There is a subsection of rhythm action games that requires only one button to be pressed, but you’ll need to tap it to the rhythm or the melody. Depending on the music, you’ll need to wrestle with off-beat rhythms or jaunty melodies and survive until the end of the song. Melody Ball falls into this subsection of rhythm action game and adds a hardcore rule: you’ll fail if you get more than two notes wrong! The task may not sound too difficult, but its exacting nature certainly does.
There is a variety of music in Melody Ball from classical to cinematic synth orchestra to pop ballad to folk rock. It sounds like the music is made largely from polished MIDI files, though, so the soundtrack is quite rigid and lacks dynamism and emotion. The music is great at setting up tempo changes or lead melody switches, and that’s where the gameplay comes in. Melody Ball has two note types. Blue circles are single presses of the space bar. Red circles are press and hold actions until you reach the next blue circle to release. Hold notes make up a very small portion of the gameplay, and are introduced about halfway through the campaign. Most of the time, you’ll need to memorise the melody or BPM of the rhythm and tap away. The rhythm charts bounce around like a path on screen, but they’ll also go up like steps, or round in circles. The viewpoint restricts how far ahead you can see, and whilst this is usually not a problem, in fast, frantic moments, you might get a bit space bar happy!
One critique I have of Melody Ball is that some of the tracks in the final third of the campaign aren’t quite aligned musically and chart-wise. Notes occur slightly before the melody signals them, and whilst you can mitigate this a little bit with the calibration settings, it is a little jarring. Melody Ball demands exacting precision from players, but the charts aren’t exact themselves. There is also some screen tear when the most frantic flurries of notes occur, and the game doesn’t seem to keep up.
Whilst the campaign is completely adequate, it isn’t the part of the game I enjoyed the most. Oddly, it is the level editor that shines brightest in Melody Ball. Players pick a song, set its beats per minute, load a PNG file for a background image, and get to work. A grid is presented to click notes onto, and you can move them around the screen, set their length from single notes in a bar to a 16th note, and also set up creative patterns for note display. I found getting up and running to build my own levels relatively simple and very approachable. Any levels built can be auto-played to see if it’s matching your intent, and whilst the sharing of custom levels will be driven by its Discord community, there is a high ceiling for creativity and play. More fuss needs to be made about the level editor; it’s a great addition.
Whilst the level editor shines, the moment-to-moment gameplay of Melody Ball is nothing new, nor the most compelling or competent version of a one button rhythm game either. There isn’t anything glaringly wrong – it is just a bit limited in its own scope and technical specs. A stronger soundtrack or a specific gimmick or a twist would have let Melody Ball stand out. As it is, this rhythm game will need to rely on community support using its excellent editor to make a lasting impression.
Review copy provided by the developer. Melody Ball is out now on PC.
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