Game Review: Frets on Fire

Frets on Fire is a free clone of the popular Guitar Hero games. I decided to download it and test it out under Linux. Here are my thoughts.

Download & installation

Frets on Fire is cross-platform, so it'll work on Windows, Mac, and Linux. However, I only tried it on Ubuntu Linux. Unfortunately, there are no native .deb packages for Ubuntu Fiesty (but there will be for Gutsy, the upcoming version scheduled for October). The game is offered as a binary .tar.gz package with an .sh executable. No installation was necessary: it was a simple extraction.

Running the game

This is probably the game's worst point. Simply double-clicking the FretsOnFire executable did not work, even when I chose to run it in the Terminal. To run it, I actually had to open a terminal window, cd to the game's directory and run ./FretsOnFire . You are then greeted with a full-screen of slow graphics and choppy music. To fix this, I had to quit the game and turn off Beryl. Once Metacity was running, I started the game again, and it seemed to work well.

Playing the game

The game is played with the keyboard. There are 5 fret keys (though most of the songs only use the first four) and the Enter key, which acts as a pick. If you've ever played DDR, this game is similar: press the right fret key at the right time. I've never actually played Guitar Hero, so I can't really compare them.

A setback for the game is that only 3 songs, plus the tutorial, are included. However, you can download more songs on sites like Keyboards on Fire.

The game, despite its perks, is really fun and addictive.

Technical aspects

The graphics are amazing too. The game is programmed using the free Pygame library, making it completely OS-agnostic: it can run on any OS with Python and Pygame on it. The sound is not the best, but maybe it's just the songs that are badly recorded or something.

Conclusion

Pros: free and cross-platform, lots of songs available, good graphics, fun and addictive

Cons: no native Ubuntu packages, running it a pain, can't play when Beryl is on, few songs out of the box, sound could be better

The bottom line: This is a fun game that you should really try out, despite its flaws.