1...2...3... KICK IT!: a preview

When the wonderful folks at Dejobaan released what is essentially a purchasable alpha for their new music game, I jumped at the opportunity. Dejobaan has a solid track record of titles, in particular the Katamari inspired "The Wonderful End of the World" and BASE jumping fun times in "AaAaAA!!!- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity". I had heard of this several months ago, and was excited to see what they had cooked up so far. After playing a decent variety of songs, I felt a preview was in order, so here we are.

The game plays very similarly to "AaAaAA". You fall through gyrating geometry, nearly missing obstacles and crashing through score plates to get the highest score possible. The difference here is that, like Audiosurf and many other recent rhythm games, you insert your own music and the game generates a level around it. Here lies the issue with the game: the level generator isn't too great as of yet. If the song you're trying to play doesn't have a strong beat and bass, you probably won't have much luck- there will barely be anything in the level to interact with. Songs that do work lead to a fairly varied series of obstacles, though I found that some sequences repeated.

My biggest issue was that the game seemed to have trouble keeping up with some songs, often having a split second of delay between the music and the game's beat. This wasn't a majority of songs, but it was enough to be annoying. However, the game is still in pre-release, so I have faith they'll fix it soon.

But honestly, this game is the sort of thing you just have to show, so I made a video with one of the songs the game did better with: Dance Commander. My recorder isn't great, hopefully it came out OK.

You can grab "KICK IT!" for half price ($5) on Steam right now. If it seems appealing to you, give it a go.