Parents' Guide to Vectronom

We all move through life to our own rhythm, whether it's that tune you hum in the car on the way to work or that personal playlist that pushes you through your regular exercise routine. Vectronom challenges players to tap into that same inner metronome to sync up movements to music in an entertaining but frustrating way. The premise is about as simple as can be. You've just got to move a little cube from one end of a maze to another without falling off the path or getting hit by obstacles in your path. Seemingly making things easier, all the hazards move to a specific rhythm along with the stage's music. But the biggest trap is how the game fools you into thinking it's easy, and then taunts you with a frustratingly difficult challenge that's addictively hard to stop playing.

A couple of specific things inflate the already maddening difficulty level of Vectronom. For starters, the game uses a 3D view that's skewed diagonally. That makes movement feel a bit awkward at first, as you have to adjust your control perspective. Up isn't really "up," but rather "up and left." It's more manageable with a controller, but if you're on a computer and using the keyboard, it's a bit of a pain. Also, by design, the camera isn't adjustable. This means that on some stages, your path is obscured by other parts of the level. Even when you're following the beat of the music, these moments are therefore more of a leap of faith that raise the anxiety to new heights. But as frustrated as you might get, the game never quite gets to the point of feeling impossible. With each failure, you learn a little more about the timing and can usually get a little closer to the goal. And it's that incremental progress, along with a thumping soundtrack fit for a techno club, that'll keep you coming back for more.