If you have ever said the words “I am not musical” then consider trying Oddada
My older brother and I were lucky enough to have parents who prioritized toys in the budget. They took an interest in finding well made and stimulating play sets for us to try. My mother also ran a daycare which led to us having an expanded repertoire of play. Fisher Price was featured heavily. I distinctly recall shopping at a local store called Toys That Teach which stocked an array of products that were supposedly capable of stimulating growth. My family combed through that place once a month to decide which products were truly gems. Just thinking about that makes me feel like a young and precious person.
That is the feeling I experience when I turn on my computer and play Oddada. Its rounded renders harken to a time when my toys were my most prized possessions. The experimentation encouraged by the play space in Oddada is perhaps the closest software has ever come to making me feel like I’m being hugged sincerely. Sven and Mathilda are sincerely hugging us all with this special piece of playful software.
That’s right! With this game you can feel like a kid again-or maybe for the first time? Not only that, you can participate in the music making process in a way you might not have thought possible.
I approached this game with an incorrect angle. Since making music is my foremost hobby I tend to evaluate everything as if it might contribute to my music making methods. This led me to mistakenly ask: “How will Oddada fit into my production workflow?” I very quickly realized that comparing it to Fruity Loops or GarageBand or any other music making tool was doing it a disservice.
Oddada is less a sandbox and more a branching waterslide. The decisions we make while playing (even if random or arbitrary) are never going to lead to a failure and can’t really render a discordant or grating result. At the same time our tinkering with the toys in Oddada will yield changes we can instantly sense and appreciate. Our role in the creative process builds a satisfying feeling of involvement while guiding a musical toy train safely to the completion of a miniature jam. It provides all the security and confidence of bowling bumpers with none of the sense of inferiority.
A session with this game can be completed in a few minutes, however, it can be difficult to rush through since the simple sound machines are so ebullient and enticing.
Oddada presents us with a toy which makes beautiful sounds. We play with the toy and the sound becomes more interesting. When we are satisfied with that particular noise loop a car is added onto the aforementioned miniature train which follows us to the next musical machine to begin an encore experiment. The process is repeated until a handful of charming instruments are happily harmonizing and making a satisfying synchronized selection of rhythmic refrain. When a toy is initially a bit bewildering it feels mysterious, and delightfully that feeling persists even after we have conducted it towards a more preferable performance.
The conclusion of each play session is a time for performing our piece by intuitively raising and lowering the volume of the instruments we have gathered. We do this by clicking and dragging up on the cars of our train which slowly reveals a tiny tower of speakers. It really wraps up into the theme of magic that has a certain logical sense. This tiny concert at the end of each session gets recorded to a tape cassette which is enjoyable to customize using the built in stickers and decoration tools. I found myself feeling a sense of ownership over my jams because of these custom tapes and gleefully organized them into my cassette holder. They can even be exported as sound files.
Perhaps the best hook of the game is the inclusion of unlockable items. I don’t want to spoil them so I’ll just mention that there is a metronome, which allows for instruments to be sped up or slowed down relative to each other, and an extra piece dispenser, which gives us a few additional sounds to pick from on a handful of machines. These tools may not rival those found in production studios but they offer something impossible to find there: they are, above all, approachable and joyful.
I really believe there will be future musicians who will point to this game as the seed that grew into their desire to make music in a deeper and broader way. I also hope this game helps people realize they can still make music, even if they thought it was too late. You might just rekindle a love for music you had forgotten all about. I bet you’ll smile and laugh either way.
Oddada is available for Mac and Windows for Steam. This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher.
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