Rhythm games may not be as prevalent today as they once were, but some titles like Metal: Hellsinger and Thumper continue to innovate the genre with creative concepts and spectacular soundtracks. And while Melatonin may be a shorter experience, its simplistic gameplay and foot-tapping beats make it worth checking out if you're looking for something more relaxing than challenging.
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Melatonin features roughly twenty bite-sized mini-games that require you to tap a button - or two - at the right time to succeed. Each stage begins with a tutorial that will help you recognize their visual and audio cues, but some levels are meant to throw you off with unexpected distractions or twists while you're playing them.
9 Shopping
Shopping is supposed to be a relaxing experience, but Melatonin found a way to make it a bit more stressful by adding rhythm-based sequences and memorization to the activity. This stage appears at the beginning of the game and is the first to test your ability to remember and repeat a specific pattern.
In Shopping, you will need to observe items as they fall on boxes and then repeat the sound they make by tapping a button to swipe a credit card. This becomes more difficult as the number of items that fall increases, and the level doesn't provide much room for error if you're aiming for a perfect score.
8 Dating
As you unlock more levels in Melatonin, you'll begin to notice that some of them require you to use more than one button to clear them. Dating appears in the second chapter and will have you click one of two inputs to swipe either left or right on a series of dating profiles that pop up on the screen.
Dating begins by showing you a photo of the person - or thing - to help you determine which way to swipe, but it doesn't take long before your phone starts to hide its screen. At this point, you'll need to rely on audio cues only to figure out what kind of profile it is, and you only have a split second to decide before Dating moves on to the next potential match.
7 Mind
Tapping a button on time sounds easy, but Mind is one of the later levels in Melatonin and turns this simple action into something incredibly challenging. This level might also make you sleepy as your eyes follow a pendulum that sways across the screen to the beat of the music.
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Your main objective is to tap a button whenever the pendulum lines up with the eyeball on the screen. While the concept sounds simple, it's quickly made more difficult by other pendulums that appear during the off-beat of the song. To make things worse, the corners of the screen will occasionally get dark, making it much harder to tell when another one will swing past the eye.
6 Space
Space is another one of Melatonin's final levels, but instead of testing your ability to tap a button on time, it will see how good you are at holding one down and knowing when to let it go. There are three different lengths of time to hold the button down during this mini-game, and you'll know which one to do based on an audio cue and hints from a monitor hovering around the moon.
Like Dating, Space becomes much more difficult once the visual component is removed after the monitor flies off-screen. You can still rely on the audio hints, but Space is one of the faster-paced levels and might have you sitting on the edge of your couch as you attempt to get a perfect score.
5 The Past
The Past is another stage that requires you to hold down a button for one of three different amounts of time, but it's somehow even faster-paced than Space and doesn't give you much room for error. A series of photographs will move down the line, and it's up to you to burn the ones that light up before they pass you.
There are three different sizes of photographs, and you must make sure you burn them for the perfect amount of time to pass. Not only do you need to focus on the timing, but you also have to remember which photos to burn, which becomes tricky as more of them light up in unpredictable patterns.
4 Followers
Most of Melatonin's opening levels are designed to teach you the fundamental elements you'll need to master to clear later levels. Still, Followers stands out in the first chapter for being genuinely challenging and hard to master. It almost feels like it should have been in one of the later sections of the game, but it does demonstrate how difficult the game can become early on.
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In Followers, you'll need to tap a button during the off-beat while the main character jumps between apps on different mobile devices. The timing is peculiar, but it becomes much more difficult when the character needs to perform two jumps in succession and then go back to the regular beat after.
3 Nature
Watering flowers and plants is usually a calming activity in real life, but once again, Melatonin finds a way to make the task a bit more stressful. Nature is immediately challenging, and while it doesn't have any gimmicks like Mind or Space, you'll need to use lighting-fast reflexes to obtain a perfect score.
Two different sound cues in Nature indicate whether you should tap a button three times or hold it down for a moment. The time you have to react to the cue is limited, and if you mess up the timing, it becomes easy to lose focus on the beat and might cause you to scramble for a bit. There are also some visual cues, but you'll need to keep your eyes open to clear Nature.
2 Desires
Putting money into a claw machine to grab an off-brand Pokemon toy can be risky and taxing. Desires appears in the final section of Melatonin, and like the actual machine, it requires precision timing and quick reflexes to pick up a toy and carry it toward the prize slot.
Desires doesn't have any tricks waiting for you as you play it, but it might demand the quickest button input out of any other stage in Melatonin. The crane will head towards the prizes and stop in one of two places, but the audio and visual cues only appear a split second before you know where it will land. If you play the level a few times, you'll have a better idea of what to expect, but at least you're not spending real-life money to play it over and over again.
1 Money
It's not unusual to dream about money and wealth, but it is kind of strange to fantasize about these things while sitting on a giant piggy bank in the rain. Money appears in the second chapter of Melatonin alongside Dating, but it has one of the most devious twists that makes getting a good score incredibly difficult.
The main objective of this level is to press one of two buttons to catch coins as they fall on your left or right side. This initially isn't too bad, but after a while, a storm will begin to brew and starts to interfere with the direction the coin is falling right before you're supposed to catch it. These last-minute changes make it hard to know exactly which button to push, and even after playing Money a few times, it will still shock you with its difficulty.
Next: The Best Levels In Melatonin
