When compared to one another, the two genres that Rhythm Destruction tries to meld don’t initially appear to be in any way compatible. But when you look at both from a distance, the similarities become readily apparent. Rhythm Destruction takes the reflexive nature of both rhythm games, a la Guitar Hero or DDR, and attempts to mix it with the frantic pace of a top-down bullet hell shooter. Both genres require quick reflexes and the ability to memorize extensive patterns to succeed, and together could come together to craft a satisfying culmination of two otherwise disparate styles. Unfortunately, Rhythm Destruction is not a quality example of what could be an exciting new alternative to the more standard rhythmically-inclined titles.

Rhythm Destruction looks like a standard bullet hell game when played, but rather than face insurmountable odds in the way of thousands of pink death pellets, you typically only have to worry about crashing into obstacles that you can’t shoot. In order to account for the rhythm aspect, your ability to freely fire upon enemies has been removed entirely, in favor of specific button presses timed to the beat of electronica style music. This means that you’re often forced to maneuver through miniature mine fields of enemies and obstacles that would have taken mere moments to obliterate in a typical bullet hell title, all because the game decided that these enemies were not worthy of a rhythmic tap of the x-button on your gamepad. Failing to end an enemy that did earn that right may stick you in an unavoidable head on collision with them, reducing your limited life pool. Some of these issues, I could forgive, if only because the point of both genres is to test your memory as well as your reflexes. But your inability to freely deal with the limited enemy force isn’t my big problem with this game.

The best rhythm games are separated from the rest by a very, very particular gameplay aspect that many titles, like Rhythm Destruction, just don’t get, and that’s player feedback. Looking at a title like Bit.Trip Runner, one of the most satisfying things about doing well in that game is the emphasis on your actions and performance in relation to the music. Acquire collectible pickups and increase your score while avoiding death results in an ever evolving music beat, as does performing the correct action add a note to the rhythm. Failing to perform adequately affects the music, and furthers the desire to be absolutely perfect. This is an example of rewarding feedback for the player, and provides a driving force to continue against ever increasing difficulty. RD does not have this. Hell, it doesn’t have any feedback aside from a score counter. And that, beyond the button taps that don’t quite sync with the music, or enemies that you can’t kill, is what kills any enjoyment I could have had for this game. Failing to hit the correct button results in a loss of score, or, if you’re in a narrow hallway, the loss of a life, and that’s it. The music never changes to fit your actions, and in a game about keeping a beat, that is unacceptable.

While RD is poor example of variety in a couple of stagnating genres, I love the idea it presents. I can only hope that the concept is picked up by another developer.

Will destroy your love of the rhythm.

The game is just a bland shooter that attempts to graft the stepmania gameplay but the button presses do not sync up to the crappy music. Don't bother with this one.

Rhythm Destruction.
Made by Curious Panda Game, two man indie studio.
It is their first game, so i guess i can forgive some faults.

The game. Runs good- 60FPS ingame, and I really dig the look of it. Also, kinda fun.
But, the resolution options are only 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10. No actual sizes. So that is kind of wierd.

The fighting mechanic is based on music, the beat goes down you have to press the displayed arrow key, and done. Enemy dead. Very QTE-like if you ask me, but it is strangely fun.
The music.. It feels like it's from the 90's. Straight from some europian late night party. Heck, the second level song is a definition of that era's music.

And the final verdict? If i had to choose, i'd go with yes.
It has leaderboards, challenges- things that can lenghten the play time. The game definetly has the feel of good game.
Now, if only it had online/local coop, and it would tolerate alt+tabbing without crashing every time, we would have a great game.

You can check my videoreview of the title here -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5RtAnIh2jI

I have a great inner conflict when thinking to either recommending this game or not.

The game is basically what you see (bullethell+stepmania) so I won't lose time writting what's the game about and assume that you all came reading the reviews in the second place.

As you may have read already (and seeing the overall review score) yeah, this game has some perturbating issues:

- Ironically, as a rhythm game, it's a failure. There's not much clue about when you have to hit the notes since it's not sync'd with the music. Even though the game has an option to resync it, it doesn't work at all (which reminds me the console version of Guitar Hero calibration mode). And if it does, it means that I still have no idea of what sounds I need to care in order to beat the notes. Since this game rewards precision (like Stepmania did), this is a huge issue and makes this game fail at what it's meant for.

- Gamepad players will have to arm with patience here. Controls are tight most of the time but that's all, other than that the game does not respond properly (I'm using a standard 360 Controller). For instance, I cannot press Pause 'cause the game detects the button at every frame, so it keeps pausing and resuming game at a frenetic speed. Same thing happens when I try to read the tips.

