Something Different, Pulled off Correctly.

It's not often that you see a game in Game Maker that acts as a utility rather than a game. Song Maker by Jeremyguy lets you create chord progressions by dragging and dropping buttons onto a grid. You can then play these chords with the play button and hear it.

The graphics are overall mediocre. Most of the sprites look like they were created in Game Maker's sprite editor, and others are pixelated or scaled too far up. Nonetheless, it's obvious that Jeremyguy took time to make them, adding effects like shading and outlining.

The sound is rather good in this game. As quoted from the help file, "All chords were recorded in Garage Band, using a Fender electric guitar and a Line 6 amp." The chords sound very powerful; a crunchy, heavy sound comes from each chord. Some chords are unbalanced, however; some chords have a louder 5th than root (Fm for example), some chords are longer than others or start/end earlier than others, etc. This doesn't make a huge impact on the quality of the game, but it does annoy certain obsessive compulsive people (!).

Overall, adding a tempo changer, cleaning up the chords, and giving the game a graphics overhaul are the main things that would give this game five stars.

--Smile-a-lot