• 9.5/100 ZTGD
• 9/10 Total PlayStation
• 8/10 Game Informer
• 8/10 IGN
• 8/10 This Is Fake DIY
• 8/10 Gaming Union
• 8/10 Terminal Gamer
• 8/10 Play UK
• 8/10 First Play
• 8/10 Eurogamer NL
• 85 4players.de
• 8.2 GameFocus
• 5/5 Snackbar Games
• 5/5 PsPenguin.net
• 4/5 Game FTW
• 5/5 PSN stores review
• Desconsolados
• 4/5 GamePro
• 4.25 Rotorob
• Metacritic

Absent from the original Chime and becoming the most popular request from fans since, Chime Super Deluxe introduces a Co-op Mode and a Versus Mode for up to four players, bringing a fresh dynamic to the Chime gameplay experience and allowing players to “Chime” together. Co-Op Mode has players working together to fill a grid as quickly as possible with completed quads in order to reach the 100% coverage and keep on building that high score.

The Versus Mode is where friends become enemies and the competition heats up, as players work against each other to cover as much of the grid as possible against a backdrop of colourful, musically harmonious chaos! Versus Mode also introduces an additional rule whereby players can ‘steal’ an opponents coverage by overwriting it with over 50% of their own colour, adding a subtle level of strategy to proceedings.

A brand new video has been released as Sabrepulse, one of the artist additions to Chime Super Deluxe, gives an in-depth interview on his experience of creating his track “Play With You” for the game with Jorden Milnes.

The video interview can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EE1ElIeNJU

The video can be downloaded from: http://www.yousendit.com/download/eURDcmxYQzM1bmhjR0E9PQ

For Chime Super Deluxe Zoë Mode were keen to work closely with some of today’s most relevant artists to create music designed with the game in mind, perfectly illustrated by the collaborations with Shlomo and Plaid.

“The Looping Song” was created exclusively for Chime Super Deluxe at Zoë Mode’s Brighton recording studio by Shlomo, one of the world’s finest human beatboxers who, as well as being the first ever World Loopstation Champion, has provided his vocal talents for the likes of Jarvis Cocker, DJ Yoda, Mad Professor and Bjork.

Talking about how “The Looping Song” came about, Shlomo said, “I’m a beatboxer but also a keen looper, so we plugged in my loopstation and started jamming. It’s actually kind of like a two part song – the first section is super chilled and then it gets more hyper. We had a lot of fun making the song and I’m really stoked it’s going to be in the game.”

Completing the track line-up for Chime Super Deluxe is “Tender Hooks” by British electronic music duo Plaid comprised of long-time friends Andy Turner and Ed Handley. Now on Warp Records and with an extensive and highly regarded body of work to their name, Plaid has a devoted clan of worldwide followers.

Plaid have spent much of the last few years making film soundtracks to compliment their catalogue, including the award winning Japanese animated feature ‘TekkonKinkreet’ and the Japanese live action film ‘Heaven’s Door’, but once they knew about Chime Super Deluxe they jumped at the chance to be involved in creating music for a video game.

Andy Turner of Plaid describes how their track, composed specifically for Chime Super Deluxe came to life. “We were keen to push the Chime engine for this composition. “Tender Hooks” is based around loops written in 5/4 and 2/4 time allowing the track to switch between these time signatures to emphasize the gamers’ progress through the level.

“We chose a musical key that we hope feels driving and has a sense of urgency. We wanted the players input to be the biggest part of the track and so we made the ‘block’ sound the dominant lead; having it triggering randomly to emulate game play whilst we wrote the interchangeable loops that should provide a rich texture underneath. Hopefully this will focus the player on their game rather than distracting them and we hope they enjoy their part in writing “Tender Hooks” as much as we have ours.”

The brand new Chime Super Deluxe trailer can be downloaded from http://vimeo.com/20283491

For more information and updates on Chime Super Deluxe keep checking back here at www.chimegame.com or follow @zoemode on twitter or sign up on facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chime/168579188020

Zoë Mode Entertainment, an independent multi-format game developer, are excited to announce the initial line-up of brand new artists and their never-before-heard tracks for Chime Super Deluxe, releasing exclusively on PlayStation®Network for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system this Spring.

