Chime Sharp

It’s nuts to think Chime is nearly a decade old. It came out so long ago that I can safely use the term “back in the day” to describe when I first purchased it on Xbox Live Arcade. At the time it had one of those feel-good “X amount of the purchase price will be donated to charity” attachments. Later, I somehow ended up with a copy on my PlayStation 3 as well, though for the life of me I’m not sure how it got there. Possibly it was a PlayStation Plus freebie or discount. It’s also on my iPhone. And iPad. And PlayStation 4. And my Xbox One. And now, with Chime Sharp, it’s on my Steam account as well. Seriously, where the fuck did I get all these? I’ve caught fewer colds over the last decade than I’ve acquired copies of Chime.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, the formula is basically Tetris + Luminies – tension = Chime. You get a grid to place various shapes of blocks on that you have to arrange in 3×3 or larger “quads”. When a quad is formed, a meter starts to fill up inside it. You can keep adding blocks around it to make it bigger. Once the meter is all filled up, the size is locked in and the blocks are deleted the next time the pace ticker scrolls by. It aims to be a kinder, gentler action-puzzler that’s more relaxing than its sweaty-palms forefathers. And it succeeds. Mostly.

In 2018, I must have made over a hundred attempts at beating the “Strike” mode for Steve Reich’s stage. I don’t think I could complete it if I had a thousand years.

For the sake of fairness, I went back and played the PS3 port, Chime Mega Super Deluxe 5000 HD Turbo Special Edition or some such shit. I would have tried the XBLA original, but I mean, come on. It’s 2018. My last Xbox 360 (I went through four of the fucking things) Red Ring of Deathed about two years ago. Possibly from old age, or possibly from an oscillating fan blowing mildly cooled air in its general direction. We may never know. Anyway, having already put a few hours into Chime Sharp, I was pretty impressed at how far along its come. The presentation for Sharp is so much sleeker and modern. Chime on PS3 isn’t that old, but it looks positively ancient compared to what the game is now. If you care about that sort of thing, and you really shouldn’t because it’s a block-puzzler for cripe’s sake, Chime Sharp is positively dazzling to watch.

Except when it’s not. Did you buy those special sunglasses to view last year’s eclipse? Well, I hope you didn’t throw them out. Go grab them, put them on, and take a look at this level.

I’m not sure what the fuck they were thinking with the color scheme here. I honestly can’t remember playing any game at IGC that literally made my eyes hurt until now. On my first play through of it, I didn’t get enough coverage to make it to the next stage and I might as well of cried because my eyes were already pouring tears. That’s not an exaggeration. By time I completed the second, thankfully more successful attempt, my eyes hurt. Badly. And the pain lingered quite a while afterwards. It felt like I had looked into the sun. Hey Chime developers, I like your game. But for fuck’s sake, change the color scheme of this stage. The next level was gaudy too, though that might have been my fault since I only waited an hour after finishing the nuclear explosion pictured above.

Take my word for it, turn on color blind mode, where all the blocks are orange and blue regardless of the level you’re on. It’s a really useful mode to have, because after playing it without it turned on, you might end up color-blind. And possibly blind-blind as well. But, even that’s not perfect, because the wrap-ups after each stage ignore the option and revert back to digitally pepper-spraying your retinas. Like so.

On the plus side, it makes it hard to see how badly I did. So, uh, I guess thanks Chime devs for sparing my ego?

I should probably point out that Chime is technically supposed to be a music-based game, where each block you put down somehow alters the soundtrack. The thing is, a quirk of my autism is a condition called Amusia. Which, despite what it sounds like, doesn’t mean I find stuff amusing that I shouldn’t. I don’t, for example, laugh at Big Bang Theory. Because Big Bang Theory is not funny. If you do laugh at it, consult your own doctor, because something is wrong with your brain. I’m not sure what it’s called, but it’s not Amusia. Amusia is clinical tone deafness, and in my case, music can even make me physically ill sometimes (though that usually only applies to pop music and not symphonic stuff). That’s why I rarely talk about it here at Indie Gamer Chick. Maybe that makes Chime an odd choice to review. But, maybe it speaks volumes to the core gameplay’s quality that I’m not a music person and was perfectly satisfied. Come to think of it, I was the same way with Lumines too. You people get too worked up over music anyway. Like when idiots refuse to watch Married with Children on syndication because it doesn’t have the Frank Sinatra theme during the opening credits. Even though literally nothing else about the show is different. I don’t get it.

I don’t have a ton to say about Chime Sharp. I appreciate the additional modes and challenges, all of which are just different scoring variations of the same core gameplay. I really only wanted to do this review to get Chime on the Leaderboard. It’s been one of my go-to “I desperately need to calm down” games for years. While I joke about not being sure how I came upon so many different versions of it, the truth is Chime is the closest any “action-puzzler” has come to reaching that Tetris-level “sure-fire bet” when you simply need to get your game on and need something that will draw you in. Chime is a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. It gets the job done, fills you up, and lets you go about your life. I’m not good enough at it to chase records. I’m not bad enough at it to have my blood pressure spike. It’s a spa-treatment of a game. Granted, one that might occasionally mace your eyeballs.

Chime Sharp was developed by Zoë Mode
Point of Sale: Steam, PlayStation 4, Xbox One (No Vita version? Really?)

$9.99 actually started writing this review back in February and never finished it but wants to get content up daily so here we are in the making of this review.

Chime Sharp is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. You can safely consider all ports of Chime to be covered by this review, but if possible, get Chime Sharp.