What came first, the idea for the puzzle game or the idea to create race tracks from songs?
Visualizing music came first. The gameplay went through many phases and started as a first person shooter with music-reactive gravity and rockets. When the idea to make it a puzzler first came to mind I was extremely resistant. With about half my time available to build whatever I wanted it seemed crazy to spend it making a match-3. After some tinkering I fell in love with the mechanic – it became clear that Audiosurf “wanted” to be a puzzle game. The pieces just kept falling into place perfectly. Have you had any interest from publishers? Yes! The guys at Valve made it an easy decision to launch on Steam though. They’ve bundled the entire Orange Box Soundtrack with Audiosurf! “Still Alive” was already a clear favorite with Audiosurf beta testers and Team Fortress 2’s “The Art of War” has been a frequent contest between Elizabeth and me lately (she holds the high score right now). Valve also worked fast to integrate Audiosurf’s achievements with the Steam Community and I think players
