Luna asks:

I want to see the rhythm game breakdown/a rhythm bonanza discussion personally :3

Raph additionally asks:

Or an explanation on when aesthetic obfuscation in rhythm games is and isn’t acceptable

Rhythm game critique threw me in the loop for a while because it’s working on a different axis from a lot of other “good” games in our sphere, and what’s happening inside of the game is generally not that interesting; it’s, from a strict ruleset perspective, almost always just timing checks. While for most video games we can perform quality critique fully within the “bounds” of the game, looking only at the variables during program execution and how they change over time, for many rhythm games our critique only blooms when we look at our physical interaction with the controller. Timing checks become complex in the context of human movement, where moving a finger may become taxing depending on the position of your other fingers, or where hitting multiple buttons simultaneously may require more than just your two hands. I’m going to quickly go over the main games that might strike your fancy, and then I’ll break down how I analyze quality when I’m playing rhythm games.

The Rhythm Games Starter Pack

If we lived in a perfect world, I would just say Beatmania IIDX¹ and move on. The Beatmania series codified many major rhythm game mechanics, including the continuous scrolling playfield and the stationary judgement line (the line which, as a note crosses it, indicates when you should press it). It also leaned into its unusual custom controller, which used staggered keys in a piano-esque orientation alongside a turntable.² While integral to the genre, this is the big stickler for recommending rhythm games to most people: getting quality controllers is expensive, and access to arcade cabinets is highly region-dependent (and expensive over time). Bemani leads the entire genre as a rule, so trying these games out by any means necessary is worth it in my opinion: find Dance Dance Revolution at your local barcade, or hack your PS2 and play IIDX and Pop’n on the cheaper console controllers.³

You also might be close enough to an arcade to make regular trips. Round1 Bowling & Arcade has the official American license for every major rhythm game, giving you access to official servers and up-to-date content. There’s also a burgeoning grey market for arcade games that has led to random small-scale arcades across America offering solid selections that invariably include a couple rhythm games. Regardless, it’s worth taking a look at what arcades are in your area. If you do manage to find one near you, the most common non-Bemani games are from Sega. The Performai series are all excellent (Chunithm, maimai, and Ongeki), and Project Diva is also a solid game, if a bit unorthodox.

Gitaroo Man uses the distinctive art of Mitsuru Nakamura, with its ornate costumes, giant heads, and droopy faces, to weave an intergalactic tale that incorporates every style of guitar music you can think of.

On the console side of things, the NaNaOn-Sha games have a lot of online popularity thanks to their unique graphical style and nostalgic PlayStation-era vibe. The PaRappa trilogy in particular (the two PaRappa games and Um Jammer Lammy) use a novel freestyle system for scoring that also makes them difficult for new players to pick up (especially the two PlayStation 1 games). For those interested in games along these lines that are easier to pick up, I would recommend the iNiS titles: specifically Gitaroo Man and the Ouendan trilogy (the two Ouendan games and Elite Beat Agents). The former has its own striking cartoon look and a more traditional timing-oriented gameplay style, while the latter adapts rhythm gameplay to a touchscreen with an innovative aperture-esque judgement circle for each note. Many who are unfamiliar with these games may recognize their gameplay from the popular Osu rhythm engine, which has far outstripped the popularity of the original series in the west.

For people who grew up in the ’00s like I did, there’s a good chance you have spare Guitar Hero or Rock Band instruments lying around; these are still super solid rhythm games! Albeit a bit repetitive musically for my taste. Regardless, all of the underlying concepts align closely with the traditional arcade rhythm games, and they had extremely deep libraries (that are now unfortunately being nuked for good thanks to expiring licenses). I also enjoy their Frequency/Amplitude series, which has the unique twist of having the player switch between different music tracks every couple of measures. I was first exposed to those games through, believe it or not, LEGO Rock Band on DS when I was a child, which adapts the same concept to the four main instruments from the console version. Rock Band Unplugged has a similar setup on PSP, and it has the benefit of significantly higher quality music than a DS release as well.

