Kudos: Rock Legend

[Peregrine]

This is an independent game by the guy who made the Democracy sim a couple years back (fun game) and who made the original Kudos last year. The original Kudos is basically a life sim, something like the Sims but less arcadey and using a turn based setup, and it was a lot of fun. This new game uses the Kudos engine but in this one you're a band just starting out and have to build your band up to rock stardom.

Really I can't say enough good things about this game, it is still based on a menu system but it gives you a ton of options, you get to audition your band members (you're the lead singer,) set them up with equipment and instruments, buy stage gear like spotlights, hire roadies, write songs, rehearse your band, practice to improve your musical skills, go to shows by other bands to get inspiration, sell merchandise, and a lot more.

An example of a successful gig:



Most of these options include some kind of mini-game, to practice you have to correctly match a series of notes that play, when you record an album you have to mix and match various tuner settings to get the sound you want, and so forth. You and your bandmates all have various ratings in musical skill, their levels of stress (a day off can help with that,) and each of them has different traits, an inspirational band member helps get the word out about your band to draw more attendance, others let you use particular song segments to write your songs.

The song writing part of the game is clever, you start off with very basic parts of a song, which you must assemble on the screen, trying to match the start and end notes of each part with the other parts. As you play the game, you can learn better song parts by listening to other bands, buying albums and listening to them (you also get inspired by this, which is important in making good songs) and other ways. So your songs can get better and better as you go along.



Anyway, this game has a demo which lets you play the first 80 turns or so, the entire game lasts for 5 years, but the whole thing is extremely moddable so if you want to play longer, just tweak one setting. It's a hell of a lot of fun overall.

You can buy the game or get the demo at:

http://www.positech.co.uk/rocklegend/index.html

[sterlingice]

Reminds me a bit of Music Maven

SI

[sabotai]

I had a lot of fun with a game called Rising Star, which was a turn based game along the same lines as this game. I'll have to check this game out.

[cody8200]

Peregrine, I played the demo about a week ago and was really impressed. I'm really thinking about buying it, it's only 23 bucks I think. I'm just short on cash right now. It's definetely the most fun I've gotten from a game of this type.

[Passacaglia]

Which parody thread do I go with?

Kodos: Rock Legend

or

Kudos: Granola Bar Legend

??????????

[Radii]

I bought this and played through a 5 year career last night. There were enough different things that I wanted to try that it seems like it has some decent replayability, definitely happy with the purchase.

[Peregrine]

I've had really bad luck putting together a mega-group so far, the advice I'll give is watch your money carefully, even when you're making a lot of money if you're not careful you can lose it all. My most recent game I had a great band and was doing well, but I overextended myself by buying stuff, and then a well-paying gig was cancelled, which put me way in the red, and I couldn't recover.

I find it interesting that each band I've done is different, the one I just mentioned I had great chemistry, everyone worked great together, and we had good musical talent, but average songs. The next group (which eventually fell apart because of personality conflicts) I was a great songwriter but we were lousy musicians and there was constant infighting in the group.

[Crim]

Just played the demo. Fun.

[Peregrine]

By the way, I started a dynasty thread for the game, with the band The Front Office and songs like "Pancakes and Ksyrup" and "Parody Thread."

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...ad.php?t=59915

[Bee]

This looks pretty decent. Thanks for posting about it.

[twothree]

This is now available for free for the next 23 hours at Game Giveaway of the Day.

Game Giveaway of the Day - Rock Legend

[Sgran]

Originally Posted by twothree

This is now available for free for the next 23 hours at Game Giveaway of the Day.

Game Giveaway of the Day - Rock Legend

Great tip! I can't believe I got the game for free. To be honest, I'm not sure I would have shelled out 20 bucks for the game based on the demo, but it's a nice little game. My big problem with it is that the music you produce doesn't seem to have any rhyme or reason behind it. Maybe I just haven't caught on to the logic behind the colored notes, but the songwriting just seems to be a logic puzzle rather than the crafting of successful style. It would be cool if you could somehow get a sample of how your songs sound. This is my first game of this style, so maybe one of the other, more hands on games would be more for me.

