"Deemo: Rebirth" review: tired piano can also solve puzzles

The first thing to note is that Deemo: Rebirth is a second-generation work based on mobile games. I can only remember a handful of games that have dared to bring mobile games to the console platform and achieved success, but Deemo: Rebirth is one of them. It makes a special adaptation to the console version on the core gameplay of the original audio game, and adds the elements of exploration and puzzle solving, greatly expanding the game content. These changes make the derivative of this mobile game appear not "mobile game" at all.

Deemo: Rebirth operates in much the same way as a normal console game. The combination of directional keys and function keys replaces the original six-button operation of the touch screen, and the player only needs to press the key corresponding to the column when the note crosses the beat line. Although it sounds simple, in practice, the control of timing is not as easy as you think. Most of the time, I thought that I pressed the button at the right time, but I often pressed it in advance or didn't press it at all. Even if I pressed the Combo, it might not be perfect, resulting in unsatisfactory final score.

Each piece of music can be freely adjusted to reduce difficulty

The total completion degree and Combo number of songs are the important bases for the final song score of the system. At the beginning of the player, due to the existence of the above problems, it is not easy to get the ideal score. In this case, the game provides players with beat adjustment and spectrum speed adjustment two functions, in order to help players find the most suitable for their own button timing. This setting is very practical, after the adjustment of song achievement and combo number will be increased to a certain extent.

The score is calculated by completion and Combo number

The disadvantage of this operation is the setting of the function of the handle rocker. The performance of the medium and long notes needs to move the rocker in accordance with the flow direction of the score, which is not difficult in itself, but it is not so simple to achieve the smooth connection between the rocker and the key. It often appears in the game, the early operation is smooth, but suddenly keep up with the button after a long sound, which makes people unprepared and affects the subsequent play.

The operation mode of the handle is designed

Because the reaction time of the player's key operation is longer than that of the touch screen operation, it is difficult to achieve frequent and fast key change operations like mobile games. The game's spectral design does not fully take this into account, the transition time between the keys is set too short, although there is an option to adjust the spectral speed, but this problem does not improve. In the difficult difficulty of the game, this lack of design is the most obvious, the number of keys on the spectrum is significantly increased compared with the ordinary difficulty, and most of them are stacked in the climax of the music. In this case, even if the player's consciousness can keep up with the changes in the score, the operation of the hand is difficult to coordinate. What's more, the controller will also have the situation of key input conflict. Under the difficult difficulty, it will be quite difficult to complete a song if you want to pass it.

As a music game, the number of songs included is naturally the focus of the game. Deemo: Rebirth does this very well. In addition to the collection of classic tracks, this work has also added many new songs, and the subsequent launch of paid music packages will further enrich the library. The songs in this book vary in style. There are not only a series of unique piano solos, but also a variety of styles including electronic, jazz, rock rap, etc. For me, who has to wear headphones everywhere, just listening to the hundreds of music in the game, this process is very enjoyable.

The extensive library contains music of all styles

The new picture performance is another highlight of the "Deemo" console version. This work has abandoned the original 2D hand-painted style and adopted full 3D stereoscopic pictures, which makes the plot that was slightly weak in the original mobile game, and has been fully interpreted in this work. The 3D scenes and characters are very delicate, and a large number of cutscenes make the story feel much smoother than the original PPT. The 3D screen presentation also gives the production team more opportunities to try new content. Instead of simply using these 3D scenes to tell a story, they chose to add a large number of interactive elements, expanding the original single gameplay into new possibilities.

The 3D Healing wind screen is excellent

The scene of the game is composed of ten rooms with different themes, and the player can only play in the initial room at the earliest. Here, music is played to make the ancient tree in the center of the piano room grow, and the ancient tree can reach a certain height to unlock the new room and promote the development of the plot. This element already existed in the original game, but the difference is that each room is filled with a number of explorable elements, some of which are subtle clues that tell the story of the game, some are trivia information and key items that help solve various puzzles.

Each room has a wealth of interactive elements

The clues that drive the plot, mostly in the form of photographs and drawings, are hidden in various rooms. By interacting with some of the items in the scene, the player can find these clues, which can roughly understand the backstory of the game, and uncover the identity of the main character. That is to say. The story of the game unfolds in a two-pronged fashion. On the one hand, we will witness the emotional changes of the characters in the game as the ancient trees grow, and on the other hand, we can analyze the reasons for these changes through some obscure clues.

In the later part of the plot, when the two cleverly overlap as a line, the feeling brought to me by the whole game is completely different from the concealment in the early exploration, and the various questions buried before are answered one by one, the feeling of being suddenly enlightened is precisely due to the narrative technique of the plot with the light and dark lines.

Plot hints hidden in the flow

The addition of puzzle play freed the game itself from the inherent gameplay constraints of music games, while making the entire process more challenging. The puzzle content in this game is very rich, both classic puzzles such as puzzles, permutations, and interactive puzzles that need to be solved by interacting with the surrounding scene. What surprised me most was that some of the puzzles in the game even used the gyroscope built in the controller to act as a puzzle-solving prop, and gave different feedback according to the direction of the shake of the controller, which shows that the production team took many aspects into consideration in the puzzle design, so that the puzzle solving process of the overall game always maintained enough freshness.

However, there are still many puzzles in the game, the design of the puzzle is lack of proper clues to guide, resulting in players can only blindly explore the room, trying to interact with all the interactive props, in order to find hidden puzzle clues. The process of solving some puzzles will use professional music theory knowledge, and some are simply testing the player's musical sense. For some non-relevant professional players, it seems that they can only look up relevant information to solve these problems, which will lose the fun of exploring and thinking that the puzzle game should have.

A marble maze with a handle gyroscope to solve puzzles

But in general, "Deemo: Rebirth" as a mobile game derivative work, not only inherited the original first-class soundtrack level, its new 3D picture look is also excellent, but also the bold addition of exploration and puzzle elements in the gameplay, so that the game is no longer limited to the small circle of music games. Its retelling of the original story is also impressive. However, there are still some problems in the operation of this game, such as the timing of the combination of the score is difficult to control, the operation gap time for the player to change the key is too short, the difficulty of the difficult mode is too high, but as a niche music game, such a high completion is still worthy of affirmation. If you also like music and solving puzzles, it must not be missed.