As a quick final note: I haven’t played mobile rhythm games very much, but some of my friends have reported good things about Arcaea and Rotaeno. As arcade rhythm games gradually move towards continuous touch surfaces, phones make immediate sense when porting those gameplay concepts. I have played a bit of Arcaea on Switch, and while its progression is undeniably inspired by other sluggish mobile games, the multi-layer touch-and-hold gameplay packs a lot of depth by overlapping your fingers and twisting them all over the screen. It also prominently features music from the BMS community (who make unofficial Beatmania music and charts), which gives it the cultural edge of the arcade community that many other rhythm games lack.

Methods of Rhythm Game Critique

Physical Routing

Top Project Diva Arcade player F.SinA uses his elbow to hold down the triangle button while using both hands to play a roll of notes on the cross button on the song Sadistic.Music∞Factory. [src]

As discussed prior, Beatmania has both keys (digital buttons) and a turntable, which is activated by spinning the plate of the turntable a certain amount. If the game were just keys (like its clone series DJMax), one could imagine that engaging with the control surface would be extremely simple: assign a finger to each key and then press them at the right times. However, the turntable complicates this: by moving it up and down (usually with your pinky), you’re also moving that entire hand out of alignment with their key assignment, and if you have a shorter handspan, you may not be able to consistently manipulate the turntable without leaving some of the keys uncovered. Making decisions on where to position your hands both in general and during specific sections of songs is something I call physical routing, or spatial decision-making outside of the game. The benefit of a game putting so much emphasis on physical movement is that it brings in the many variables associated with the body and kinesthetics. The size of a person’s hands (and occasionally arms!), the strength of their fingers, their ability to move fingers independently of each other, the motion they must make to hit the note, and the context of note patterns around a given section of a song all influence how the player interact with the control surface over time. As the note charts grow denser, these decisions must be made at quicker speeds, cascading between sections and evolving between play sessions as the player trains physical capabilities.⁴

Although the Beatmania turntable is a genius addition, it as a game makes a less compelling argument for physical routing⁵ as compared to Bemani’s next two major series: Dance Dance Revolution and Pop’n Music. In the former, the control surface is a dance pad, with four buttons that you primarily control with your two feet, while in the latter, you have nine staggered bubble buttons to maneuver between. In both of these, where total coverage is extremely difficult, the note patterns are less dense and chord-reliant in comparison to Beatmania in exchange for challenges that expect the player to think beyond just pressing the note. When I play Pop’n Music,⁶ I think constantly about which finger or side of my palm I use on each button and how each choice will affect my ability to move to the next notes cleanly. Sound Voltex, Bemani’s later smash hit, re-commits to the idea of different motions on the control surface by adding two knobs that the player must turn, often for extended periods of time and with a sensitivity that mandates the player use a whole hand to manipulate them. This opens up many opportunities for a player to change their button coverage over the course of a song, such as having one hand switch between the knobs while the other covers the six keys, and then switching repeatedly back to splitting the buttons between their hands. These examples illustrate methods for how a rhythm game can build around a control surface to push the player to think physically.

As a special case, it’s also worth mentioning that hold notes (literally, notes that you hold in place for a duration instead of just pressing) have an essential effect on physical routing: they lock part of your body in place for a period, which leads to a knock-on effect on how you can hit other notes during that period. Seeing how a game handles hold notes and how they fundamentally alter playstyle most clearly indicates how physical routing works for said game.

Some questions to ask in your crit:

• What is the control surface of the game? What are its dimensions? How many separate inputs are there, and are they analog or digital? How responsive are stock buttons and other sensors? What kinds of motions do the inputs require?
• Much like a keyboard, I start every song in a “home position,” with my hands and feet set to cover inputs in a way that will work for most stock patterns. What is your home position for the game? How many inputs can you cover comfortably? What positions do you commonly see other people using? How many other positions do you find yourself commonly using? How does the control surface push you away from the home position?
• How do your physical capabilities relate to the control surface? When engaging with an input, how do you need to move your hands or feet? Can you do the action in an unusual way, and if so, can you do it consistently? What tradeoffs come with using different parts of your body for different inputs?

