Pulse iPad Preview (it’s out today!)
Fans of music games have something to look forward to: Pulse was released today. Pulse is a music rhythm game where a pulse emits from the center of the screen and you have to hit the notes that orbit the screen as the pulse passes over them. This game is all about multitouch so you’ll be using both your hands to keep up with all the notes that litter the screen.
A couple of us from the Indie Game Mag were lucky enough to play through a near final build of Pulse. The iPad does a great job of immersing you in the music (headphones are a must here) and makes you feel like you are playing an instrument and creating music. The gameplay is simple and there is no way to fail out of a song so the game lacks some of the difficulty that you will find in Guitar Hero or Rock Band. At the end of a song you are given a score. The scoring system was not final when we played but it will add some replayability to each song.
Pulse is really all about the music. It is an interactive album of eclectic tunes. There is a wide variety of genres represented in the game’s first 8 tracks. Sakura was by far my favorite level. The pink Japanese cherry blossom particle effects were my favorite graphical flair. The song was one of my favorites and the difficulty was perfect for me. Later levels throw a lot of notes at you and I found that my hands blocked a lot of the notes on the outer edges of the screen. I definitely felt like I should have failed out of some of the final levels, but this isn’t rock band so my anxiety over missing these notes was misplaced.
Pulse came out today in Apple’s app store for $4.99 and includes 8 tracks. Cipher prime has announced that they will be releasing new free songs every week from local Philly artists for the next 6 months so Pulse should keep you tapping away for quite a while.
Zak’s Impressions:
I wasn’t too sure what to expect the first time the Cipher Prime guys sat me down with an iPad, headphones and said, “Go for it.” I wasn’t even sure how to play Pulse, which was painfully obvious from my score on the first level. But by the third level, I was making music. Cipher Prime’s newest game is highly addictive and extremely entertaining. It continues with the musical leanings I’ve come to expect from the studio, but takes it to the next level in a new interactive way. The gameplay is pretty ingenious; a pulse radiates from the center of the field and points appear on the radial which the player has to hit at just the right time. What follows is intense and spectacular. Like Cipher Prime’s other titles, Pulse’s graphics are elegant, stylish and sharp. The use of color transitions is flawless and makes for a beautifully put together game.
I’ll admit that sometimes I just need a tutorial, but what the guys did with this game was create a learning process. The game itself teaches you how to play and in the process, creates a musical experience. As the tempo increased and my fingers were darting all over the pad, it left me with a feeling as if I had just played a musical instrument. It might be a risk to design a game for multi-touch platforms. But after playing Pulse, my opinion is that the risk was well worth it. I haven’t seen anything else out there like Pulse and really look forward to seeing what else Cipher Prime has in store for us.
