The original Chime, a ‘charity’ game, was a great puzzler. It was slight, occasionally mechanically clunky, but made with real vision and love. Drawing inspiration from Tetris, as well as the Miziguchi helmed Lumines, it was an exploration into the hypnotic quality of block puzzlers and repeated musical phrasing. Every song or stage played differently, with the misshapen tetriminoes as well as the grid they had to fit into distinct, each feeling as distinguished as the varied soundtrack.
Free from the bindings of charity, the original 360 release (something of a proof of concept for developer Zoë Mode) migrated first to the PC in its mostly vanilla form, and then to the PS3 some years later in the expanded Chime Super Deluxe. The added heft was both a blessing and curse, with the whole thing feeling a bit less focussed, and the added tracks lacking the punch that made the more compact original such a joy to play.
In 2017, after two lacklustre rounds of crowd funding, and over a half a decade since Chime’s last outing, we have Chime Sharp.
I use the word here not in a literal, tactile sense, or a sour, citrus sense, but rather in its intended musical definition. It’s just a shame that I don’t mean in a semitone about ‘C’ and below ‘D’ way, but rather a ‘I can hear the note you’re trying to hit, but you’re just a bit sharp’ way.
Still helmed by Ste Curran, the heart of Chime still beats in this latest incarnation, but the additional tracks and modes feel like a distraction. Progress feels more forgiving, the soundtrack leaps just a little too violently between genres, and the engine isn’t quite as smooth meaning that occasionally it commits the most heinous puzzle game sin of all by forcing what should be an unforced player error. It’s still a good game, but a game that suffers from bloat. Years of gestation and Curran’s desire to revisit the game that has largely defined his development career means that whilst this is unspeakably a labour of love, it sometimes falls short of the original’s greatness. Chime Sharp is slightly overcooked and overthought.
Chime is one of those games that got it right the first time.
