The father of music games, PaRappa the Rapper creator Masaya Matsuura, is bringing his innovative rhythm game sense to the iPhone. Again.
Masaya Matsuura developed an iPod game a few years. This time, he's back with another music game for the iOS, titled WINtA, which is inspired by the Marvin Gaye lyric "War is not the answer".
It's a charity game, and the barebones edition is free and will net players three free songs with one being an extra download and the other being a tutorial. Gameplay is simple and should be familiar to anyone who's played a music game: players touch blocks on the screen to the rhythm of the music.
The game has a vocal and a music track, and touching the blocks impacts the song. There is also a neat "whammy" effect that occurs when players are prompted to touch a block and move it around. I liked the gameplay. It's not revolutionary, but it's well done and fun. All the songs I tried had different visual looks, which is a big plus.
The game is a freemium game, meaning that you'll have to pay for the extra tracks. Since this is an Apple App store title, each track is $.99. That's a steep price for a couple minutes of gameplay. WINtA is a charity title, meaning that whatever doesn't go to Apple and the record companies will go to charity, such as the kids who were impacted by the earthquake in Japan. It is a shame, however, that the catalogue of tracks available for purchase are somewhat skimpy.
Each of the tracks seem to have different visual appearances and there are varying levels of difficulty, so there is incentive to master each track. In that sense, it does offer a bang for your buck, especially if you consider what Apple charges for music. But in a world in which Angry Birds is only a buck, some players might balk at the price. If only the WINtA had more "free" in its "freemium". That's what future updates are for—hopefully!
WINtA [iTunes]