Groov is billed as, and I quote dear readers, “Groov is a frenetic dual-stick shooter that makes you the conductor of an intergalactic jazz fusion orchestra.” and by jazz fusion they mean Smooth Jazz.
Man, in my formative years when I was much younger and much more of a hep cat than I am these days I was often found lurking around jazz clubs of a weekend, gorging myself on expensive whiskey and exuding the air of cool (look, I was drunk – obviously you think you’re cool when you’re drunk) that comes with grooving along to the hammond, sax, guitar and drums quartets that oft played at the local bar. Around about this time, two of my friends (and in one case, rather fine chap who taught me my way around a mixing desk and Studer) were a pair of the finest musicians I’ve ever had the pleasure of conversing with. One a hammond organist, the other a primarily jazz guitarist (although he also played a pretty mean rendition of Pretty Vacant if you got him drunk enough)
We’d while away the hours discussing everything from Abba to The Sex Pistols to Jimmy Smith and getting incredibly drunk. After the jazz club, we’d either decamp off to the local establishment playing Northern Soul where we’d get even more drunk or if it was a school night and the other chaps had to be off to work in the morning, I’d decamp to either the rock club or indie club and launch myself around a dance floor at 500 miles an hour taking out any passers by en route.
Yet, in all these years spent the subject of smooth jazz never really cropped up.
It was the genre that no-one wanted to be associated with. Sort of like that guy with the creepy expression who everyone politely nods to at parties but no-one really wants to speak to for fear that they’ll find themselves brutally murdered on the way home after he takes a fancy to them. Smooth jazz just wasn’t the thing that the cool cats went for and resided in its little pocket universe of elevators, Smooth.fm and late night taxi rides.
And now, 10 years on, ways long parted with friends and the stench of Marlboro Lights and alcohol that infused many a night are nothing but a distant memory, I’m sitting here parked up on the sofa playing an arena shooter that attempts to mix Geometry Wars and Smooth Jazz together. Suddenly, I feel really old and as if someone is trying to make me pay for the years of ignoring the genre, lalala’ing to myself and pretending it doesn’t exist. “Ha! You can’t ignore me now, can you?” it whispers creepily to me, leering over its vodka and coke.
I really wish I could. On the one hand it makes a refreshing change that someone is trying to make a game that moves away from glitch or electronica in synaesthestic gaming and on the other hand – it’s smooth jazz, a genre not really suited to anything outside of elevators. Even post rock would be more suited than this.
So, how does the game fare? Unfortunately, not well enough to make you stay in its little elevator from the bottom floor to the top of a 15 floor towerblock. You see, Groov is a game based around a conceit – the conceit of course being that it plays smooth jazz at you whilst you play and the game unfortunately appears to be an entirely secondary concern. Somebody really wants you to appreciate the time and effort that’s gone into the music even if it is at the expense of playercentric feedback and enjoyment.
Take your standard Geometry Wars-esque template. Throw in multi-hit enemies galore (the primary sin of Biology Battle also), 8 directional fire on an analogue stick (not good) and near unplayable levels of inertia on the ship that make it difficult to negotiate yourself out of any awkward positions you might lumber yourself into due to the sluggish pace. For bonus points start the player ship off completely underpowered (one bullet, 8 directional fire, analogue stick – go figure just how awkward this is) and you’re not really heading into the realms of the win here.
To top it all off, there’s no sound effects. Groov is sitting in the corner, humming away to itself, never conversing.
You’re not meant to be playing a game but instead enjoying the jazz – any sort of audio feedback would get in the way of the conceit. Rez, the gold standard on synaesthesia in games understood that you still need to feedback important information to the player. Even Space Giraffe at the looser end of the scale has glaring audio cues that are hard to ignore. Groov has none, nothing, nada. Even the explosions don’t go off until they’re on beat.
In fairness, the pace picks up to “slightly more enjoyable but still not great” once you get more heavy artillery but you’re still at the mercy of the sluggish ship movement and an increasing amount of tedious multi-hit kill enemies.
The ultimate end result being that you come away from Groov with the feeling that you’ve being playing in someone elses conceit and there’s no regard for you, the player. You’re supposed to marvel at its wonder and the great idea that it so obviously is but it doesn’t care about you.
