Cosmic DJ is a strange title. On the surface it looks like a generic music-based game in a same strand as Rock Band or Guitar Hero, but those initial feelings are completely misleading.
In fact, I’m not even sure how much of Cosmic DJ you can actually class as being a GAME.
You play as the Cosmic DJ of Legend, as you use travel the universe using THE POWER OF MUSIC to fix the Jamtenna Network and create Music in a variety of wacky situations.
There are really two ways to look at this title, so I’ll check out both sides of the coin and critique it as both a “game” and as a tool for creating tracks.
As a game, it’s incredibly simplistic. As you enter each of the levels you are greeted with a task to accomplish through creating music, but all that it amounts to in reality is entering notes into a 32-beat loop, using a variety of 4-sample instruments. There’s literally no real challenge, as you only need to enter the notes and are not judged on their location or the musical merit of your creation. You literally just need to fill the bar with a standard number of notes and instruments and you’re done. There’s very little actual gameplay variety, but the tasks you are given vary quite wildly, from piecing together a space-corgi to re-uniting a robot band. Each loop you make does have it’s own individual background interface too, which reacts to your note placement with cute animations.
Each level consists of creating four loops, at which point you hear a compilation of your creations mixed into a single track, with the chance to design a cover to go with it and the option to export it to MP3 format for later listening.
I guess you can see where this is going. Cosmic DJ feels like it was never truly meant to be a game for someone like myself, whose used real music sequencers for many years and writes music on a regular basis. However, whilst playing it I experienced the same joy I felt sequencing that I did when I first started, and I believe that this is what Cosmic DJ is REALLY all about.
As previously mentioned, the creative sequencing aspect gives you a few specific instruments to use for each short loop, a few samples for each, and the ability to place them in four-note long bars. You can’t split the samples, or increase their frequency, but because of this no matter where you put the notes they always sound GOOD. Syncopated rhythms come organically, with the music flowing from very simple placements into something complicated and often very impressive.
It’s almost like Cosmic DJ was designed to be a (surprisingly) easy to use gateway program into the world of sequencing, teaching inexperienced users the basics of music creation through an interesting, colourful framing device. The background aspects of the music crafting system must be incredibly complicated in order to make the rest of the routine so simple.
The graphics of the game take a lot of inspiration from gaming culture, combining a variety of media to build a unique aesthetic which is hyperactive if nothing else, but also incredibly pleasing.
There’s also a lot of replay value. Whilst there are only six challenges with a total of around two hours playtime, it’s fun to keep going back and making more tracks, stretching the limits of the creation interface.
In short, Cosmic DJ embraces the inherent randomness which is music, and gives the player an easy way to create impressive-sounding pieces of Electronica in a short period of time. Younger users will love the colourful look and the fact they can make music out of nothing, and like Older Users, may even be drawn into more complicated ways to create music.
For the asking price of around a fiver, I can highly recommend giving it a go if the concept of creating decent, albeit simple electronic dance tracks excites you. #
Support the game and purchase it now in early access via steam http://store.steampowered.com/app/297110/
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