Auditorium

Developers: Dain Saint and William Stallwood
Publisher: Cipher Prime
Release Date: Feb. 4, 2009
System: PC
ESRB Rating: N/A
Official Web Site

In a nutshell: Pure beauty distilled into a puzzle game.
0:00 I played the demo version of this for literally 30 seconds before being distracted by something shiny. Since then, it seems EVERYBODY has been talking about it and saying how great/amazing/beautiful it is. Now that the final version is out, I decided to take everybody's advice and pay for the full version. OK everybody, you'd better be right!

0:01 I do like the gentle piano music that plays along with the animated logo. Very synchronous. I don't like the jerky animation on the various icons in the intro cut scene, though. Maybe I need to turn down the Flash quality? Ah, that's better.

0:02 Just like that, we're in fullscreen mode and "HAJIMEMASHITE 1:1" is starting. A gentle rain of white particles falls down the left part of the screen. In the center, a clear ball with a right-pointing arrow on it. On the right, a few horizontal bars, like a gain meter on a stereo. I move the circle into the stream of white, bending it towards the gain meter and playing some gentle, repetitive piano music in the process. The meter fills up and the level is done. I like the way the particles don't all bend in exactly the same way ... there's an organic margin of error in there.

0:04 Level 1:2 has the white rain flowing leftward and an up-arrow circle that can be used to hit the nearby meter. Super-easy so far.

0:05 Level 1:3 is a little more involved, with two circles and two boxes. The second box adds a sonorous bass to the now-familiar piano. Very nice.

0:06 Level 1:4 adds a third box with beautiful violins. The music is incredibly soothing ... I can feel the stress melting away!

Read the full review at Crispy Gamer