Not to brag, the essence of this game is "click on the black squares, don't touch the white squares", the rules can be explained in one sentence. But it is this minimalist gameplay, paired with piano music from Mozart to Beethoven, that makes it addictive. I played for more than an hour last night, either to get points or simply to hear the song "Canon" flow completely under my fingertips. This feeling is a bit like playing Snake on an electronic dictionary when I was a child. Although the picture is rough, there is a kind of pure joy.
When it comes to mobile game trends, the trend in the past two years is actually quite obvious. Major companies are piling up materials, with open worlds, high-definition, and installation packages that easily weigh tens of gigabytes. It seems that otherwise they are not worthy of being called "AAA mobile games." But "Piano Tiles" goes the other way. It still uses the underlying logic of "just click and there will be feedback", but it makes the audio and video experience beyond the quality of a mini-game. In particular, the "mahogany luxury piano" sound mentioned in its promotion is just an analog effect, but when you listen to it with headphones, you can really feel the warm resonance. I think this idea of pursuing the ultimate experience in a "small category" is exactly what is most scarce in the current mobile game market.
Another trend is the competition for “fragmented time”. A game of "Piano Tiles" lasts only one or two minutes. You can play it while waiting for the bus or waiting in line, and you can stop it at any time without any psychological burden. Today's games are becoming more and more serious, and many players no longer have the energy to play dungeons or do daily tasks after get off work. On the contrary, this kind of "open and play, put down and go" game has gradually become the daily choice of middle-aged players like me. To put it bluntly, it's not that we don't like playing games anymore, it's that time has been chopped into pieces, and we need works that can adapt to the fragmented time.
Of course, "Piano Tiles" is not without its shortcomings. Its charging model is free + advertising. There are only a handful of mobile games that don't charge money these days. It's a good idea to be able to do it without forcing money. But ads occasionally interrupt the immersion, especially when a download page pops up at the climax of a song, which is a bit disappointing. Fortunately, the developer Hainan Star Jump Technology seems to have been updating the music library, from "Little Star" to "Ode to Joy", the coverage is quite wide. I hope there will be a buyout system for the advertising version in the future, and I am willing to spend a lunch money to support it.
Finally, I say with emotion, from "Super Mario" on Symbian to the current "Genshin Impact", the graphics and gameplay of mobile games are getting better and better with each generation, but I always feel in my heart that the games that can really be remembered are often the simplest ones. "Piano Tiles" is not a masterpiece, but it retains a sense of ritual of "slowing down and listening to a song" in the "fast-paced era", which in itself is worth the price of admission.
Not bragging, I recommend it to all friends who want to find a game to "quiet and relax". 🎹