Piano Trauma – Stress Deluxe is a frustrating experience!
Have you ever wondered could you attach fire extinguisher to a piano and use that to propel yourself over an obstacle course? Piano Trauma – Stress Deluxe or PTSD for short answers that. Piano Trauma is the first project from developer Meltersoft and it’s advertised as physics-based platform game, you take control of a concert pianist who is late for the show rather than call a UBER you have to navigate various jumps and obstacles over rooftops and cars to reach the concert hall on his modified piano.
Handles like an egg on ice!
Controls are simple however mastering the momentum of your piano is anything but, you have to gauge when to accelerate and when not too and be very careful as the tiniest amount of extra speed can send your piano careering sideways down to the start undoing 30 minutes of progression in seconds! The game design is intended to cause frustration which is evident within seconds of playing as I accidently knocked over the helpful boards which give you movement instructions and spent 20 minutes trying to get up the first ramp…
While I am all for challenging game play, I found Piano Trauma just straight up unfair at times having such a huge amount of progression undone by a tiny clip of scenery made me mad however spending another 30 minutes to get to the same sport and making the same mistake made me want to scream as I watched my Piano tumble to the ground all the while being serenaded by the wonderful and relaxing classical piano score they have chosen for the soundtrack. There is an entire genre of games that are designed in this way such as Baby steps or Jump king and I have never really played one before and after playing Piano Trauma, I realise this type of game might not be for me if I’m honest it got to a point where failing stopped being fun and more of a waste of my time.
Fun but has limited replayability.
There is a multiplayer option in the game menu which sadly I never managed to get to work, I can imagine if you were trying to navigate the course against over players knocking each other off would be frustrating but also hilarious and would improve replayability as the single player game has no way to save progress so having to start from the beginning each time you play some may find a bit of a grind. There is no leaderboard which is a shame as it would be nice to see how you stack up against other players.
Bright and clean visuals.
The game looks nice and seems to run very well, while it is very difficult to control your piano you do get a good sense of momentum and physics. The game ran well on my handheld Lenovo legion GO S although I found it much harder to play with the controller layout. The best part of the game is the wonderful soundtrack they use classical piano scores throughout, though I do wonder what Chopin would think to find his music used as a backdrop to a game where you control a flying piano.
Brutal, challenging and sometimes fun.
After playing Piano Trauma for several hours, I did for the most part find it a fun game, however its far too infuriating for lengthy game sessions for me at least although I am very curious about how the multiplayer will run and will check back in to try that aspect. In short if you want a game to raise your blood pressure you can try it out here.
