where one simply could not exist without the other. For example, I could listen to Still Alive forever, it is a musical trophy representing the time I had playing through Portal (seeing as though I never got that damned cake...), however, the version remixed for Chime is significantly more drawn out and while it doesn't bring the instant delight and joy of the original, it allows you to enjoy the song for what it is while you're still horribly aware that you have twelve seconds left to fill the remaining eight percent of the playing-grid.
I feel that for every good thing I say about Chime is something good I'm saying about Steam: the bringer of Chimes. Without this amazing service being what it is I would have never seen this game for sale in the first place. In addition to the simple fact that Steam is a platform from which Chime could be released, it is also fully supported with online leaderboards, stats and achievements. Because the fucking game wasn't addicting enough, apparently.
I was having a conversation recently about how much to put a price tag on a game; to you charge for the length of the story-mode; the overall experience; the multiplayer; how much it took to develop the game? Whatever pre-conceived points existed for that debate have now been shattered by Chime. Five dollars. I paid five dollars for one of the best games I've played all year and most likely will be playing for a very long time. How can a company like Activision justify charging 110 Australian dollars for a game like Prototype when Chime charges five and gives a portion of that to charity? They can't, that's how.
I'm on the verge of a rant that would be better saved for later so I'm going to quickly conclude so that I can play some more Chime before I have to go to sleep and wake up to do many non-Chime related things.
So, in conclusion...
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