But the game is fun, and my daughter loves it so far. I definitely enjoyed the first year of Hard Return.

[BigDPW]

I downloaded this today and lost about 3 hours playing it... I like it alot... Is Music Maven still around??? This makes me want to play that again...

I enjoyed this alot. Does it really cap out at 5 years? I got a notice at 5 years that I had failed to sign a record deal and it seemed to be over???

[Bad-example]

Nice score for free. Played it for a few hours but got sick of the music practice part pretty quickly. Thanks, but I threw away my Simon game years ago.

[Raiders Army]

Grabbed it, but not sure how much I'll play it with Madden, Head Coach and NCAA taking up a lot of my time.

Thanks!

[BigDPW]

Originally Posted by Bad-example

Nice score for free. Played it for a few hours but got sick of the music practice part pretty quickly. Thanks, but I threw away my Simon game years ago.

Agreed... That is probably why I failed at teh 5 year goal... I hated the music practice/skill booster after the first 4-5 times I played it... once it got to a combination of 5 or more notes I was like screw this...

[Radii]

Originally Posted by BigDPW

Agreed... That is probably why I failed at teh 5 year goal... I hated the music practice/skill booster after the first 4-5 times I played it... once it got to a combination of 5 or more notes I was like screw this...

I haven't played this in a long time, but IIRC there is an ini file you can modify that lets you change the impact of practice/skill decline without practice so you don't have to deal with it as often. You could probably search through the game's forums and find it.

[Passacaglia]

I got it, and it was pretty fun -- too much of a diversion from trying to pack! I thought the "simon says" part was a decent mini-game, but getting it for free, I wasn't expecting much more.

[Swaggs]

I enjoyed this and did alright through five years.

I got a crappy record deal and kept the core of my band together for the duration. I had pretty good success, but don't feel like I actually "won" the game, as I "only" had about $150K in the bank (along w/ owning/employing most of the things you could buy). Does anything better than getting a record deal happen?

[Blade]

Doh! I have been thinking about getting this game for a few weeks, and have not pulled the trigger...but to read today that I could have gotten it for free and missed out?

DOH!

Oh well...worth the $20 anyway?

[Deattribution]

Originally Posted by Blade

Doh! I have been thinking about getting this game for a few weeks, and have not pulled the trigger...but to read today that I could have gotten it for free and missed out?

DOH!

Oh well...worth the $20 anyway?

I don't think it has the depth to really be worth it. I 'beat' the game on my first try in about 2 hours. There are only about 12 or so arenas, and a set # of items to buy, after that it's just rinse and repeat of the same items and arenas amassing cash.

For free, It's a good deal, but depending on what 20 bucks is worth to you, I'd pass.

[Sgran]

Originally Posted by Deattribution

I don't think it has the depth to really be worth it. I 'beat' the game on my first try in about 2 hours. There are only about 12 or so arenas, and a set # of items to buy, after that it's just rinse and repeat of the same items and arenas amassing cash.

For free, It's a good deal, but depending on what 20 bucks is worth to you, I'd pass.

Agreed. It's very much a game more than an insightful sim.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Pretty okay timekiller, was definitely worth the price on free download day.
I'd have been disappointed with myself afterwards if I had paid $20 for it though.

[BigDPW]

I agree... Probably not worth the $20 unless you really are just itching to play it... It is enjoyable but after playing once and failing and starting a second time I have probably had enough...

[Passacaglia]

What would make this game much more immersive for me is Billboard charts. I had no idea how famous I really was, and something like that would have helped me out a lot (of course, since I'm a real geek about Billboard, that feature would probably do more for me than others). I saw my "fame" score grow, but had no idea what kind of scale it was on.