Thought that might get your attention hehe. I’m only referring to A Fading Melody’s silhouetted heroine. She’s not really naked as such. It’s just an outline. In any case, I wouldn’t deliberately review anything that really had naked chicks in it, I mean, this is a family blog after all. Well I mean everyone in the family can read without feeling offended. In any case this game is just not like that, so stop wishing! Now I told you to stop that! Go look at some mud flaps or something. Even they are a little more “explicit” than this game is. Okay okay so let’s get on to the game. A Fading Melody is a platform game made for Xbox Live Community Games by Anchorcast, (Christian Seehausen). Here’s the official description of the game – “Bring color and light back into the world of a coma patient as you run, leap, and roll your way through seven challenging levels. Fight off the fading darkness by stomping monsters, and watch as color returns to the black-and-white world of the game. A deep and powerful story unfolds as you progress through the levels. Discover how you got into the coma even as you fight your way out of it!”
I think this is an attempt to be artsy, however, it plays like a real platform game. You jump with the ‘A’ button, you run while holding down ‘X’. Pretty much all there is to it. The idea is this woman is in a coma, and you’re sort of fighting to come out of it. There wasn’t any real main menu or anything, just the character and the world. The world starts out as black and white, and supposedly gets to being color, only I couldn’t tell that from the trial game. The game gets darker as you progress so you basically have to jump on the heads of the “monsters” to brighten it again. An interesting concept, and the game might be interesting but I can’t seem to get far in 8 minutes. I did manage to get to one save point, and then you had a rolling attack because some monsters require that. But that is a pain in the butt, because one part you have to roll and then jump on the first type of monster and you don’t have an extra ledge or anything. To roll you have to be running and then you have to let go and hit x again. Interesting approach to extra actions.
The graphics are pretty artsy. Mostly silhouette. The text sort of floats as if it were part of the level, and it’s there you can read the story, or find out how to play. When you start up the game it just shows the title and plays the music and then you essentially start playing. At first I assumed it would do it’s thing, but it was quickly evident that i needed to make her move. So that’s what I did, and then there was the intro text something about her past. Really you don’t know she’s in a coma other than when the description tells you. Everything is pretty much gray. The graphics aren’t bad looking though. Her animation is too rigid, however, to look natural, but since this is trying to give you some impression of something, it works quite well. The sounds are unobtrusive and fitting. Well when you jump on monsters you hear a “ding” sound. The music sounds like some classical piano piece. I mean it could have been created by the author and it could also be modern, but it just sounds classical. The whole effect is rather calming. The only real sense of urgency at all is the screen darkening, probably corresponding to the darkening of her mind, and you kind of don’t want to let that happen. Interesting though you don’t die but just return to save points. But who knows maybe if you didn’t jump on monsters she would die.
Final Analysis: An interesting take on the platform genre, although nothing really original as far as the platform elements themselves go. I did kind of enjoy playing this so you might too.
Name: A Fading Melody
Developer: Anchorcast, (Christian Seehausen)
Price: 200 MSP / $2.50 USD
Where you can get it: Xbox Live Community Games. on the Xbox 360
Tags: Adventure, Anchorgames, fun, game, independent, Indie, jump'n'run, Platformer, review, reviews, scroller, scrolling, xbla, xblig, xbox, xbox live, xbox live community games