Comments (2)

By Sam, August 16, 2009 3:48 am

BitStream – Racing & Flying – 400 Points – Download

BitStream is an arcade ‘racing’ game where you must guide your dot (with a line trailing behind it) through a track filled with obstacles. The less you turn the quicker you’ll get through the track and there are also turbo pads that increase your speed if you go over them. The game is based on the popular Dotstream from the bit Generations franchise.

The first thing you’ll notice when playing BitStream is how well it is presented. The graphics are simple but the neon glow of everything sives them an almost Geometry Wars-esque quality.

The music too is extremely well made. It reacts to the movement of your dot and increases in pitch the higher or lower you are on the track. There are also eight different colored dots to choose from and each has a slightly different sound associated with it which slightly changes the music.

The game has several different modes. The tournament mode is the main single player mode. It sees you compete against seven other A.I dots over four races whilst accumalating points for your position after each race. If you win the tournament you unlock the next one and allow the track to be played in the single race mode.. With a total of four tournaments and sixteen tracks BitStream has a fair amount of content.

Up to four players can play in single race mode using split screen but one of the more innovative modes is called Swarm. In this mode up to eight players can play with two to a pad (one on each analogue stick). It’s chaotic fun and could be a great crowd pleaser.

The final mode is Freestyle. This mode allows you to freely change between each dot (and therefore change the instrument) and create music. It remembers your movement with each dot and then loops it. It’s an interesting feature and shows off the impressive music engine.

Overall BitStream is a thoroughly polished indie title. Whilst it obviously takes huge influence from Dotstream for it’s core game mechanics it innovates on it’s own, particularly with it’s sound design. At 400 points it’s at the highest possible price point, but don’t let this put you off as with a few friends this is one of the best multiplayer games on Indie Games.

The sound design is excellent and the multiplayer is great fun.

Comments (3)

By Sam, August 11, 2009 1:32 am

Four new games were released over the last 24 hours though I can only review three as one of them is only available in Japan.

Note: These impressions are based off 8 minutes of gameplay and are not an accurate assessment of the full product.

BitStream – 400 points – Racing & Flying – Download
Great Dotstream-like game with music that reacts to your movements. I just hope the 400 msp price point doesn’t put people off.

MADRISM – 80 points – Puzzle & Trivia – Download
I had no idea what I was doing when playing this game. From what I can tell it is some kind of house blueprint puzzle game? You probably need to be Japanese to understand it.

X OVER（クロス・オーバー） – 240 points – Shooter – Download

Pretty polished Japanese R-Type-like horizontal shooter. It’s in Japanese but nobody plays shooters for the story.

フェナックむら　ものがたり – 240 points – Action & Adventure – Download

Japanese Zelda clone. Seems pretty fun to play though I got stuck because all the text is in Japanese. This needs an English translation.