Musaic Box

Overview

You play as an unnamed character who has just received a letter from his grandfather. The letter asks you to come to his house and hints about a birthday present. The game starts here with you in your grandfather’s house. He is not present, but you discover a note of some sort. The note provides a musical outline and points you toward the music box in the room. After being guided through this first musical arrangement as a tutorial, you are set off to find the other musical arrangements left behind by your grandfather. The goal of the game is to solve all 27 musical arrangement puzzles to discover your birthday present.

Gameplay

The rooms of your grandfather’s house are viewed from a single fixed angle. In a point and click fashion, you search for pieces of the musical arrangements. Once you click an undiscovered scrap, it is automatically drawn in your notebook in the correct area. Scraps are not always in obvious locations and some require light puzzle solving to find. A purple twinkle will pop up in an area relevant to a missing scrap if you are taking a long time to find it. You do not need to find every scrap to unlock all five rooms, but you need them all to complete every musical arrangement and beat the game.

Once all of the scraps for a single musical arrangement are found, you may attempt to solve the arrangement. Clicking the picture in your notebook loads the music box screen. This is where the meat of the game takes place. An arrangement is comprised by two or more musical instruments, represented by different colors, with one section of a single instrument being played on each tile. Tiles may be by themselves or grouped with other tiles as a static arrangement. The main instrument, called the melody by the game, will always be red. Many puzzles will have a sample player at the bottom of the screen that plays the melody in the correct order as a starting guide for you. To solve a musical arrangement puzzle, you must arrange the variously shaped pieces so that they all fit on the outline and no color repeats vertically. When played, your arrangement must also be in the correct order so that it matches the song. Any section of your arrangement or the sample player can be played at any time by simply clicking where you want playback to start. The hint button may be used to check tiles you have places already. If a tile is in an incorrect location, then it will turn gray. Placing all of the tiles in the correct location causes the whole song to play and you are directed back to your current room of the house.

After finishing the main game, the extra mode unlocks at the main menu. The extra mode allows you to choose any song and freely arrange the individual tiles on a larger outline box.

Song List

PC System Requirements:

• OS: Windows XP/Vista
• CPU: 800 Mhz
• RAM: 256 MB
• DirectX: 8.0
• Hard Drive: 142 MB

Availability

Musaic Box on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/29130/

Musaic Box on Big Fish Games: http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/4166/musaic-box/index.html