Review: A Dance of Fire And Ice Is Brutally Harmonious Musical Game

Music and video games are a match made in heaven. This holy matrimony gave birth to a generation who rocked plastic guitars, showing moves on the dance floor of arcade dancing pads, and slashing music notes with a giant lightsaber.

In this musical game, you are going to open your eyes and ears with one finger on your keyboard and be prepared to face the music. This is the review of A Dance of Fire and Ice developed by Malaysia-and-Peru-based 7th Beat Games, and published by indienova.

Simple yet challenging

I’m going off the rails on a crazy train

The premise of this game is dissected to the simplest form. Your goal is to align the blue-and-red-colored orbiting planets as these spherical (not flat) globes travel down a challenging route. It might sound easy, however, there is a limitation. You have to make sure both of these planets move in perfect balance with the music or else, restart the whole song. 

That being said, you need to rely on your trusty ears and eyes along with the push of ‘space’ or ‘enter’ keyboard buttons to progress further into their journey across various levels without missing a beat. 

Musical extraordinaire

Five levels (plus two) to beat

A Dance of Fire and Ice has five levels with two bonus level (like an encore), which will be unlocked after you successfully completed all of the songs. Every level features diverse musical tracks from jazz to techno. The levels present different patterns such as long, triangular-shaped, overlapping zig-zags roads and otherworldly designs that the developers could think of. Similar to its songs, the magnificent art backdrop changes for each world.

The beats can be slowed down and fasten up during the levels when either of the planets encounters two animal icons. As usual, the rhythm will become faster once you are approaching the final level. 

A fitting tutorial title

Tutorials are given in successive segmented sections of the song, which means once you surpass one segment, other section will come next. My biggest obstacle in any rhythm games is that I hit the notes faster before the visual could capture the beat, which ruins my whole tempo (I’m looking at you, Patapon Remastered) or worse in this game, I have to restart all over again.

As the developers are also music aficionados, they are well aware of the importance of calibration. The game can detect your own beat in device calibration settings that appear in the menu. You are also able to change and re-calibrate the offset on the spot so you won’t have to leave the levels for the menu to be in sync with the melody on each stage. Neat! 

Symphony finale

After 12,742 attempts, I finally finished the level.

A Dance of Fire and Ice lives up to its name while saving the best for the last. At first, the one-button gameplay, the countless flunks, and the pressure to maintain the planets in the same line fire up my bones. The game definitely puts your hand-and-eye coordination and rhythm sense to the test because there is no difficulty meter as presented in Guitar Hero, Beat Saber, Deemo, and many more. The additional two levels are unbelievably tough but there are some gamers out there who aced those levels.

If you stuck in a certain beat, replay the whole tutorial. I learned my lessons by keeping the tutorials close to my heart. Practice makes perfect! When you are one with the music, that combination of raging fire caused by the intense challenges is doused by an ice-cold sensation like yin and yang. The anticipation of nailing each note becomes a personal obsession of mine. It feels utterly rewarding when you are able to finish the whole song. 

You don’t need a high-end PC to enjoy the beat

To see and hear if you can keep with the beat, try the demo first on itch.io. A Dance of Fire and Ice is now available on PC (Steam) and Android.

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