“Don’t play me, appreciate me”, whispers Groov.
I’m sorry Groov, but I can’t. You’re too self centered. Too in love with yourself. There’s no room for me in your life. Perhaps we should just y’know, call it quits and you go off and do your thing and I’ll do mine.
And tonight Groov, I’ll be walking home across well lit and well populated streets. Please don’t try and kill me, I’ve got a family waiting at home and I can scream very loud.
This title was 200 Points at the time of writing this review but has since been reduced to 80 Points.
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I also(?) thought the musical elements were rather well done, but the gameplay not so much.
I wasn’t put off by a lack of audio cues, but I did find it a bit graphically sparse for my liking.
That, the not-so-stellar gameplay, and the fact I already have a half dozen arena shooters and there are still a score more about the place killed my thoughts of purchase.
Great writing! I really enjoyed the article and agree mostly with the lack of a great game under the smooth jazz surface. Definitely fun for a bit, but I don’t think I’ll be picking it up anytime soon. Keep the reviews coming!
Hey guys, I’m the one that made this game and just had a couple response comments. Firstly there actually are sound effects to your shots, which produce music. The whole song is actually produced by what happens in the game — if you do nothing, then only the basic chords and sometimes drums loop in the background. So while you may not have noticed it, or thought it wasn’t enough, the music is actually entirely created through player interaction.
Also there actually is entirely analog firing so I’m not really sure why you thought it was eight-directional. I don’t think it was you specfically though because I’ve gotten another comment to that effect, although I have no idea what produces that impression.
Anyway sorry you didn’t like the game. Nice review though, I got a kick out of it. Don’t play Groov, experience Groov.
In response to Julian, I think your game is great. Were there flaws? Of course. It’s an independent game, how could it not? For 200 points, the flaws it does have are easily overlooked.
I think the reviewer on this site missed the mark on several things, notably, the way the “song” of the game works. The enemies explode shortly after you shoot them, producing a musical note when they go. This explosion is timed with the beat. It HAS to be that way, or the game doesn’t work. If they produced a sound the moment they were shot, the game would just be a bunch of noise.
I especially like the fact that the bullets themselves are playing notes. The bullets speed up (and thus, the “song” speeds up) at times, which mimics getting a weapon power-up in a shooter. And then, the bullets fire more slowly at times, making the “song” slow its pace. This adds to the challenge and the music itself. I could go on and on, but basically what I’m getting at is that Groov is well paced and very well thought out.
Besides the game being enjoyable, the music itself is great. Every time I think about the game, the “song” (can I stop putting that in quotes now?) gets stuck in my head, and that’s not a bad thing at all.
Anyway, kudos on this, the first Community Game I’ve purchased. Well worth the points. I hope you have a follow-up in the works. Easily worth more than just 200 points.
I would argue that this review is infinitely more self indulgent than groov, which seems to have gone over the reviewer’s head entirely.
While I agree with part of this review a large chunk is overly harsh. There are some good gameplay elements in here, although overall I like this better as an interesting experiment rather than a game.
Julian is right about two things the review is 100% incorrect on- analog shooting and sound effects. It’s analog shooting. Really, that’s all there is to it. If I want to aim a bullet at 23.45 degrees off the horizontal I can do it, making the huge assumption that I could be that precise.
As for the sound effects, I’ve got to say I really liked the way they were done. The basic beat of the tune hums quietly in the background is you do nothing, and shots synch up to provide musical detailing. The enemies all have specific sounds that add to the music when they explode as well.
From a gameplay perspective I appreciated the challenge that working around the grey “dead and harmless but not yet gone” bodies of shot enemies presented, requiring me to move around them to draw a bead on the enemies they shielded.
As for multi-hit enemies, there’s a total of 1 in the entire game. It’s a big bastard too, so hard to miss. All the rest of the baddies fall apart after taking a single hit.
In all fairness to Groov, this review needs a rewrite. It’s got too many errors to be accurate.
