VOEZ

VOEZ is rhythm game developed by Rayark Games, an independent game developer in Taiwan. The game was released on May 26th, 2016 for iOS ^[1] while Android version got delayed. The Android version was released on June 2nd, 2016. ^[2]

Plot Summary

In the diary in-game, it will give the player challenges to do to unlock each episode. Each episode contains parts of the story and artwork. The player can also find out more about each episode on the official website.

Chapter 1 Summary

The first ten episodes introduces each character and the setting of each location of the story. During the introduction, Lance quickly sneaks out of He Sheng Bakery to avoid work leaving his sister Chelsea to do his part of the work. Ocean is helping his father on his work in fixing cars at the garage. Qian Qian works at Ocean Breeze Music, where they sell instruments and offer services such as teaching lessons and lead school clubs. Yuko Sasaki is the class leader of Class 2.2, she comes in to help Chelsea so that the class can decide what to do for the fair event. Chelsea and Ocean are classmates in Class 2.2. ^[3]

For the school fair, Class 2.2 decides Maid Café while Class 2.3, which Qian Qian and Jessy are in this class, are doing a fun activity which uses big inflatable hammers to hit the class members with mole rat hat. ^[4][5] The school also has an annual talent show. Which Chelsea shows her talents in singing despite being initially nervous on stage. ^[6] Jessy and Ocean also showed their talents in playing the guitar in their improv performance with someone playing the piano. ^[7]

Chapter 2 Summary

During the summer holidays, Chelsea, Qian Qian, Yuko, Ocean and Jessy spends one of their days to supposedly to do summer vacation homework at VOEZ Café but they end up having an outdoor barbeque. ^[8][9] Chelsea goes to find wood to use as firewood but ends up getting lost in the forest. ^[10] Everyone begins to look for her and Jessy finds Chelsea’s phone on the ground. ^[11] Soon after, it begins to rain, Chelsea gets lost in the woods for about 30 minutes and she manages to leave the forest while head towards a small building. ^[12] Ocean searched through the forest and managed to see a small temple which he heads towards and finds Chelsea there. ^[13] At the end of chapter 2, everyone is at the beach spending their summer holiday having a fun time and to relax. ^[14]

Characters

Within the story of the game there are several characters, each with their own position in the VOEZ band, personality traits and their own associated colour.

• Sasaki Yuko: Born on the 27th of October, Yuko is the bassist of the VOEZ band. She is half Japanese, half Chinese and moved to Lan Kong with her father, during high school where she met Chelsea and Ocean and was recruited into the band. Her specialty is her entertainment industry connections, which she uses to help the band, from a management perspective. Her associated colour is red. ^[15]
• Chelsea: Born on the 7th of July, Chelsea is the female lead vocal of the band. She works with her parents in the local bakery, and is known to have a great enthusiasm for helping others. Lance is Chelsea’s younger brother. Her associated colour is orange. ^[15]
• Lance: Born on the 16th of December, Lance is the plays the drums in the band. Even though he excels academically, he’s not known for taking many things seriously. After encouragement from Qian Qian, he joined the band and put more focus on his musical talents. Chelsea is Lance’s older sister. His associated colour is yellow. ^[15]
• Ocean: Born on the 22nd of August, Ocean is the guitarist of the band. Raised solely by his father, he is fond of helping him when he can. He spent some time before the current iteration of the band in a duo with Jessy. His associated colour is green. ^[15]
• Jessy: Born on the 13th of January, Jessy plays the role of guitarist in the band, as well as providing the band’s lead male vocals. Originally from the United States of America, Jessy moved to Lan Kong while he was still young, where he met Ocean, and they formed a two-man band. Generally level-headed and calculated. His associated colour is blue. ^[15]
• Qian Qian: Born on the 9th of October, Qian Qian plays the keyboard in the band, having learned through playing the piano from a young age. Described as kind, but quiet and reserved, she helped bring the members of the band together due to her keen eye for the talents of others. Her associated colour is indigo. ^[15]

Gameplay

Each song will have three difficulty levels which is Easy, Hard and Special. The difficulty of a song is also given a rating. Higher the rating then the more difficult the song will be. The player can also decide how fast the note will fall.

The player must hold on the note for a certain duration until it finishes. It also shows the visuals of a Max Perfect which the is large rainbow coloured and a Perfect which is the brown coloured. The hold note also has line across indicating where the note will move as the player is holding the note. It also shows the user interface.

For each level, there is a black horizontal line at the bottom of the screen. Diamond shaped objects, which are called notes, comes down from the top of the screen vertically on the note line towards the horizontal line. The note line can move horizontally depending on the song and difficulty of the song. The player must either tap, hold, slide or swipe the note depending on which note it is. ^[16][17]

Tap notes must be tapped when they reach the horizontal line to make them disappear. Hold notes are long notes that must be held on until the hold note ends. Swipe notes are notes that are swiped when they reach the horizontal line to make them disappear. Slide notes are white notes that requires the player to hold their finger on the horizontal line and slide it to where the white note will fall to so that when the white note touches the horizontal line where your finger is, the note disappears. ^[16][17]

The score is given based on the performance of how accurate each note is hit. The accuracy of each note is judged by either a ‘Max Perfect’, ‘Perfect’, ‘Ok’ or a ‘Miss’. The total score will also give you a letter grade, an S rating at a minimum score of 950,000 or when player receives a title, an A rating at a minimum score of 880,000, a B rating at a minimum score of 780,000, a C rating at any score less than 780,000. There is a combo counter which keeps count of how many notes have been hit without missing. Hitting all the notes can reward the player with a title ‘Full Combo’ and there is further reward by hitting all the notes and the accuracy of each note is ‘Perfect’ and ‘Max Perfect’ then it will reward the player with an ‘All Perfect’.

Playable Songs

VOEZ features currently 95 songs to play, a variety of genres are included such as trance music, electronic music, pop music and more. The music comes from independent artist and composers from regions like Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.

Release

VOEZ was released on May 26th, 2016 on the AppStore and June 2nd, 2016 on Google Play for Android devices. The game is free to play and it features an optional in-app purchases which allow you to buy keys to unlock the song permanently. These keys can also be earned throughout the game by playing it.^[17] The game features free song rotation system which changes the song from being free to paid and vice versa at a certain date.^[18]

Reception

According to Rayark, 3 weeks after the game has debut, they claimed that there have been more than 3 million downloads with users up to 900 thousand playing daily.^[18]

VOEZ received positive review. Smartphone game review site Touch Arcade gave a rating of 4.5 stars, citing “the game shines because of the way it does the core mechanics so well”.^[16]

A gaming review site Game Zebo gave a rating of 4.5 stars, they praise the visuals of the game how it affects their experience, citing “they’re also very clean and crisp. There’s also a real feeling of energy to everything as columns move.”^[19]

Pocket Meta gave VOEZ an overall rating of 4.2/5, applauding the game’s polished look and feel, but quoting that the music “appeals to specific audience fond of anime and Asian pop.”, as a detracting factor.^[20]

Digitally Downloaded awarded a rating of 4.5/5 stars to VOEZ, praising its gameplay’s similarity to real instruments, and saying that game includes a “stellar soundtrack that has some of the best music I’ve ever heard in a rhythm game”.^[21]

Many reviews of the game, however, level criticism at the ‘always-online’ necessity, where the user needs to be connected to the internet in order to play the game. This requirement makes it difficult to play the game, while on the move.^[16][20]

References

See Also

• Deemo, another rhythm game by the same developer
• Cytus, another rhythm game by the same developer

External links

• Official Website of VOEZ
• Official Facebook Page
• Official Twitter Page