Melody's Escape: The Best Birthday Present

A little over three years ago, when I was just starting to get into regular streaming of my gameplay on Twitch, one of my best friends gifted me an early access game on Steam for my birthday. That game was Melody's Escape.
 

I didn't know then that I would spend endless hours playing the game, but it was still the coolest gift I received that year because it was a music game -- a genre I had fallen in love with when the PS2 was hot and Harmonix was giving us Frequency and Amplitude. (If you don't know the studio name Harmonix, I'm sure you know their Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. They have even released a new version of Amplitude on PS4, though it doesn't have the same feel as the PS2 game.)

But I didn't sit down to write about Harmonix. I'm here to write about one of the few games I have seen be successful in utilizing Steam's Early Access process. I played this game for over 2 years while it was in Early Access (which I feel is way too long for a game to take advantage of, but that's another topic), and it finally had its full release in June 2016. The game has undergone a great many changes since I first installed it, but if it tells you anything at all: I've never once uninstalled it.

For people who have no idea what a music game is all about, I'll break it down for you. Typically these games follow one of two paths: (1) It comes with a set list of songs, or (2) It uses your own library of digital music. If you have a game that follows the first path, you're lucky if they also include difficulty levels. If it doesn't, I hope you didn't pay overmuch for the game.

Melody's Escape follows the second path in that you can search your computer directories from the game window itself to pull up any song file you have -- or you can even drag and drop the music file from another window if you aren't playing full-screen. (I use this method mostly out of habit from streaming so much -- it was easier not to let my viewers see what songs I was passing up and instead to simply accept what I was going to play!) The game will then analyze your music file and generate an obstacle course that is set to the rhythm of your music. Slow, off-rhythm computer-generated songs without much beat are often much harder than fast-paced rock classics as a result!
 

Melody is the feature-less girl figure who has to run this gauntlet of your music, and the being you control the movements of. When I first began playing the game, there were a couple of token cosmetic variations you could choose for her appearance, but if you wanted to do your own thing you had to know which files to edit and have a good understanding of how the body pieces moved together. The game supported Steam Workshop files for this, so a lot of the early options looked like paper dolls connected with those gold round head fasteners at the joints. Eventually they added the tools to make your own custom appearance with less technical knowledge, and that added some uniformity to the resulting files. These days, Melody can look like anything from Marge Simpson, to Equestria Girls, to Vocaloids, to Rick Sanchez or even a Warframe. Granted, some of them look terrible -- but there are a good number of them which are rather good. (I'm still waiting for someone to update the Rainbow Brite mod.)

 

The customization doesn't end there, either. There are also mods for the background color themes and every possible detail taken into account when the game analyzes a music track. You can tailor any of the difficulty levels to suit your play preferences, or even make a Custom setup of your own choosing. The targets you have to hit in the game can display as either colors (which correspond to a gamepad's XYAB buttons) or as directional arrows (which correspond to a gamepad's directional pad buttons). Beginners will often need one or the other by itself to get familiar with the game. Harder difficulty levels require a mix of both -- or both in tandem! I haven't yet become skilled enough for tandem, but I've at least worked my way up to mixed. You can also adjust how fast Melody moves across the screen, if the analyzer adjusts anything for slower tempos, how much timing leniency there is with your button presses, and how fast Melody respawns after crashing. I could explain these options, but they would likely not make sense if you haven't seen the game in action.

Given these customization options, gameplay already has a wide spectrum of possibilities. Add in the wealth of music that's out there, and the different genres people enjoy listening to, and you've just given yourself an endless supply of entertainment in one game! Speaking for myself, any of my seasoned Twitch followers who used to watch me stream can attest to the crazy variety of music I threw across my screen. I would play anything from John Williams to Daft Punk, The Sound of Music to Linkin Park, Cookie Monster to Swedish House Mafia. I'd refer you to my saved Twitch videos, but they like to censor long stretches of audio when copyrighted material is magically detected.
 

There are a few great benefits to this game. For me, the first is that I learn more about my music because I have to listen more closely to it if I want to play the game well. Nothing improves appreciation like repetition and careful listening. If you're a social person with the capacity to stream your games, then this is also a great way to share your music with a live audience while also having fun (just don't expect the audio to maintain its integrity if your host site is afraid of copyright lawsuits). And of course the obvious benefit is further improvement of rhythm and hand-eye coordination. If you have trouble keeping a beat and don't have a music teacher to beat it into your football helmet, then this game can probably help you out a great deal. (First person to name that reference in the comments wins a small game from me via Steam, Humble Bundle or GOG.com.)
  

Originally priced at $15, the full list price for Melody's Escape is now $9.99 on Steam. In addition to the Steam Workshop, it also has some competitive Steam Achievements to acquire. It is worth every penny if you're looking for a fun, customizable music game.