Memories of Melodies and Melodies of Memories, Memody: Sindrel Song

Just today, Memody: Sindrel Song released on Steam. It was a few months ago that I helped beta test the game, and finally it's out! I really enjoyed beta testing the game, and through the efforts of developer Tobias Cornwall as well as helpful feedback from me and other testers the game was polished into its current state. It's a game I strongly recommend, and I'm not going to pass up the opportunity to talk about why!

There's the titular Memody

Memody: Sindrel Song is a rhythm game... But actually, it's not! Memody is quite a brain-buster when it comes to genre, since its core gameplay loop has more in line with a carefully curated and musical game of Simon Says than your typical rhythmical QTE-like game. It's more like Space Channel 5 than Guitar Hero!

The main gameplay consists of an NPC playing a melody and the player repeating said melody back. If the player messes up, they have to try the segment again (optionally slowed down) and if they succeed they carry on to the next segment. Every song is broken up into these listen and repeat segments, interspersed with a few key melodies that later come back as duet segments where the player has to play back these key melodies purely from their memory. It's rather challenging, but it also makes it very fulfilling to get through an entire song, especially if you do it without making any mistakes! But don't just trust me word, look at this gameplay video I just made!!

The game thankfully has several different modes to ease players into its rather challenging gameplay, with a casual mode where you get unlimited attempts for every song existing for people who want to just experience the story and get through the narrative as well as serving as a practice mode, but there's also challenge mode where players start with only 6 attempts and lose an attempt every time they make a mistake. Luckily, the game still has systems to accommodate people who might hit a brick wall in challenge mode, since playing a sequence of chunks correctly lets you earn back attempts, and failing one specific chunk consecutively lets you keep retrying that chunk without losing more than 3 total attempts.

This gives the game a good feeling of flow, where my preferred tactic was to first play through the song a few times in the casual/practice mode, then trying to finish the song in challenge mode and finally going for a high score in challenge mode by playing songs with as little faults as possible and mimicking the rhythm of the song's notes as closely as possible! These results are all graphed to give a visual indication of your progress!

Hooray for sufficience!

Did I mention yet how satisfying this gameplay loop feels? Because it does! I played this game last a few months ago and when I turned the game on again I still remembered so many of the melodies from heart just because I got so into the game! Memories of melodies, quite literally!! Playing a song well gives a good sense of rush, and playing a song better than last time feels great too. A large part of the game's narrative is about overcoming challenges and overcoming yourself, and it's integrated really well into the gameplay.

And speaking of story and narrative... Memody also has a story and narrative worth talking about! The setting of the game is a rather strange one, taking place on an island inhabited by Sindrel, humanoids who share a lot in common with plants of all things. Memody is one such Sindrel, though while most Sindrel are born with a plethora of innate knowledge of the world thanks to the little flower embedded in their head, Memody's flower appears to be defective. It knows little of the world and needs NPCs to explain basic concepts any Sindrel ought to just know by default. 

-blushes-

The flower in her head constantly speaks to Memody, something she's not sure the flower is meant to do, and worse still the flower acts as Memody's harshest critic. Irrational to a fault and negative to the extreme, the flower constantly pushes Memody to seclude herself from others due to her inability to fit in. And worst of all, this flower is stuck inside Memody's head. It's a part of her mind she cannot free herself from, or at least, not that she knows of...

The story takes place over the course of six days, six days until the world Memody's born into falls into a deep winter and all life is snuffed out. All life except for the few other Sindrel inhabiting the island. One of the Sindrel offers Memody the key to this prolonged life, but Memody is hesitant. Does she deserve to live on? Does she even want to live on? The Sindrel urges Memody to explore the island and connect with the other Sindrel through song and listen to their stories and reasons for choosing to live on.

Memody in a nutshell, really

This is where the main gameplay happens, as the Sindrel all tell Memody their outlooks on life through song, while also being ready to talk with Memody about other topics that happen to be on their mind at the time. By returning to these stages and talking more with the other Sindrel, their character arcs get fleshed out and reach fruition, but Memody is left ever unsure whether she can measure up to the other Sindrel.

And when the final day comes and Memody has to make her decision... Well, you'd have to play the game yourself to find out, of course! But I can guarantee the game's got plenty of dialogue to go through and it's very much worth seeking out! 

Everybody has very sensible things to say!!

Again, the game's available on Steam! I do recommend checking it out!