Fret Nice, from Pieces Interactive, was designed as a platform game to play with your guitar controller when not actually playing music games. It certainly is that I suppose, but it failed to keep me interested.

In the game you have to jump and run through the levels, collecting musical notes and clearing the world of the baddies who are invading from Heavy Metal Kingdom just because their leader didn’t like your tunes (you’re a member of the band Vibrant Chordmasters).

It’s a pretty standard sort of platformer at times where it’s just about getting from point A to point B and surviving while collecting stuff. The twist comes in on how you have to defeat the baddies. Each facial feature on them is keyed to a specific key on the controller. So you need to play the keys in the proper number to destroy the bad dudes.

That ends up being a lot of button mashing at times. But precision gives a points bonus and higher points on a level combined with a faster time will give you specific medals and also help you unlock certain targets on each one as well as bonus levels.  Finishing a level unlocks another even though there’s no sort of story progressions through them. There are some boss battles from time to time to break things up though.

The problem is that the game feels sluggish. Movement is slow and the character sort of floats through the levels in a lethargic sort of way. It’s really annoying at times and just doesn’t feel action-packed enough to maintain a decent interest level for me. Even when the character is running it seems fairly slow. You can only attack while in the air for some reason, so you must jump up and then play the necessary notes to wipe out the bad guys.

The graphics are a sort of  paper cutout and layered pieces seem to make up the worlds. They’re cool in their own sort of way, though not especially engrossing to say the least. They certainly lend a little atmosphere to the game. That atmosphere is bolstered by the fairly decent sounds all around.

Along the way you’ll run into a shop that will let you customize your character, unlock bonus levels and gain some extra powers (like a longer range on your riffs) which will help you survive better. But nothing extremely fascinating there.

Overall, the game isn’t intensely engrossing, nor is it boring, just somewhere in between. I can’t say that I know if it’s more fun with a guitar controller as mine is non-functional at present but I can’t really see how it would add much to the game. In the end it’s just a unique sort of platformer to me that I thought would have been more engrossing. Perhaps playing with a guitar controller would be far more interesting, but I just can’t see it adding all that much to the game.