Use musical scales and magical melodies to solve puzzles in Sonority
A puzzle adventure that uses a novel mechanic: Pure sound.
Taking a step away from the usual spatial, programming, and logic challenges that most commonly appear in adventure puzzle games, Sonority is a clever new indie that focuses instead on the basics of music. The building blocks of puzzles are instead music notes ranging, quite literally, across the scale. As you play the notes are combined into melodies and ranges that create magical effects.
Using those magical melodies, and with the help of a talking raccoon, you use various instruments to get all manner of different results. Here's a simple example: Certain notes in one order might raise a platform, while those notes in reverse would lower it. There are also puzzles that have you listen to a sequence, then repeat it back using your instruments, in order to progress.
It is of course a game that's going to be harder or easier based not just on how good your sense of hearing is, but how good your "ear" for music is. That's not absolute: Despite my inability to learn how to read sheet music in the third grade I did manage to enjoy what I played in Sonority's demo.
You can find Sonority for sale on GOG and Steam. It also has a free demo.
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Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.