- I don't have 2 pair of eyes. Therefore, sometimes I can't just focus at everything I see on the screen. It's not a matter that it's difficult, but a matter of a lot of info put into so separated parts of the screen. You'll go fine at the first levels but on higher difficulties you'll struggle about what to pay attention since both features (bullet hell and rhythm) requires to focus.

- Finally, this game demands a song editor feature. I'm OK with the soundtrack, it's not bad as some reviewers pointed. I simply want more than 10 non-familiar songs, and implying a song edition could truly enrich the experience.

So... that said, why do I recommend this game?

+ Even though there's a complete chaos of information during a song, I really liked the idea. The fact that it's not well executed doesn't make it wrong.

+ The game is definately crafted for the hardcore audience. I like to challenge myself and test my gaming skills regularly, and this game can provide a huge test on me. So far I still haven't played it much but I'm sure I'll go on until I can master it.

+ Although the game has some issues with gamepads, the important part of the game works fine, so I can leave with that.

+ Achievements are ACHIEVEMENTS. No farming stuff, no "beat the tutorial" chievos. Almost all of them are rewarding as hell, and I expect to see more games with this achievement logic, since it strongly give you that sense of proud.

+ As for me, the game is addicting. I played some bullethells and a lot of rhythm games, and both genres combined makes a new whole experience I never played before, and looked very original. Even though the notes go quite delayed you can somehow get used to it.

Overall, the idea of Rhythm Destruction is fantastic, but it's simply not well executed. Thus, I recommend it 'cause I wanna see more games like this, more polished, and more features.

Final Mark: 6.5/10

This game really surprised me.

I had seen it floating around a few sites and was on the fence about buying because of some of the negative reviews on the Steam page (Which I really need to stop reading). Anyway I caught it in a bundle this week and have been a little blown away by it.

IMO the rhythm gameplay gels really well with SHMUP gameplay. It just feels nice to play.

I can imagine a lot of the negative comments would have come from the die hard SHMUP community becuase this is very different to the norm. If you were expecting Dodonpachi then it maybe a bit of a shock but my advice is stick with it becuase it's really fun!

Trash, a rhythm game with no hitsounds, no sound effects nothing but the music itself. This might be tolerable in another game, but it makes this game even worse than it already is. Having no sound effects in a shmup is terrible, it feels horrible to play. The game has graphics, these graphics are not visually pleasing, blowing up enemies just feels empty.
There's no satisfaction to actually hitting stuff on the beat.

Due to these combining factors I'd recommend not buying this game. Playing it is highly discouraged.

The concept of the game is very interesting and if worked out well I would definely enjoy such a game, but in this game it was not implemented properly and thus ended up being a pretty boring and buggy shooter. The game also probably requires you to install something because otherwise it crashes on launch. If you do buy it and experience that then you can find a fix on the discussion board. I will, however, not recommend this game.

It turns out that a shmup in which you are unable to shoot anything except at precise moments arbitrarily timed to bad rave music is exactly as frustrating as it sounds.

The concept for the game is actually pretty cool -- a scrolling shoot'em'up (shmup) with rhythm game mechanics -- hitting directional buttons to the beat of a song to destroy enemies. I was actually really excited to give it a try, until I discovered something unfortunate: The game just doesn't play well with my visual impairment. While generally speaking my vision doesn't affect me too badly, for this one the game was nearly unplayable after the first stage. My problem? The rhythmic inputs are shown over the ships you're shooting, and when gaming I have a very focused center of vision that comes from being nearsighted to three inches. I just couldn't see what buttons I needed to push and when. "Oh hey, there's a circle. I can hit that ship." But next thing I know, there was another note to hit somewhere else on the screen and I completely missed it because my vision was focused on another part of the screen. So from the one stage I completed multiple times and the portion of the second, let me say that the music is good, as would be expected from a game of this genre. The graphics look really nice too, and I liked the idea of Hyper Mode shown in the tutorial section. I just wish I had the eyesight to give this game the fair chance it deserves.

Possible suggestion? Put button input prompts as an optional behind-the-ship background flash. That way I can watch and maneuver the ship while still being able to get the gameplay experience, and I can watch the glorious destruction of ships in what peripheral vision I have. Granted, I'm just one person, so that's just a wish from someone that really wanted to love the game.

In closing, while I personally cannot reccomend the game due to not being able to play it, take my review with a whole package of salt. What I could enjoy I enjoyed quite a lot.

Don't waste your time with this. You need to be online to use leaderboards, challenges, medals, achievements and there's no way for that to happen. It seems like the devs had issues with servers a few years ago and it still seems to be the problem.

The little bit I did play was ok and didn't really have much of a rhythm to it like others mention in their reviews. Just hide this in your library and move on to better shmups out there.