Time for some dreamy tunes with soothing visuals as we take a quick look at a small, upcoming rhythm game called Melatonin. I recently got to check out the demo from this new and upcoming indie developer (David Huynh / Half Asleep) and was quite intrigued, so here are my impressions thus far in a small, quick preview.
Hey everyone, sep here, with a quick impression on melatonin! recently i got to check out the demo of this quirky rhythm game. as an insomniac who can’t remember the last time he had a dream, the name is already intriguing. but as a game it should actually keep us awake and engaged us. does it succeed? let’s find
Out! first let’s take a quick look at the options. they are basic, but all the necessities for a game like this are here. the game should support resolutions up to 4k, although i didn’t test it, as my screen doesn’t support this. it’s good to have some assistance and calibration options to tailor the experience to
Your own liking. something i’d like to see added is a high contrast mode. the pastel graphical style provides some very unique, dreamy and beautiful aesthetics, but unfortunately it also makes the little text that is in the game rather hard to read. i also consider an option to change keybindings basic decency nowadays,
Especially on pc and when playing with a keyboard. the default controller layout works fine for me however. there’s a handy tutorial to get you accustomed to the game’s mechanics, which is a basic ‘hit the button at the right time based on audio visual cues.’ the first night featured in the demo only requires
Single presses of the a button or space bar. left, right prompts or elongated presses seen in the tutorial are for later nights in the full game i guess. as the night starts we see our being surrounded by all manners of melatonin suppressants, the sleep state is still achieved somehow and we get to explore the dreamscape
In four different themed stages or songs. and one that combines them all into one final challenge. the actual stages are quite a treat to play. the hand-drawn graphics are very pleasant and the fun, upbeat music fits the different themes nicely and it’s easy to get into the rhythm of the tunes, featuring a
Metronome and clear visual prompt to easily learn the required rhythm. these are the assists you can also freely enable in the settings. a good rhythm game in my opinion needs to put special focus on the music and be playable even without the visuals. too many games within the genre seem to require some foresight by
Looking ahead to actually be half decent at them. to say that this game is much more on my level and actually can be played just fine with your eyes closed. at least these earlier levels. feels real natural where you’re supposed to press the button. how this would translate into multiple buttons, i’m not sure, but
This first night felt great to go through. although for veterans of the genre it’ll be a total cakewalk. the visuals will support the audio well and what i especially like is that it’s very clean. stuff to distract you and even the score meter is very subtle. things that are there to distract you are there by
Deliberate design for the level. based on your performance you get a rating of one to three stars at the end of each track. to open up the final, combined, challenge you need at least 8 stars. each stage also has a challenge variant. these vary in quality i find. the first two actually feel a bit different from
The original stage, but the last three stages feel almost the same as the original and don’t add much variation and feel honestly a bit underwhelming. to aim for the highest scores, you require a lot of consecutive ‘perfect’ timings. to help you hone in on these timings, there is also some haptic feedback. a perfect gives
You a stronger vibration compared to an early or late reaction. being quite awful in keeping rhythm myself, i must say that even for me it was quite easy to go for the great ratings, which is 2 stars at least. the game seems to stick mostly to 4/4 time and nothing the changing factor to mainly content with.
Far i found it very enjoyable. not particularly for sure. who knows what the later levels will bring to the table and what themes it may explore. will it all be dreams? or we also find dreams to get the heart pumping a bit? we’ll just have to wait to find out i guess. the game should come out somewhere in fall of
This year, for the steam and epic game stores, as well as for the nintendo switch. next month the demo should also be available via steam for everyone to give this game a try. and i recommend you do as it’ll be a nice quick diversion at the very least. well that’s it for this one. as always,
Transcribed from video
Melatonin (PC) – First Impression / Video Preview By HalfBlindGamer