Music and puzzle video games have at all times bought on fairly nicely. We’re considering of the blissful zen of Lumines, or the throbbing techno of Tetris Impact: Related. One motive they mesh so nicely is as a result of puzzle video games are all-consuming: you’re targeted on the duty at hand, and music is just about the one sensory stimulus that may sneak its method in. Oh, and whenever you full a puzzle, Peggle-style, there’s not significantly better than a musical fanfare to soundtrack your success.
However as a lot as music and puzzles have shacked up collectively prior to now, we are able to’t recall a sport that welds them collectively as tightly as Rytmos. A puzzle sport from debut sport makers Floppy Membership, it’s a supersonic journey by means of world music, utilizing puzzle video games because the conductor’s baton. If it sounds pretentious, you needn’t fear: it’s simply as enjoyable and pulsating as Lumines or Tetris Impact: Related – you simply occur to be taught one thing as you remedy it.
We had an opportunity to dive into the total sport on Steam, hoping that we uncover an Xbox launch later. However, but, we’re loath to play it an excessive amount of. That’s as a result of it’s so rattling good and, like a too-revealing trailer for a film we’re positively going to observe, there’s an opportunity that we are going to spoil every little thing for ourselves if we play an excessive amount of. That is pure gaming gold, and we need to maintain it recent for that playthrough.
Rytmos goals excessive. The universe has exploded, and it’s your duty to wander system to system, rebuilding what’s scattered. These are planets by the use of LEGO, with bricks flung in each course, and the one approach to deliver them collectively is a spot of puzzling. So, you zoom into the shattered core of the planet, and discover puzzles on its floor. By finishing puzzles, the planet magnetises extra bricks, and the floating Megablok Meteor reconstitutes itself.
The puzzles are harking back to video games you may need performed, however with simply sufficient rule-changes and extra mechanics that they make issues anew. Consider an ice-sliding puzzle, however with Tron bikes and you’re confusingly nearly there. You begin on a glowing purple circle on a 2D grid, and your purpose is to get again to that circle. Which is simple as pie. You progress across the grid with a faucet of the analogue stick, and you’ll solely transfer up, down, left and proper.
However ah, there are issues. You retain sliding alongside the grid till you hit one thing. You possibly can’t simply cheekily flip a nook and pop straight again within the purple circle you emerged from. It’s a must to do some good outdated ice-sliding. What’s extra, you produce a yellow path out of your bottom as you progress (thus the Tron bikes) and you’ll’t cease, at any level, on that path. So, you’ll be able to criss-cross your path however not park on it, which implies there’s a number of restrictions to the place you’ll be able to go.
Even so, the puzzles are nonetheless – nearly uniformly – straightforward, and you’ll slip-slide your approach to the exit with relative breeziness. However the place’s the enjoyable in that? If you happen to actually need to problem your self, you’ll want to be sliding by means of some elevated circles that look one thing like Mario warp-pipes. If you happen to hit all of those in your method, then you’ll obtain a gold award.
It’s the one approach to play, for a large number of causes. There’s your satisfaction, after all, however for those who get all of the golds on a given planet then that planet enters into orbit on the extent choice display screen. Full the puzzle appropriately, and its music might be added to a fantastically layered music monitor. You wouldn’t need to deny your self that.
Over the course of planets and techniques, new mechanics get liberally sprinkled onto the puzzles. Portals teleport you from one finish of the grid to the opposite. Ice cubes could be moved round to kind a transportable wall. Holes seem and disappear, and partitions slide out and in. Rytmos has enjoyable with its primary mechanics. It’s on the fiddly facet – we performed with a mouse on Steam, and we hope {that a} controller can really feel extra exact once we need to stroll again a foul resolution – nevertheless it’s wonderful in its simplicity.
However whereas the puzzling is all somewhat beautiful and progressive, it was the music that we fell in love with. Every planet in a system is an instrument. You begin by reforming a kalimba, earlier than making your method as much as electrical guitars and synthesizers. When the planet is full, you get to actually play that instrument. An overlay seems, and you’ll faucet, pluck and toot to the backing monitor that you just beforehand constructed. Higher nonetheless, you’ll be able to file what you make, slotting the ensuing musical abomination right into a vinyl carry-all.
Chef’s kiss. The music builds with every puzzle – sonorous little motifs that linger as ear-worms for days after. However then you definately get devices, the flexibility to play these devices, and even a sudden flourish of creativity as you layer your individual sounds on high. And thru all of this, you be taught concerning the instrument; and also you be taught concerning the musical milieu that it comes from, as every system has a area and time that it explores. You’ll be touring to German digital music of the ‘60s and ‘70s, to Ethiopian-Jazz from the identical interval, all the best way to Japanese environmental music of the ‘80s.
And it’s there we stopped. The promise of finishing the galaxy, Katamari-style, was sufficient of a motivation, however we have been gripped, vice-like, by the music. We’re not ashamed to say that the puzzles weren’t what beckoned us, siren-like, to play extra – it was the prospect to construct music after which play it. It’s the primary time {that a} puzzle sport has been sidelined by the music that surrounds it, and we have been proud of the substitution.
Roll on Xbox launch: we are able to’t wait to play Rytmos correctly.
Enormous thanks exit to the Floppy Membership crew for giving us entry to Rytmos on PC by means of Steam. You possibly can play the sport for your self proper now on PC or Nintendo Swap, while a cellular model is promised for later within the yr.
We’re hoping past hope that an Xbox version follows that.