Hi James,
I had absolutely no analogue firing at all. It locked to 8 directions on my pad and there’s absolutely no response from it *unless* I hit upon one of the 8. Whether that’s the game or my old controller I don’t know but it definitely is the case. It -seemed- to work a bit better when I had some of the heavier artillery but I can’t be sure if that’s just the wider spread making it more noticeable. I went through the trial for around an hour in total prior to writing the review to make sure. So it’s a bit unfair to say “It’s got too many errors to be accurate” (I’ll gladly accept self indulgent!). This is my exact experience with the trial as I found it. I’m glad it went better for you, though.
And the sound – nope, sorry – the way it was layered just *didn’t* work for me. It felt disconnected with a lack of direct feedback. It’s a nice idea and certainly as an experience works very well, better I’d say than Synaesthete which attempts a similar concept of melding arena shooter with music but ultimately nopers, wasn’t doing it for me.
It is analog firing. It could be an optical illusion that tricks people as the direction of the projectile sprite almost looks like it’s at a 0,45,90, etc. degree angle, despite going in “infinite” directions.
I’ve had similar ideas for shooters, in the sense that it would play music, and so enjoy that part of the game. And I think it was pulled off rather well.
But the gameplay itself is pretty dry. I like nuances like how the dead baddies are bullet sponges until they explode, that adds depth, that and the beat based movement of some enemies. But most enemies move similarly at similar speeds and turning radiuses (radii?
). For example if the big multihit ship moved so that it would stand in one spot, turn to face you, slowly accelerate at you getting very fast, and then repeat if it missed you…it would make it seem like a threat, remain fair (doesn’t seem cheap), and add variety. Along with that if it killed other enemies when charging it would add even more depth and strategy.
Controls are solid, and the firing rate and damage it deals are acceptable IMO. But I did wish there were screen clearing bombs. The slowdown feature should last an entire bar (feels too short to be effective).
One thing I liked doing was creating a rhythm by firing at targets by tapping the stick. This created unique sounding melody lines rather than a steady stream of random notes (which were melodic but lacked an interesting rhythm). You could encourage gamers to do the same (ie. not just hold the stick down) by making the first attack a 3 pronged attack like you get in certain waves, and the rest following as single projectiles when the stick is held down. It can result in more interesting audio too, since those 3 projectile attacks play a 3 note chord, IIRC. Alternatively you could give bonus points for certain rhythms fired during each bar, adding depth and serving the musical aspect of the game at the same time.
So I think the gameplay could have been thought out much more. I would agree that the visuals (even the game cover didn’t turn out well) are pretty poor. The main menu was especially jarring. The graphics programming though was good, good particles, good implementation of motion blur, good framerate, and so on.
Despite my complaints, the game is worth the 200pts. The audio experience alone is worth the asking price. It provides enough of an experience to warrant that price, and any greater asking price would have been too much for me. That is when I would expect the gameplay to draw me in, and the visuals to be better. 200pts in my region represents the price of an energy drink or coffee…so while it may seem weird that I’m justifying the purchase of a game that I don’t find too exciting in terms of gameplay, I consider it a purchase of an interesting experience that I will revisit from time to time (and show off to friends).
I can’t believe how much the reviewer completely missed the point of this “game”, and I put it in quotations because it isn’t as much as a game as it is a music “making” experience.
The absolute most fun to be had in Groov is messing around with the fire bursts to make custom tunes which is a great experience.
If you have an ounce of musical ability/appreciation, you will appreciate Groov for what it really is, a concept more than a true game.
So the nitpicks about the gameplay are moot points and in some cases, just plain wrong.
Great job Julian, I hope for a Groov 2 with more songs and features.
Blows my mind that anyone playing this game or watching the trailer would think it only has 8-directional fire. Lust playing the game, or watching the video, looking for this CLEARLY shows more than 8-directional fire. Why anyone stumbles over this, I wish I knew! Maybe the frustration of the controls (the controls are not the best), or the restrictive feeling you get while playing the game, is what causes this oversight ??!
I have to agree on the controls at least feeling 8 directional. Just play the demo on the 1st level and tell me how many directions you can shoot– Count them. Well I count 8. and i think that later in the game it feels like its more precise, but it might be the graphics fooling me– I like the Music ,but the controls feels very limited when shooting.
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