The Twilight Sun

Sorry about the long wait, but there’ve been some things that kept me from editing when I wanted to. I mentioned posting on Synaesthete next, I think? I don’t think it’s a complete enough game to warrant a full review, but it’s definitely worth posting my thoughts on.

Synaesthete is a small music-and-rhythms game, comparable to DDR in terms of gameplay, but more of a platformer than an arcade game. (And let me note, I don’t really understand "platformer" beyond it meaning "you pick things up and go through levels". Please correct me if I’m wrong.) You control a small Gumby-esque character called the Zaikman (named after Zach Aikman, one of the game developers) through three Visions, each with three Stages each.

To complete a Stage, you must travel along a rather linear set of rooms, clearing each room of enenies in order to procede. To do this, a "reciever"-esque item appears on screen when required, with colored bars falling from the top of the screen to the "receiver" spots. This is where it’s similar to DDR. You also have to keep moving, so as to not get damaged by the enemies, and you only have so much health before you’re defeated. To help with this, with around every stage you complete, you unlock a "spell", of which you get three of at the beginning of a stage. I found Equilibrium to be the most helpful of the spells, personally.

At the beginning of the game, you have two difficulty options, based on the RPMs of old-style records. After completing all three visions, and the final boss, you unlock the third and fastest RPM. When you complete a stage, the ring around the stage entry spot becomes the color of the highest difficulty you’ve completed it on: green for easy, yellow for medium, and red for the hardest.

It’s a great game, and one that definitely deserves one or two play-throughs. It lacks a lot of replayability however, except for completing all stages on difficult, so you’ll probably drop it after a few days. I wouldn’t just ignore it though. Try it out, you’ll be hooked for a few days.

Synaesthete Game Website

P.S. I almost forgot to mention, this game was designed and developed by a team of students at Digipen. Great job!