A lot of people think of video games as a medium for entertainment to indulge ones self. “What can video games do? They don’t benefit the world like a work of art!” is the typical thought of some folks. Zoë Mode had decided to change that with their musical puzzle game Chime and the OneBigGame charity initiative. The initiative is currently donating 5% of the royalties from Chime to children’s charities with a future push of 80% to charities for their later games. Their motto is quite noble: “Play, so others can.” At this moment, they are pledging support the Save The Children and the Starlight Children’s Foundation, both being worldwide organizations. I was given the game by my best friend Alex as a gift as he loved the game and the premise of the charity. It took 3 minutes and I fell in love with the game.
There used to be an embeded media player here, but it doesn't work anymore. We blame the Tumbeasts.
The mechanics are pretty simple, yet intriguing. The game is like an inverted fusion of Tetris with the musical element of Lumines. The main objective is to reach a high score, while trying to cover the game’s play area completely. While the songs may have differing containers for the play zones as well as puzzle pieces, the magic comes from the arrangement or clusters of the pieces and range of them. From big, small, wide, tall… They all come together as pieces and parts of a song. The more clusters you have going, the more intense a song becomes. Chime also has some unique feature songs from artists like Moby, Paul Glass, and Johnathan Coulton in the game which end up sounding like wonderful culminations or remixes on songs. Achievement fiends may love it as they offer a hard challenge. The game is cheap at the price of $4.99 on Steam and 400 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live.
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