Rhythm Fighter
Developer: echo games
Publisher: Coconut Island Games
Release Date: Jan. 14, 2021
“This is a roguelike horizontal action game that player need to follow the beats to defeat opponents. Beats to follow, fist to the bone. Face the for, and dance to kill!”
Now, here I was thinking I had a decent amount of rhythm in me, considering my years of dance, and guitar playing, but ah… time has a way of taking that from you, at least in video game form. The music itself is pretty catchy, but I find it takes a while to find the actual beat in order to move your character to it. Now, hey, this is entirely a me problem here. I’m not the video game boy… actually that’s Egorapter, but still! I’ve a way to go before I can master any sort of video game.
The art style and animation is really cute. It’s cartoony, but the main characters are short and squat. Not so much a chibi style, but a more western approach to it (as their size is smaller, but the style isn’t necessarily that much cuter). The enemies you fight along the way are freaking veggies! If you know or have a kid that hates eating their vegetables, tell them after they eat them, they can dance kill them later on their Switch (or on Steam, coming later in the year).
The gameplay is solid. The controls work, and if you want a high score, and a better chance of defeating the enemies (and the main bosses – which… aren’t veggies?), you need to pay attention to the beat, and learn the attacks of every enemy. And if you can’t get the attacks down, after a certain number of “trophies” earned, you can unlock a practice arena, where you can practice against any of the enemies you’ve unlocked so far – which is awesome!
There’s roughly five fighters to unlock, each with their own special ability, and yes, you can upgrade them, and you are helped by – well, I say helped, but according to some written dialogue this whole invasion could have been stopped by him already – Mr. Disco. All I can say about Mr. Disco is that if he ever gets spoken dialogue, I really want Dan from Game Grumps/ NInja Sex Party/ Star Bomb to voice him.
All in all, whether you have rhythm or not, this game still works. There is an option to slow down or quicken the beats, so you can, eventually, move and fight to the beat.
A solid, cool game.