Musical exploration toy ODDADA will launch next week

Image credit: Sven Ahlgrimm, Mathilde Hoffmann

ODDADA is a music maker where every level looks like a colourful toy, some shaped like towers, or landscapes, or old factories. By stacking blocks, twisting knobs and clicking chunky buttons, you create your own track – then record it to a cassette tape you can keep.

It now has a release date: August 15th.

This trailer explains more:

ODDADA | Release Date Trailer

ODDADA’s release date trailer.Watch on YouTube
Its playful, physical interaction reminds me of the work of Vectorpark, and its colourful toy-like dioramas are reminiscent of GNOG. ODDADA isn’t really a puzzle game, however, but an open-ended toy. Levels and instruments are randomised so each journey with your tune-train is different, and figuring out how each toy works is meant to be part of the fun even though there’s no strict right or wrong answers.

The cassette tapes are physical objects within the game world, which you can store and replay. More importantly, you can also design their covers out of prefab shapes and custom colours. They look cool enough to make me actually nostalgic for cassette tapes, a rattly, easily broken technology I lived with only briefly.

If this all sounds appealing, there’s an ODDADA demo you can download from Steam now. I’ll be doing just that later this evening.