I have something of a love-hate relationship with games that are also toys. I’m talking about games like Townscaper, The Ramp, Summerhouse and even Tiny Glade – the games that are essentially one endless creative mode where your goal is to simply ‘make stuff’ to your heart’s content. I love what they’re about, and I will admire and coo over all the lovely GIFs and clips that folks with far more imagination than I manage to get out of them until the cows come home. But I struggle to get much personal joy from them when there’s no overarching objective shaping what I’m meant to be building. It’s a chronic case of ‘blank page-itis’, but not so with the musical toybox delight of Oddada.
Oddada’s Steam Next Fest demo gives you something tangible to hold onto – though it may not seem that way when you first give it a go. Straight off, you’re invited to simply poke and prod various music boxes to create interesting sounds. The first involves slotting the letters of the game’s own name into adjustable wooden towers with adorable little faces carved into them, their height determining what pitch they’ll quickly start humming away at. A toy train then appears on the scene, letting you change the scenery from day to night to dusk, which in turn alters the timbre of your notes yet again. Press the big red button on the train’s nose, and you’ll be whisked away to another scene where you can build on the da-da-dum you’ve just created, or mute it entirely to make something new.
You’ll go through several scenes like this, each one more tactile and intriguing than the last, layering up your growing musical soundscape as you go. My favourite one was the giant metronome crabs, whose sleepy eye stalks would clong together neat little bell sounds, while their open, toothy mouths could be raised up and down to change the speed their eyes knocked together, as well as the tone of the bell in question. The wooden toy pipe organ was also absolutely exquisite, with each mouse click on one of the keys marking a notch on its multi-coloured drum, adding more rhythmic and percussive knocks, boops and dings to my growing bed of electronia. And if you need to redo those rhythm’s you’ve just laid down? Then just slam that metal handle down on the side and start over.
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