Auditorium

This extended break has given me a chance to trawl through the hundreds and hundreds of starred news posts in google reader that I didn't have time to read when they first hit. Most of them weren't worth the time, the item well out of date, or the items just plain boring. Hidden amongst those however are several gems.

Auditorium is one of those gems.

A decidedly minimalist game, all you're presented with when you start playing is a thin stream of light, a circle, and what looks like a bar from a graphic equalizer. Quickly you realise you can move the circle, and dragging it into the stream of light affects the direction of the light. Experimenting further a few beams of light hit the equalizer bar, and a haunting piano melody starts to play.

OK, it's got my attention.



Next level, I have two circles, but with different direction arrows. No problem. Next level I learn that you can affect the power of your circles by dragging the edges. Oh and more equalizers for more instruments, nice. It starts to get a bit samey, I guess to make sure that people are comfortable, but I began to lose interest. Eventually they throw in some additional gameplay elements and my interest piqued again. Didn't take long before I'd finished the levels in the free flash game, and a teaser level from the levels available in the full version clearly shows the developers have more tricks up there sleeves.

I'm going to pick up Auditorium when I have the time to play it, it's a really beautiful game both visually & aurally and is a perfect puzzler for spare moments where you fancy a chill-out. Helps that the price is a very reasonable $10.99 too.