Do you feel the healing rhythm brought by Doctor Rhythm?

Whenever Nintendo faces a meeting approaching, I always fantasize that Nintendo will surprise and announce a new game for "The Kingdom of Rhythm" at the end. During an interview, a female journalist on the side suddenly faces the camera and says, "We're going to release a new game," and other unexpected official announcements. Unfortunately, since the release of 3DS "The Best+" in 2015, Nintendo has shown no signs of letting the beat continue.

Fortunately, I have found a temporary alternative to "Rhythm Doctor".

Rhythm Doctor is actually a game that was released almost a decade ago. It was first released as a trial version online, and received much more positive feedback than developers had imagined. Later, the game was nominated for an Independent Game Federation (IGF) award in 2014, and a trial version was also provided on the Steam platform until the EA version was officially released at the end of last month.

The game system is very simple, and players can press the spacebar (or mouse click) at a fixed beat to successfully set the beat. In order to allow players to see the progression of the beat more intuitively, there will be a beat line in the middle of the screen that extends from the left (occasionally the other side) to display the fluctuation of the beat rhythm. When the player successfully presses the beat button as required, a blue vertical bar will light up on the right side of the beat line to indicate successful beat, and a pleasant sound effect will sound to indicate that the player's hit is perfect. If the beat is missed, the right side of the beat line will remind the player whether to press earlier or later based on the position of the final wave.

The most basic beat of this game is "7 beats", which means that when the button is pressed in the 7th beat, sometimes the game will give fluctuations in the first 6 beats. Players can memorize the rhythm in their hearts to play the beat, but depending on the performance of different songs, these 6 beats may sometimes break one or two beats in the middle, so players must rely on their memorization to reproduce the beat. The second level of the game has added "2 beats", which means that when the first beat is played, you should immediately pay attention to when to press the button to take the beat. In the later stages, there are a lot of multi track and multi beat (2 beats+fast-paced 7 beats+slowpaced 7 beats) overlapping situations. If the rhythm is not enough, playing will really be a bit rushed.

Just like in "Rhythm Paradise", whenever a new beat is added, the game provides a thoughtful training session at the beginning, allowing players to quickly adapt to the patterns and possible changes of the new beat. If there are obvious changes in the beat in the level, NPCs will also jump out to remind players to be careful and pay attention to the upcoming rhythm becoming different.

"The Kingdom of Rhythm" adopts a scoring system, which scores players based on their accuracy in mastering the rhythm in the level, and rewards them accordingly based on the score. "The Doctor of Rhythm" combines two mechanisms: scoring evaluation and health. On the far right side of the beat line is the heart representing health. Every time you hit the wrong beat, it will cause cracks in the heart. If you make too many mistakes, the heart will rupture and hatch chicks. At this time, it means that the player will not receive any evaluation that is considered to pass the level - the level evaluation ranges from A to F (I'm sorry, I'm too naive and I don't even know if there will be an S). If you don't get a B or above evaluation, then you cannot pass the level and cannot continue playing the next level.

The gameplay of the game is closely intertwined with the story, with players playing the role of a remotely assisted doctor. The method of treating and saving patients is to use music to beat the rhythm to stabilize their heart rate, solve a series of physiological pains, and also heal their injured souls. To deal with the samurai patient in the first level, the most intense and enjoyable music should be used for treatment, and the rhythm of several pieces of music in this level is very fast; The second level tells a love story, and the music is all about Lo fi Hip Hop with a light rhythm.

The most surprising thing is the boss battle in the second level. If you are playing full screen, you will be forced to switch to windowed operation, and alt+enter cannot switch back to full screen. In fact, this is the developer's "conspiracy" - because the patient you want to treat falls in love with the barista and moves at full speed. The game's window will simulate the patient's forward movement and too fast heartbeat, jumping randomly on the computer screen. It is unexpected that the game will narrate in this form, especially as a music game.

There are still many similar scenes in the game, but in the fourth level, remote assistance faces severe challenges due to virus invasion. When players play the beat, the screen will blur, flicker, and a large number of meaningless windows will pop up, accompanied by various noises and explosions. Players must be able to memorize the melody and shift their attention away from the already broken screen in order to focus more on the seventh beat.

Although it is still in the EA stage, the number of levels in "Doctor of Rhythm" is already satisfactory - there are nearly 20 small levels in total, as well as many intermediate levels and high rated unlocked levels. It will still take a lot of time to fully conquer them. The most important thing is that the game's level editor is very powerful. Nowadays, a large number of well crafted levels can be downloaded from the creative workshop and game official website. The excellent production of A Lovely Night and PONPONPON has sparked a lot of discussion among players. You can take a look at the following two videos:

A Lovely Night

PONPONPON

Video address

It can be said that players creating their own levels will become an effective guarantee for the game to maintain its vitality in the community. This is enough to make people hope that after the official version of the game is released, the creative official levels and self-made levels representing the player's wisdom will bring what kind of charm.