Melatonin Review

Melatonin isn’t just a sleep aid, it’s a rhythm game that tells the story of a pink-hoodie-wearing person’s everyday life. Players take over their body during their dreams and play through five different mini-games. Once they get through the mini-games for a certain night, players have to prove their mastery by performing all five patterns before moving on to the next night where the cycle continues.

This is the first real game by indie developer Half Asleep, though it seems it’s currently working on its next one, Block Party. Melatonin is a simple game with a good soundtrack. As long as fans have a decent sense of rhythm, it’s good for killing a few hours.
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Melatonin has some amazing original lo-fi beats that players unlock as they get better at the game. Unlike Guitar Hero, which plays the same song regardless of how players perform, Melatonin’s original music changes to correspond to the level of difficulty. All the gameplay revolves around hitting the spacebar or the directional keys with the right timing, and when the prompts get more complicated and speed up, the music speeds up and the beats change as well. There are also portions when the time slows way down, which seems easy but actually does a good job of throwing off the sense of rhythm.

The level progression is similar to Mario, with different dreams (worlds) each night with multiple stages to get through. While it’s a casual game, don’t expect it to be easy. The gameplay is simple, but players have to be precise with their timing in order to land perfects. They have to rely entirely on the audio and visual cues for when to hit the buttons, as the game hides the reticle when not in a tutorial. It’s clear that the developers want people to know the songs and understand how to count time. It’s honestly a helpful game for training rhythm and counting time, getting players used to distinguishing upbeats and…

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