“Play With You” is written, produced and mixed by Sabrepulse, aka Ashley Charles, a London based musician who creates Drum ‘n’ Bass, Electro and Electronic Dance music. Ashley is an influential figure in the increasingly popular 8-Bit and “Chip Tune” musical movements and uses a 1989 Nintendo Game Boy and a laptop to make his unique blend of sounds and compositions.

We are delighted to learn that Bit Tech have declared the Steam PC version of Chime the best puzzle game of 2010, Bit Tech says:

Strip everything else away and Chime is little more than a shape matching game with clever audio design. Randomly delivered blocks must be placed on a grid into 3×3 or larger quadrangles, at which point they disappear. Meanwhile, a wave passes over the board every few seconds and adds a sample to the soundtrack for every block it hits. Simple, but surprisingly addictive and fun!

Read the full review here.

The definitive version of the acclaimed musical block puzzle game with brand new multiplayer modes, coming exclusively to PlayStation®Network this Spring

BRIGHTON, UK – 27th January 2011 – Zoë Mode Entertainment, an independent multi-format game developer, are excited to announce that Chime Super Deluxe will be released exclusively on PlayStation ®Network for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system this Spring.

Superseding the previously released Chime on Xbox LIVE Arcade and PC, Chime Super Deluxe features new music from a variety of artists in addition to those already included (Moby, Markus Schulz, Philip Glass, Paul Hartnoll from Orbital and Fred Deakin from Lemon Jelly). The line-up includes tracks created exclusively for Chime and provides the largest roster of music so far for players to enjoy.

Also new to Chime Super Deluxe are brand new multiplayer game modes, an increase in the number of game grids, along with a complete graphical and gameplay overhaul which will make this the most visually attractive and refined iteration of the game.

Easy to play but hard to master, Chime Super Deluxe is a unique and addictive block puzzle game featuring an innovative music creation element. Players must cover a number of different grids with irregular shapes to form rectangular blocks called quads. Every shape and quad generates musical notes and phrases. As the grid is gradually covered, the song builds up in the background. Working their way towards that elusive 100% coverage, players create a unique remix every time.

About Zoë Mode

Zoë Mode makes accessible, simple, social games that are effortlessly fun but don’t take themselves too seriously. Based in Brighton, Zoë Mode’s diverse work force is unified by its attitude to gaming. Zoë Mode believes that games are powerful ways of bringing people together; that there is more to life than gaming, but that gaming can make life better; and strongly believes that there is a game for everyone. Zoë Mode is part of Kuju Entertainment Limited.

http://tinyurl.com/343jdsl

After 9:00AM UTC on Dec. 1, 2010, the royalties from sales of Chime on Xbox LIVE® Arcade will fall in line with the Steam® version of the franchise, with five percent of all royalties continuing to be donated to OneBigGame.

“While 100% of our royalty is donated we feel we can freely encourage those who have not had a chance to purchase Chime to use this last opportunity to fully support the OneBigGame initiative,” said  Ed Daly, general manager, Zoe Mode. “We have very much enjoyed working with OneBigGame on this unique venture and although this marks a change for Chime it is far from the end of the relationship.”

The title update that will debrand the product and alter the statement of charitable contributions also contains a gift to the hardened Chime players on XBLA.  Players quite early on managed to defeat the game and gain extraordinarily high scores; however, the score maximum was capped resulting in what players dubbed ‘the Eight Nines’ and a leaderboard topped with identical scores.

“Now that this cap has been removed it will finally be possible to discover the best Chime players in the world,” stated Brynley Gibson, game director, Zoe Mode. “This fix has been a long time coming and is absolutely one made for the fans; we hope it tides them over until we can announce our plans for where we are taking Chime next.”

The project has clearly been a success for all involved and has proven that charity in games can work.  Very shortly Zoë Mode will hand over a check to Martin De Ronde, director of One Big Game, for the soon to be disclosed final amount.  De Ronde commented, “We could not be happier with the success of our first game at OneBigGame and once again thanks to everyone at Zoë Mode for their hard work and generosity and in particular for extending the fund raising period.  The money raised is going to make a difference and will help children around the world as we pass it on to our partners at Save the Children and Starlight Children’s Foundation.”

Due to the critical success of the title the developer, who recouped not a single development cost from the XBLA project, continues to work on further fully commercial iterations.

