Pulse: Volume One

There’s a subset of the neurological condition synesthesia that allows people to see sound as colour.

After an extended session of Pulse: Volume One, you may feel you can experience something similar; such is the vibrancy of the audio-visual fireworks igniting beneath your fingers.

While the content on offer could be described as a streamlined version of rhythm-action, the presentation and flow of the gameplay is anything but.

Andante

Unlike stablemates such as Tap Tap Revenge or Guitar Hero, Pulse eschews a linear - or standard fret - descent of notes in favour of a fluid setup.

The target notes are arranged across multiple circles, blossoming out from the centre of the iPad (it's an iPad-only title) like a vinyl disc, each one representing a single beat in the music (and the total number reflecting either one or two bars of music).

As a song progresses, solid circles appear on these beats, the idea being to tap such shapes before the track passes them by.

Allegro

For every correct tap, a shower of symbols explode under your finger, coloured and shaped according to the chosen song’s theme and shade.

At first the targets remain still, growing larger as the glowing circle of the song approaches their beat, but it doesn’t take long before the notes begin to move around their circumference - often at a great speed and in different directions.

These movements are far from random - each is designed to either reflect the passage of the song, or to form a pattern from the inside to the outer layers of the screen that will challenge your finger positioning.

It can be mesmerising once you get a handle on the song, especially once chords and off-beat notes are introduced - your fingers dancing across the touchscreen.

Crescendo

The eight tracks offered vary in styles and difficulty, starting off with nice, slow ambient electronica before reaching a crescendo with ultra-fast synth/strings combinations that will have proper pianists in a cold-sweat.

However, despite the increasing difficulty of the tracks, Pulse: Volume One will take all of 20 minutes to play through the first time, thanks to the fact it’s impossible to fail a track.

Coupled with the lack of any more traditional game-like features like scoring or leaderboards, and it’s questionable how long some players will find themselves playing this game once the initial marvellous marvel wears out.

Still, it may not be able to offer an Extended Play, but Pulse: Volume One is an interesting, and at times intensely beautiful, experience.