To be perfectly clear about my initial thoughts on Rhythm Sprout, I thought it looked like a rhythm game designed for beginners and kids to get used to the genre. Despite this, I ended up trying the demo to appease the rhythm-game-loving side of me that was curious enough, and am I happy that I did. It turns out tinyBuild is publishing an in interesting title from the indie developers SURT. Not only is the music better and the difficulty harder than expected, but it is also actually genuinely more entertaining than expected!
Gameplay
What makes this game give off the silly, kid vibes is that every note you press successfully is another step your character takes on their journey. As they trek along, they can run into enemies which the music will slightly change for the encounter and then the notes become a mix of attacks and dodges. All the music appears to be able to loop, so if you make enough mistakes to reach the end of the track and haven’t lost yet, you wouldn’t even know.
There are only three buttons you need to press; left, down, and right arrow keys. They also have it set up for left-handed users to use a, s, d, f instead where s and d both act as the same as the down arrows, a is left, and f is right. Just as you would expect from any music game when the notes reach the reaction line, you press the correct note and all of these notes will correlate with the music that is playing.
During the combat moments, down is the button that gets replaced with dodge. Of course, it acts exactly the same for the player, but the in-game action is shifted without any actual change to the player. You will see a number that represents how many hits the enemy will need to take before it is defeated and you have a health bar as well, which is significantly smaller than any enemy (of course).
Expectations
The cutscenes that play during the demo definitely hold a comical focus on an adventure story. I can’t imagine that this game is planning to take its own story seriously at all, but it is likely to have some laughs along the way.
With the comedic writing and cartoon graphics, I would still argue that this game is being made for kids in the long run. While the demo didn’t have a difficulty option to choose from, I can only imagine that they will end up having a difficulty selection for a wider range of users to get into the game. Either that, or the first levels are going to be super boring for those at a higher skill level and the later levels are going to seem impossible for those just starting out in the rhythm gaming genre.
Based on the experience the demo provided, there is a good chance that it will actually be the latter option here. The first level was incredibly boring to me and I almost uninstalled thinking it confirmed my thoughts, but since it was only 3 levels long I finished it and the last level was where I was pleasantly surprised that this is not, in fact, beginner-only focused.
Verdict
Rhythm Sprout’s free demo reminded me not to judge a game based on its graphics. It’s nice to have a game bring out an experience to remind users that artistic choices and styles can be mixed with all entries of a genre. I mainly only enjoyed the last level of this demo, given my skill level, but I am looking forward to playing more of this game. Hopefully, they will simply put a difficulty option in the game so that beginners can learn at their own pace and players, such as myself, can jump right to the higher difficulties.
Rhythm Sprout: Sick Beats & Bad Sweets doesn’t have a release date yet, but you can try the free demo on PC via Steam today!
