Rhythm Storm is less of a roguelike survivor and more of an audio-visual dopamine injection. I’m not much of a survivors-like / bullet heaven fan as these games are generally heavy on stat-based meta-progression and repetitive circle-strafe gameplay. And while RadianGames’ take on the genre is as much a survivors-like game as any, I couldn’t help but have a ton of fun while playing this.
Immediately upon loading up the game you’re blasted with uber-slick vector graphics and hard hitting electronic music. The amount of polish implemented into the presentation is incredible and makes it feel highly immersive. The soundtrack is as amazing as it needs to be for a rhythm game.
It can be a little hard to see what’s going on at times, but generally if you understand “orange equals bad” you’ll be okay.
There are four different zones that each have their own enemy patterns and electronic beats to jam to. There is a small amount of dynamic generation going on with occasional walls that appear and upgrade boxes to break containing powerups and experience deposits. However, aside from the enemy generation, which I’ll talk about later, each zone is really just a different colour pallete and soundtrack.
At the end of the third zone there is a neat boss fight, though, and I wish we could get more fights like this one to break up the horde slaughtering.
Building up your Rhythm
During your runs you collect meta-progression points that you can sink into unlocks in the main menu. These consist of tons of unlockable ships and various permanent stat bonuses. It seems like you’ll get through the unlocks at a pretty decent pace of about one new ship every two runs. There are also three difficulties to choose from but Normal is pretty challenging on its own.
The ships feature their own sets of weaponry, gimmicks, and upgrade trees. My favourite so far has been the electric whip slinger, but there’s also grenade launchers and machine-gunners. While each tank’s upgrade trees are pretty basic and low on variety, there are enough different characters to make up for it.
Enemies come in through pre-determined patterns that are tied to the beat of the music. The waves are well-designed and I love how RadianGames punishes circle strafing with the spawning system. Patterns generate around the player itself, meaning you’re constantly being closed in on and can’t do as much kiting. There aren’t very many interesting enemy designs; it’s more about how they’re positioned.
I quite like Rhythm Storm. There’s not a ton of meat to the game and I would love to see new areas and more random generation involved, however, what’s here is really fun!
Rhythm Storm is out now on PC (Win). Access was provided to us by the developer, so thanks for that!
