Music games are a rarity on Facebook, but a quickly growing title by the name of Instant Jam has revitalized our faith in the genre. Developed by InstantAction, the game has recently grown to north of 400,000 monthly active users.

Essentially Facebook Guitar Hero, Instant Jam takes all the core elements of the rhythm-based console game and spins them into a social environment. While the concept has been done many times before, InstantAction is evidently well aware of the problems of these games and does a pretty decent job at mitigating them. The app is still a bit temperamental about playing music, but thus far such issues have been fairly isolated.

For anyone that has played either Guitar Hero or Rock Band, it will be obvious what Instant Jam is all about. Players pick a song, and as it plays, frets, representing the notes in the track, stream down the neck of the guitar. The user must time a button press to the fret when it reaches the bottom. Unfortunately, most games in the past — such as Rock Riotfrom Slide — have only made use of specific letter or number keys and/or have had miniscule selections for music.

The problem is that such rock games are intended to create the feeling of being a rock star. It’s why the guitar controllers are so effective in making the Activision and Harmonix titles so entertaining, and why social, PC-based titles have fallen apart. InstantAction realizes this, so it is, surprisingly, compatible with the guitar controllers. Unfortunately, wired controllers haven’t been used regularly since the 2nd installment of the Guitar Hero franchise, and never for Rock Band (at least not as a default controller to come with the game). However, there does appear to be an adaptor slot for a USB cable in many of the newer guitar controllers.

As for the other issue that plagues these games, Instant Jam also fixes the music selection issue by searching the player’s computer for every usable song they might have.

This feature feels a bit confusing, as the search for usable songs suggests that Instant Jam can play any of them. Not all songs can actually be played (e.g. some of our instrumental-only music), but a surprising number are available.

Once a song is selected, the game can be played on four difficulty levels, ranging from casual to expert level. However, quite a few songs can only be played on the upper difficulties. Thankfully, unlike Guitar Hero, there is no fail mechanic. Everything is done in a Tap Tap Revenge style where missing notes only reduces the potential score. As players hit notes in sequence, a score multiplier works up, but once something is missed, it goes back down to one.

In addition to this, there is a “Jam Power” boost that can be charged during play by hitting all specially highlighted notes in a sequence. Once activated, it will boost the score multiplier.

At the end of each song, players will earn experience and coins (as a side note, players get a limited number of plays a day). The latter only appears to be used to unlock items in the store such as new frets, guitars, and background videos. The coins, on the other hand, are not only used to purchase sessions, but can also be utilized to buy special power ups to boost one’s score. As the core social mechanic to this game is to play, then challenge friends to beat that high score, powerups make for a nice advantage. Other than this, however, the only other social mechanics are the standard leaderboards amongst friends and gifting.

The downside to Instant Jam, at least for now, is that the game is a bit temperamental in the songs it likes to play. Many songs have variations; it could be a Live rendition, or it could be the single version, or some special edition track (e.g. with an introduction of some sort). Regardless, if the version the user has is not the exact version in the game, it doesn’t work. It will still play, but there will be no music. For the most part, the developers state that should the basic notes match up, the different versions will work, but as one can surmise, a single version versus a live version does not always synch up.

As a side not, the developer has also told us that there are places within the game to request songs to be added to the game. Furthermore, players are rewarded with extra plays and virtual currency for purchasing songs through the game.

Overall, Instant Jam is one of the best rhythm games we’ve seen on Facebook, recognizing the shortcomings of past titles and doing its best to remedy them. It’s not a perfect solution, as many users likely do not have the old, wired guitar or any adapters, but if they do, this is a game that could easily be loaded on a laptop, plugged into a TV, and played Guitar Hero style (yes, it does have a full screen mode). Furthermore, with a large selection of music, it allows users to play a large portion of their favorite songs without having to spend $60-$100 on a console game, containing many songs they‘ve never heard of. Of course, the game doesn’t cooperate with all versions of a song, so if the user doesn’t have the one the game uses, they’ll have to buy it. Even so, most of them do seem to work.

In the past, these social rhythm games have been unable to truly hang on to their users, but Instant Jam may just have a chance.