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One of the most unique and unusual games in the bit Generations series; Soundvoyager is initially a pleasure to pick up. However, it's not without its own flaws.
Every now and then a game is released that truly innovates the way in which we play games. The bit Generations series has shown lots of promise, with a unique style and some very unusual ideas. Most of the games take pre-established gameplay ideas and strip them down to the bare essentials, but there are a couple in the series that really stand out as something completely different. Soundvoyager is one of those titles.
Can you hear that?
Soundvoyager plays a little like a completely stripped down version of Sega's music-fuelled PS2/Dreamcast game Rez - minus all the shooting but retaining the element of building up a music track. In the game's main stages, you control a small orb-like object, travelling through a seemingly empty vertically scrolling environment. During the introductory stage, you'll encounter numerous floating green orbs, and a new sound loop can be heard in the distance. The closer the green is to your own orb, the louder the sound becomes. Your horizontal position will also determine the panning of the sound - travel too far to the left and the sound will pan to the right. The aim is to touch the green orb, and doing so adds the orb's music own loop to the continually looping background audio. As you progress through the stage, the green orbs become less and less identifiable on the screen, and soon you're reliant entirely on your own perception of stereo sound to locate the sound orbs and progress. Due to the game's total reliance on stereo sound, a pair of headphones is essentially a mandatory accessory to successfully play Soundvoyager.
Soundvoyager is hardly a visual feast
Once the orbs have faded away, gameplay can seem a little daunting, frequently resulting in missing picking up a loop. Doing so is not a huge problem however; there is actually no possible way of losing in one of the main stages. Your orb continues to travel forwards until a new sound orb is reached, and any missed orbs will come round again until they are caught. There's very little else that actually comes into play during the main stages, other than the fact that at the end of each level the player has the option to follow one of two final sounds. Which one is picked will dictate the level that is played next. The levels are organised into a tree-like structure, and can be replayed at any time once completed.
Variety can be frustrating
As well as the main stages, there are several additional mini-games that are played in-between the main stages. Sound Drive is one of the first that can be encountered, which, as the name would suggest, is based on driving. There are five lanes on the road, and the objective is to get to the end whilst avoiding oncoming traffic. Extremely simple, that is until the enemy 'cars' become invisible and you're solely reliant on using the stereo sound to build a picture of where the cars are on the road. Sound Drive, and the similarly designed Sound Chase are the most effective and least frustrating of the mini games included. Sound Slalom is also very simple, and forces the player to travel between two poles that can be identified via sound in the left and right hand speakers. Unfortunately completing the Sound Slalom stages can be a bit hit or miss - even through the use of headphones.
Chasing sounds in Sound Drive
Sound Cannon is the least effective and most irritating of the minigames, and essentially has the player firing at invisible objects with little guidance. Whilst the first stage is fairly easy, with stationary targets identified again through sound, the later Sound Cock stages have the objects travelling so quickly that it becomes almost impossible to successfully target the sounds. I found myself frantically shooting and getting immensely frustrated during these stages. Overall, all of the stages that break from the mould of the main game just don't appeal in the same way. The frustration of playing the majority of them certainly doesn't help things.
As with the other bit Generations games the minimalist style perfectly suits the game. The music is amazing, ranging from chilled ambient music to bizarre electro-jazz hybrids. There's also plenty of variety in the music, with the music style changing continuously as new loops are added and others taken away.
Innovative, yet flawed
Despite it's flaws, Soundvoyager is a game that audiophiles and anyone looking for something a little different will want to check out. Whilst the developer should be credited for trying to inject some variety with minigames like Sound Cannon, Cock and Slalom, in practice these can often feel lacklustre and frustrating to play when compared to the simple yet addictive nature of the main game. It's a shame really, as if somehow Skip had managed to inject the same flair and accessibility found in the main stages into the rest of the game, Soundvoyager could have been an absolutely essential title.
