Playing Games: Ear Monsters

A couple months ago, Brian Schmidt left a comment where me mentioned a new game he was about to release, Ear Monsters.  It's taken me a while to get to it, but I recently bought it and have been playing it a bit.  Very cool game, I've never seen, heard?, played! anything quite like it.  The premise is basically that you have to kill (by tapping) monsters you can't see, but you can hear them.  You need some good headphones for this game.  By changing the volume between your various ears, reverb, etc, the game gives a fairly easy to understand method of hearing where the monsters are.  The teaching/tutorial section at the very beginning of gameplay is simple and fast.  I hate games where you have to drag through long tutorials before being able to play.  This integrates the learning how to play right into the gameplay.  I also like the arcade like aspect of the game-- quick to dip in and out-- and trying to best your previous high score.  Old school, but awesome!  It may sound kind of simple as I describe it here, but add in aircraft sounds, the sounds of your shots being fired, bombs suddenly appearing, and a timer bleeping as your final (and most difficult) seconds count down-- and it's a lot to hear!

Aside from the unique audio aspect, I like that there's quite a bit of tapping around on the screen.  A lot of the games I play on my iPhone or iPad have a directional key and maybe just one button to push otherwise.    Here, I get to tap all over.  My favorite part of the game is easily just listening to the sounds that are unlocked in the sound gallery.  The planes flying from right to left are just incredible.  I find myself constantly checking to see if I've unlocked more sounds because I just want to hear them and play them over and over....

The game music is fairly simplistic, basically some percussion and a little bass.  If it were much more, it'd interfere with hearing the things you need to in the game.  I did try playing without the music to see if that helped my aural focus, but it didn't really and I quickly wanted the musical ambience back.  I will say that having a fairly good pair of headphones makes a difference.  I tried the game three ways: with my standard iPhone issue earbuds, with a pretty nice pair of Stretch headphones, and mirroring the game on my TV through my Apple TV so that I could play it via my surround system.  It's possible to hear the differences in the monster positions in each of these cases, but I definitely did the best with the headphones as I was able to get the most monster positions I've ever achieved and a score of 318.  I'm going to keep dipping in and out of the game in coming weeks and am definitely going to use it as one of the mobile games I feature in my game class in the fall.  

Cool game.  Different.  Haven't ever played anything quite like it.  If you want to try something outside the box, and the game sounds good to you, give it a whirl.  Let me know what you think.  Oh, and if you're interested in more info on Ear Monsters, Brian has an incredible blog post over at Gamasutra where he describes the process of creating the game.  It's well worth a read and definitely the kind of behind the scenes info that scholarship needs for historic accuracy in game audio.