Rhythm Storm Lights Up Steam With Full Release Trailer
There’s a lot to be said for story and how it enhances the actions of a game, but sometimes the justification for doing something is to do it. Even the story-lite games tend to have at least a scenario to explain the action, but there are games that look so good and play so well that even that little bit of exposition is completely unnecessary. Why is a yellow claw gliding along the rim of a purple web, or why do pieces made of four blocks fall from the sky? It doesn’t matter in the slightest, because the games wouldn’t be made even a little bit better with some kind of justification for the player to stop enemies advancing up the tubes or line up the blocks to fill in the well with no gaps. Granted, Rhythm Storm isn’t Tempest/Tetris, but it’s still a fantastic horde/survivors shooter that focuses on all the important details wrapped up in particle/vector visual overload.
Vectors Of the 80s With the PC Muscle Of Today
Rhythm Storm just released on Steam and is a huge amount of fun, the latest from the long-running developer Radiangames. While probably best known for Instruments of Destruction, Radiangames has been making arcade shooters since the Xbox Live Indie Games days with a focus on classic-styled arcade graphics updated for whatever year the current game happens to be released in. Rhythm Storm is no different in that it’s vectors and polygons-only, not a texture to be found, and looks absolutely phenomenal when things kick off thanks to the detailed art and incredibly generous use of particles in any place they can go.
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If you’ve played a survivors-style roguelike you know the drill by now- pick a character and any relevant modifiers and try to handle the swarm while the shooting takes care of itself. Rhythm Storm’s characters are all different tanks, each with its own weapons for turret and body, plus a special ability governed by recharging energy called a Power. While you can get through the Normal and Pro difficulties by choosing whatever catches your fancy, for Elite you’ll be needing a proper plan to manage the build. Take the Devastator tank, for example. It comes with one turret weapon for directed fire and two empty slots for the body weapons that are more area-of-effect around the tank. It also, however, comes with drones, which mirror the tank’s starting turret weapon including any powerups you choose to enhance it with during play, so despite only having the one gun to start off with it’s deceptively strong already. Choose a special ability Power, the turret weapon, and a bonus skill (extra drone is by far the best option for this specific tank) and then comes the next set of choices.
Each run is a set of three levels, called worlds, set to a specific musical track. At the start of each world you can pick what kinds of level-up options you’ll be seeing, such as those focusing on turret or body weapons, speed, the special-ability Power, etc. Each tank has its own set of options, and while there’s a lot of duplication between tanks there are also upgrade paths focused on its specific strengths. The Devestator, for example, comes with drones, so it’s got a Tiny Warriors option that other tanks don’t get to have upgrades specifically for that feature. There are six different upgrade options per tank and you can choose four, and when the current world is over you can choose a new set to focus on different areas. When level-up comes around after you’ve collected enough experience dropped by defeated enemies, there are two sets of three upgrades to choose from, each set themed on one of the four categories. With a little care and focus you can get very powerful, very quickly, but it does require a plan to sacrifice one set of skills to benefit another.
Then, finally, it’s off to the shooting, letting the warm neon glow wash over you as everything explodes in particle-showers and the world thumps along in tune to the beat. Enemies appear and move in sync with the music, while you’re free to move and auto-fire at will, although that does make it easy to treat the music as more a standard background track than the pulse of the world. Each world is comprised of a set swarm of enemies, ending in a boss confrontation and, if you’ve been very good, a fourth secret bonus level to wrap things up. Enemies swarm in huge numbers and bullets do their best to limit player movement, but there are a good number of ways around this from choosing the right special Power to picking up magnet-bombs that give a little bit of breathing room and also pull in all the stray experience drops. The screen gets crowded fairly quickly but there are a number of ways to negate it, and when that’s not enough good old-fashioned dodging while clearing a tiny little safe area can make up the difference.
While a little short overall from a level-based perspective, with the Elite difficulty able to be beaten in a few hours’ play, Rhythm Storm is still an incredibly replayable survivors-style roguelike that has plenty of unlocks even after you’re able to beat back everything it can throw your way with a favorite tank. Learning different tanks and their builds gives the game some solid longevity, not to mention what may happen with the planned updates over the coming months. While Rhythm Storm is in full release the plan is to have a steady stream of updates for a while, although whether that’s balance or actual new content has yet to be specified. Whatever the updates may be will be a welcome reason to tear into the swarm again, testing new builds and finding yet another upgrade path strong enough to dominate all comers.
