Matching arrows to music is a game pattern that has been around for many years now. Yet it is also something that has passed me by without interest. The only time I would ever get on a DDR machine is when I'm too drunk to remember it the next morning. I'm happy to say that Sequence has made me perk up and take notice of the genre.
Sequence's core gameplay is deceptively simple. It seeks to mate the rhythm game genre with the RPG genre and pulls it off rather well. Arrows fall down in time to music and you press the corresponding key to either block an attack, regenerate mana or cast a spell. Switching between the defence, mana and spell panes feels very natural, allowing you to block and then instantly cast a spell. The complexity comes in when you begin to learn new spells. The game starts you off with a few simple spells, requiring a few well timed arrow presses, and slowly leads you into spells that will require some serious button mashing to pull off. Winning these battles allows you to level up and craft better gear, making the battles slightly easier as you go.
Of course, with a game so obviously centred around music, it would help if it had some decent songs, right? Thankfully, Sequence's soundtrack is wonderful. It features music from artists such as Ronald Jenkees and DJ Plaeskool, both of whom put forward some of their best tracks. The battle songs are a delight to listen to every time you play, which is good as you'll be hearing them a lot. The songs also ramp up in difficulty as you go along, starting slow and peaceful before bringing in the electric guitars. The arrows also match up to the songs perfectly, meaning that once you know the song you'll hit the arrows without even having to think about it. Just don't get too cocky as the enemies do enjoy misleading you.
Sequence revolves around the protagonist, Ky, waking up in a mysterious tower and being told that if he wants to live he better get a move on to the top. As storylines go it's not exactly world class. In fact, the storyline is the only major criticism I have of Sequence. It's barely there for the first half of the game and in the second half it slips ever closer to cliché. Happily, it's picked up by its dialogue. The bickering between Ky and the female protagonist Naia, is well written and pretty funny, even if the voice acting is a little awkward. Each level of the tower has its own guardian, with their own peculiarities. Once your mother has been insulted by a victorian tower guardian, you know you?re in for a good game.
Following the storyline, the game is split up into seven floors. In order to advance you need to craft the key with items dropped by enemies. On paper this seems like quite a repetitive format but the floors are all unique and the battles are fun enough that it never feels tedious. Each floor features three new enemies who all drop the materials you need to craft new weapons, armour and spell scrolls. Enemy variety is not as diverse as I'd like, with later enemies just being recoloured and renamed versions of earlier ones, but they each have their own songs, strengths and weaknesses that means you need to adapt to each one. At the end of each floor is the guardian boss, who fights with a new song and has a trick up their sleeve. Each guardian (bar the first) can interfere in your battles if you're not protected, adding another layer of tension. Some of these interferences are quite cheap (such as simply speeding up your arrows, which actually helped me) while others can wreck you if you're not prepared.
Despite being indie to the extreme, Sequence also looks very lovely. All the characters, enemies and scenes have a pleasing hand-painted feel. Even the background of the cutscenes look beautiful. There are a lot of bright colours that make each setting feel like it should. A roaring hand-painted fire in the safe rooms, for example, makes you feel comfortable as opposed to the harsher colours of the battle rooms. With such nice visuals it's a shame that there wasn?t a greater variety of enemies. Sequence's setting allowed for enemies of every shape or size but it still came down to recycling.
If you're feeling brave (and insane) there are also four difficulty settings to choose from. Instead of making the enemies harder however, Sequence instead increases the quantity of arrows. The hardest setting produces arrows to match every single note in the song and makes even the simple spells at the start tricky to pull off. It forces you to get past your button mashing instincts and instead focus on the actual song.
Whatever difficulty you play it on though, Sequence is a ferociously addicting game. A few story and visual aspects aside, it's a damn good game. Play it long enough and you'll be seeing song arrows every time you close your eyes.
Score: 8/10
Challenging, addicting and a good laugh. Just make sure your fingers are well oiled.
Sequence is a game by Iridium Studios and is available on Steam and Xbox Live.
Sequence's core gameplay is deceptively simple. It seeks to mate the rhythm game genre with the RPG genre and pulls it off rather well. Arrows fall down in time to music and you press the corresponding key to either block an attack, regenerate mana or cast a spell. Switching between the defence, mana and spell panes feels very natural, allowing you to block and then instantly cast a spell. The complexity comes in when you begin to learn new spells. The game starts you off with a few simple spells, requiring a few well timed arrow presses, and slowly leads you into spells that will require some serious button mashing to pull off. Winning these battles allows you to level up and craft better gear, making the battles slightly easier as you go.
Of course, with a game so obviously centred around music, it would help if it had some decent songs, right? Thankfully, Sequence's soundtrack is wonderful. It features music from artists such as Ronald Jenkees and DJ Plaeskool, both of whom put forward some of their best tracks. The battle songs are a delight to listen to every time you play, which is good as you'll be hearing them a lot. The songs also ramp up in difficulty as you go along, starting slow and peaceful before bringing in the electric guitars. The arrows also match up to the songs perfectly, meaning that once you know the song you'll hit the arrows without even having to think about it. Just don't get too cocky as the enemies do enjoy misleading you.
Sequence revolves around the protagonist, Ky, waking up in a mysterious tower and being told that if he wants to live he better get a move on to the top. As storylines go it's not exactly world class. In fact, the storyline is the only major criticism I have of Sequence. It's barely there for the first half of the game and in the second half it slips ever closer to cliché. Happily, it's picked up by its dialogue. The bickering between Ky and the female protagonist Naia, is well written and pretty funny, even if the voice acting is a little awkward. Each level of the tower has its own guardian, with their own peculiarities. Once your mother has been insulted by a victorian tower guardian, you know you?re in for a good game.
Following the storyline, the game is split up into seven floors. In order to advance you need to craft the key with items dropped by enemies. On paper this seems like quite a repetitive format but the floors are all unique and the battles are fun enough that it never feels tedious. Each floor features three new enemies who all drop the materials you need to craft new weapons, armour and spell scrolls. Enemy variety is not as diverse as I'd like, with later enemies just being recoloured and renamed versions of earlier ones, but they each have their own songs, strengths and weaknesses that means you need to adapt to each one. At the end of each floor is the guardian boss, who fights with a new song and has a trick up their sleeve. Each guardian (bar the first) can interfere in your battles if you're not protected, adding another layer of tension. Some of these interferences are quite cheap (such as simply speeding up your arrows, which actually helped me) while others can wreck you if you're not prepared.
Despite being indie to the extreme, Sequence also looks very lovely. All the characters, enemies and scenes have a pleasing hand-painted feel. Even the background of the cutscenes look beautiful. There are a lot of bright colours that make each setting feel like it should. A roaring hand-painted fire in the safe rooms, for example, makes you feel comfortable as opposed to the harsher colours of the battle rooms. With such nice visuals it's a shame that there wasn?t a greater variety of enemies. Sequence's setting allowed for enemies of every shape or size but it still came down to recycling.
If you're feeling brave (and insane) there are also four difficulty settings to choose from. Instead of making the enemies harder however, Sequence instead increases the quantity of arrows. The hardest setting produces arrows to match every single note in the song and makes even the simple spells at the start tricky to pull off. It forces you to get past your button mashing instincts and instead focus on the actual song.
Whatever difficulty you play it on though, Sequence is a ferociously addicting game. A few story and visual aspects aside, it's a damn good game. Play it long enough and you'll be seeing song arrows every time you close your eyes.
Score: 8/10
Challenging, addicting and a good laugh. Just make sure your fingers are well oiled.
Sequence is a game by Iridium Studios and is available on Steam and Xbox Live.