Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Dylan Fitterer just dropped us a line to say how pleased he is with the latest act on his Audiosurf radio. It’s Godheads of Nineties Sex-infused electronic rock, Girls Vs Boys. He loves them. Hey – I love them. But I didn’t love them enough to reprogram some extra variation into the free tracks when you play them, which Fitterer did. Go Basstation and you’ve four lanes to deal with. All the Rage makes you face three times as many blanks as usual. The Come Down only lets you play mono, with no Stealth possible. Let it Breath demands a minimum of five blocks for a match. And – finally – you’re able to play all the four tracks in a first person mode.

All of it sounds like as good an opportunity as ever to return to Audiosurf for a run or eight. The page is here, where it’s still available for a highly reasonable ten dollars. Or there’s the demo. Yes.

If I actually had any old flames of such calibre that, upon re-encountering them some years later, I was so blown away by their charm and beauty that I wondered why I’d ever broken up with them in the first place, I would surely have a most excellent analogy for how it felt to play Audiosurf for the first time in months. But I don’t, so I don’t.

What I do have is Audiosurf back in my life (and the rather surprising discovery that I hadn’t yet played any LCD Soundsystem on it. This has now been corrected), and lo, I am happy. The reason for this slight return is the release of a meaty free update to the MP3-racing synaesthesia supremo. Sexy details on this sexy so-called ‘FM Update’ are waiting sexily beneath the sexy cut…
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Audiosurf, in terms of both commercial and critical success, is the indie-hit of the year so far. It managed to pick up an IGF award at the same time it was sitting at the top of the Steam charts for all of February. It’s caused more listening to eighties-pop music than is strictly healthy at RPS towers, and we love it still. We grabbed an opportunity to speak to its creator, Dylan Fitterer. We talk about music, people’s physical response to music and whether he’s incredibly rich. But we start with the core of things; that is, how Audiosurf works anyway…
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