Review: Chimes

I recently took a little bit of a break from my daily duties here at the GayGamer.net Castle in order to move across town and put in some extra hours at my office. It was during this process that I realized just how much of a stress reliever games can be for me. As I packed up things like my PC, Mac, and consoles I founded myself hitting my handhelds and iPhone for my gaming needs more and more. One of the games that grabbed my attention over this past stressful week, and help me relax just a little bit, was a game called Chimes on iPhone.

This music-based puzzler has players activating five uniquely colored chimes to clear colored drops that sail across the screen. By touching one of the chimes, a ripple of that color is created and clears away any drops of the same color upon contact, all to the tune of some nice ambient-y electronic music. It starts of nice and easy, but eventually throws in dual-layered drops that require two differently colored chime "passes" in order to clear and the ability to mix chimes together to generate dual-colored chime ripples. This all sounds much more complicated that it actually is and the game is quite easy to pick up and play for just a few minutes.

While the game design is solid and the music generated by the game is fairly entrancing, a few technical issues pop up now and then that slow down action in advanced stages. Nothing game breaking, but it is a little distracting when you're getting overwhelmed with drops to clear. Also, some players may not enjoy the minimalist Bit Generations / Art Style inspired look that Chimes sports. I didn't mind it myself, but the presentation comes off as a little dry. It's funny that a game like Lumines obviously had some amount of influence on this game, but the developers didn't pick up on the "level skins" approach to keep the visuals fresh from area to area or mode to mode. This would mesh extremely well with the base game design seen here and it's a shame that there isn't anything like that available.

All that said, I still found myself coming back to this game with regularity. It's far from perfect, but had enough interesting ideas to keep me entertained for short spurts. For what it lacks in visual presentation, the game makes up with an engrossing sound design and good old fashioned game design. For a free app (extra modes/levels cost a buck or two), that alone makes it worth checking it out.

[Chimes] Apple App Store