The fifth game in the Rhythm Heaven series, Rhythm Heaven Groove, is far from a shake-up, with the player needing to react to a music sequence via button taps across a series of minigames. But the game stands apart from its contemporaries for relying heavily on audio over visual cues. And don’t let its cutesy graphics fool you, as Rhythm Heaven Groove’s difficulty is such that it’s tempting to call it the Dark Souls of rhythm games.
Things start simply enough, with the player controlling little anthropomorphic balls jumping through hoops, and living umbrellas opening and closing to the beat, but the game quickly evolves in complexity across its imaginative minigames. You’ll catch insects in a field where trees are launching into space, take part in a glamorous team of synchronized floor sweepers on high-rise construction sites, and control tiny men jumping on a windshield to avoid wipers during a rainstorm. And that’s just the tip of an irreverent, often surreal iceberg.
Each stage oozes with creativity, absurdity, and wit, soundtracked by a variety of music: J-pop, bossa nova, chiptune, disco, and more. After four levels, a “Remix” stage will test everything that you’ve learned with a new track, and some of the game’s best music shows up here. Master those stages and a more difficult spin on the minigames is unlocked where even the audio is occasionally obscured, forcing the player to keep the beat in their heads.
Rhythm Heaven Groove introduces great new competitive and cooperative multiplayer minigames, and their lunacy is inspired. Where else can one play a musical game of competitive cake-stealing with friends? Less successful is the new “Beatspell” RPG mode, where the player controls a spell-casting magician who fights enemies via rhythmic button taps. But this one sour note doesn’t stop Rhythm Heaven Groove from being an absolute banger.
This game was reviewed with a code provided by Golin.
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