Frederic 1.1

Frederic - Resurrection of Music is a musical rhythm game where letters on the keyboard correspond to piano keys. You play as an exhumed Frederic Chopin who battles in a series of musical duels across the world, which eventually lead to global freedom from a megalomaniacal producer. There are twelve stages and four difficulty levels; once levels have been unlocked in the stage-by-stage campaign mode, they are individually playable at any time at any difficulty.

The various musical pieces in the game, adapted from Chopin's works, take on a variety of styles, but are all quite catchy and, perhaps more importantly, synchronize well with user input. The falling notes to be played aren't always completely faithful to the music playing - easy and hard levels both simplify the tune significantly, differing only in the level of accuracy necessary to win the duel. But the falling notes are fairly accurate representations of the melody, and the rhythm is lined up perfectly.

Sam's Protip: It might make more sense to customize keyboard input so that it uses the lower two rows of the keyboard, which usually line up better to actual piano layout than the default upper rows. Or, to turn the game into a bit of unconventional typing practice, keep the white keys as ASDF and set the black keys to JKL.