A Fading Melody

Recently I finally purchased my first Xbox 360 Community Game: A Fading Melody (200 MS points). A Fading Melody is a simple platformer, which takes cues from last years XBLA hit Braid.

The narrative, which is told by scrolling text at the start of each level, is about a woman who is fighting a coma by bringing light and colour back into the her (subconscious) world and hopefully in the process, discover why she is in the coma in the first place. As you take out enemies, it helps prevent you from going deeper into your coma and lightens up the screen with each kill.

The main character and enemy designs are very simple (as you can see in the screenshot below), but the slightly more detailed backgrounds help draw the player in a bit more. The first thing though that should get your attention is the beautiful classical music score.

The gameplay mechanics, like the art style are also very simplistic, making the game feel like a platformer from the Commodore 64 days! Having to retry jumps or miss stomping on enemies can be a bit frustrating.

A Fading Melody, I would say is in the “art game” category, so if your not into that sort of thing I would pass, but if you like good music, the story concept and have a bit of patience I suggest giving a try (it’s also only 200 points remember!).

- Schu