Skip to main content

This chill music-making tool feels like a lost Nintendo DS game

When I think of the Nintendo DS, the first game that comes to my mind may surprise you. No, it’s not Super Mario 64 DS or Advance Wars; it’s Electroplankton. Released in 2005, the touchscreen oddity let players create music loops through toylike interactions. Though its mostly forgotten now outside of its Super Smash Bros. stage, Electroplankton still stands out to me as one of the handheld’s most distinct releases.

While I don’t expect the series to return anytime soon or even get ported to Switch, Oddada might just be the closest next thing you can buy. The $10 PC game is a colorful music-making tool that turns synths into tactile toys. It has the same charm that I always loved in Electroplankton, but in a more modern package that makes it stand out. If you love toying around with synths, it might be the creative tool you’re craving.

In Oddada, players create short songs by building brief synth loops. Rather than using a keyboard, each instrument is represented as a colorful children’s toy, each of which works in its own way. One has me stacking little toy houses on a grid and using a connected beat pad to program a beat based on the sounds they produce. Another has me stacking blocks across a voxel art landscape. A lighthouse spins at the center, its light turning each block into a musical note as it passes by. The initial fun comes from poking and prodding at each different toy to learn how exactly it makes sound.

From there, I record six loops. Each one gets represented as a car on a toy train when its done. Once I’ve made all six, I can record a song by playing around with my final train, poking it to toggle loops on and off, or sliding the height of each car to adjust the volume of each loop. Within 10 minutes, I’ve created a short ditty out of thin air. It’s the same kind of reward for curiosity that made Electroplankton such a unique treat in 2005.

A train moves across screen in Oddada.
Sven Ahlgrimm

What I appreciate about Oddada is how it takes that idea to another level. After I finish a song, I turn it into a cassette that I can recolor and customize with stickers. Once done, I can save that song as a WAV file and share it online if I so choose. That makes it feel less like a time-wasting fidget toy and more like a creative tool with physical results.

It’s a simple curiosity for a specific type of player, but Oddada nails something important about the joys of music. Sound is born from play. Anytime I’ve ever used a real synth, I tended to spend hours freely twisting knobs before actually making anything concrete with it. That experimentation is the fun of it. Oddada delves into that concept in a literal way by representing synths as colorful toys that invite players to mess around with them until they accidentally make a pleasant tune.

Even if you only end up toying around with it for an hour or two, Oddada is a fun little tool for musicians or musically inclined youngsters. And if you don’t fall into those categories, you may still find yourself won over by the kind of tactile charm that made the Nintendo DS era so special. You may not be able to play Electroplankton easily these days, but Oddada keeps its small legacy alive.

Giovanni Colantonio
Giovanni is a writer and video producer focusing on happenings in the video game industry. He has contributed stories to…
Meta Quest 3’s newest game feels like a psychedelic Fruit Ninja
Key art for Thrasher.

While the high-level sales pitch for virtual reality often involves transporting players to another world, I've never found those to be the best VR games. In my experience, my favorite experiences are very esoteric, colorful, and weird. They're more like hallucinatory episodes rather than gateways to another world. That’s why Beat Saber still stands as one of the most popular VR games and why one of my favorite VR games is Rez Infinite.

Thrasher, the newest game from Thumper composer and artist Brian Gibson, is the latest VR game of that ilk. It’s also one of my favorite games I’ve played in VR to date thanks to its simple but mesmerizing gameplay. Thrasher is flying a bit under the radar ahead of release, but anyone with a Meta Quest headset should pick this game up now that it’s available.

Read more
This free Nintendo Switch game is messy, but endearingly weird
Denpa Men run around a town in The New Denpa Men.

The Nintendo Switch just got a new free-to-play exclusive, and it's a big deal for a very niche but dedicated fanbase. The New Denpa Men is the latest entry in developer Genius Sonority's Denpa Men series. If you haven't heard of that before, there's good reason. The series debuted on Nintendo 3DS and has had several entries since, spanning out to mobile, but its most recent installments were exclusive to Japan. The Switch release brings the quirky RPG back west, which marks an exciting return for its cult following.

Or it should have been exciting, at least. As it stands, The New Denpa Men is a bit of a mess at launch. A laughable English localization, a frustrating online requirement, and some pesky microtransactions already have fans torn. While those are all issues that have bugged me during my first few hours with the release, I'm still finding some endearingly weird charm in the RPG. It feels like a return to a different era of Nintendo, where the company's hardware gimmicks led to some welcome creative swings.

Read more
This hand-drawn puzzle game will show you the power of photography
A camera photographs a cat in The Star Named Eos.

With how easy it is for anyone to snap a picture these days, it's easy to forget just how powerful the act of photography is. It's one of the few ways that we can see the world through someone else's eyes. You can learn so much about a person from how they frame an image and capture the world as they see it. Even the most minute decision can tell a lot about one's perspective, right down to what they don't show you.

You can feel that human experience in The Star Named Eos, a new indie from Silver Lining Studio. Like its last game, the excellent Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery, its follow-up is a concise point-and-click puzzle game with a focus on art and the way it communicates. While Behind the Frame dealt with paintings through tactile gameplay, The Star Named Eos centers on photography. It's a short and sweet story about how a picture doesn't just transmit 1,000 words, but can also better help us understand the person behind the camera.

Read more