Further Information

5% of all royalties from Chime for Xbox LIVE® Arcade and Chime for PC on Steam® will be donated to OneBigGame. 100% of the proceeds from the Xbox LIVE® Arcade version of Chime for Xbox 360® have benefited OneBigGame since the game’s release up to 1/12/2010.

Chime is available on Xbox LIVE® Arcade at the price of 400 MS Points. For more information, please visit http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/c/Chimexbla/

Chime is available on Steam® priced $4.99 (check Steam® for alternative currency prices). For more information, please visit http://store.steampowered.com/app/62100/

It all started back at the beginning of 2010 when Chime was initially released on Xbox LIVE Arcade. We checked the leaderboards every day, watching people getting better at the game and catching up to the kind of scores our testers had all achieved. It was all going swimmingly, and we were chuffed; that is, until we loaded up the leaderboards one day and saw that someone had got a score of 99 million points. 99 million! We were shocked to say the least. The highest any of our testers had achieved was ~20 million points, and here was someone that had got 4 times that amount.

They’d done so well that they hit the score cap we had put in place months ago and forgotten about; we simply didn’t expect anyone to score that much! At first we thought it was just a one off, one elite super player, but then another appeared. And another. And another. Soon the leaderboards were swamped with scores of 99 million points. Clearly, something had to be done.

It turns out that, if you’re quick enough, you can actually play any level on Chime XBLA indefinitely. Take the first level, Brazil – For every stage you complete in this level, you are rewarded with just over 3 minutes in time bonuses. This means that if you can cover the grid in less than that time, you’ll be able to keep playing forever as the game never gets any harder. That was my first port of call in designing Chime for PC, implementing a proper difficulty curve that prevented people from playing through the game ad infinitum.

Time Bonuses in Chime PC are reduced every time you complete a stage. If you receive 20 seconds per time bonus in stage one, you will receive 15 seconds per time bonus in stage two and so on. This means that you’ll have to up your game if you want to keep hitting those big scores, and turns coverage into something a lot more meaningful than it was before. If you can reach stage 5 in any level on Chime PC then you’re doing extremely well.

The other major change made for Chime PC is a focus shift away from coverage and towards increasing your multiplier. Multipliers were originally supposed to be THE way to score big in Chime, but ultimately they were a bit neglected in the Xbox LIVE version, mainly because you just got such a big score bonus for covering the grid and completing stages. Not so in Chime PC; maintaining a high multiplier is now essential to success, and all it took a very minor change in the way quads and shapes function. As you know, shapes and fragments left unused on the grid lose life over time and eventually die, at which point the player’s multiplier is reset. By extending the lifetime of these fragments we found that

• It was a lot harder to cover the grid (there are more fragments on screen and they often get in the way)
• It was a lot easier to achieve and more importantly maintain a high multiplier (you can make more quads before the multiplier resets and have more time to use fragments before they die)

This was a key change for Chime PC. Chime has always been about coverage. That was always one of the number one facets of the game, “Cover the grid to gain time. Attain 100% Coverage”. But by putting more of a focus on multipliers, we have begun to move away from this mantra. Chime is now less of a musical toy and more of a full on puzzler, more akin to Tetris than Elektroplankton; it’s not perfect  by any means, but it has opened up a plethora of options and new ways to play.

So I had adjusted the time bonuses and brought multipliers into play, but I wasn’t finished yet. Next up – Shapes, quads and grids…

Marc Tourle – Designer

Chimaniacs we salute you!!!

We will be getting in touch directly with the winners to collect contact details, and to find out if they want to keep or gift their prizes. If you know someone more deserving for one or all of your prizes be a Fairy Godmother and gift it.

Here are the winners and the prizes.

Grand Prize Winner

Taylor Cole Sheckler Ryan

• A one off digital print poster of Chime signed by the development team,
• Chime Ambassadorship

• Chime for PC and XBLA
• WiNTA for iPhone – All to keep or gift.

The other winners:

Chime Ambassadorship & Chime for PC and XBLA to keep or gift.
Bianca Barton
Travis Young
Shannon Kothoff
Andy Endean

Chime for PC to keep or gift.
Ashleyy Chalhoub
Tracy Biram
Jo McPherson

Chime for XBLA to keep or gift.
David Adelstein
Dan Short
Izzy Lyons

When released the new OneBigGame title; WiNTA for iPhone to keep or gift.
Emma Cella
Steve Schindler
Lolly Mann
Cheryl Hadfield