Aesthetic Obfuscation

In this boss battle from Space Channel 5: Part 2, the number of segments in each robot represents how many times to press their corresponding direction before shooting them with the A button. [src]

Aesthetic obfuscation refers to a more general game crit concept I have that looks at the relation between game state (each variable and their values at any given moment in time) and their rendered representation. It’s easy to differentiate aesthetics and mechanics when it comes to crit, but how do they interact? In virtually every game, state is obfuscated by the game for the purpose of clarity. In some cases, variables don’t need to be shown directly to the player, in other cases, using Arabic numerals or common graphing techniques directly conveys essential variables, and the vast majority of the time, groups of variables are abstracted as visualized representations of things people understand from reality and other media, such as anthropomorphic entities or physical topology. For many of the Bemani games I just mentioned, notes and their position relative to the judgement line (or rather, when they actually will be sounded in the song and need to be pressed) are represented abstractly and plainly in a geometric form that will cleanly align with the line. In other words, the games try to be as clear and intuitive as possible with when a note should be hit. However, in other rhythm games, part of the challenge may be when the game obfuscates the timing of upcoming notes to the detriment of the player, emphasizing visual comprehension over physical movement.

Raph’s question above is framed as “when is it acceptable and when is it not” because of a prior conversation we had around Rift of the Necrodancer, which prominently uses aesthetic obfuscation. In Rift, there are only three lanes, and each note is one of many enemies, which interact with the judgement line differently: many have to be “hit” multiple times in a row, at intervals denoted by the type of enemy, while others may move down their lane faster or skip tiles. I’m not generally fond of this style because the interaction is less dynamic: simpler, obfuscated patterns are more easily “solved” once the player understands the underlying rhythm, and they lack the inherent strain and split-second shifts that denser patterns force upon the body.⁷ That’s not to say I always find the technique distasteful. Space Channel 5: Part 2, one of the many games produced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, who influenced my thoughts on aesthetic obfuscation greatly with his exploration of aural transformation through player input, illustrates this perfectly even with a similarly simple input system. The songs are in call-and-response format, and elaborate, cartoony depictions of the caller moving and vocalizing are used to represent what buttons you should press when you respond. By playing with different modes of representation through each stage and providing a fun alien invasion framing around the experience, the game succeeds in its obfuscation by leaning more heavily into the aesthetic side than the mechanics. Rhythm Heaven pulls this off as well with a wide variety of art styles, and it uses compilation tracks to mix its different “minigames” together into a tapestry of obfuscation with a major mechanical payoff.

It’s also worth mentioning that, after all the praise I gave them in the last section, Bemani have experimented with the technique as well. For their classic games, stopping the note scrolling or changing the speed suddenly is a common design technique, while in one of their newer games, Beatstream, using a large variety of different note types differentiated by color and shape changes the way the player looks at the touchscreen.⁸ Obfuscating the game in the form of another type of game can also bring in a new audience that isn’t already invested in rhythm games, such as the precision platformer veneer of Geometry Dash. Of course, these hybrid genres can also de-emphasize timing checks as the sole gameplay driver, which adds different questions when it comes to critiquing them.

Some questions to ask in your crit:

• How are notes represented in the game? Is it the same for every input, or do some inputs vary? How does the note representation match the action needed to succeed at the timing check? What techniques does the game use across both visual and aural components?
• How much does the note representation interfere with your ability to hit notes? Do you feel like the challenge is weighted more towards understanding the notes or executing the timing checks? Does the obfuscation challenge disappear quickly after understanding the song, or does it continually interfere with your play?
• How abstract is the visual representation? Is it tied to something you’re familiar with from reality? How does the representation create a broader narrative or sensation through the chosen representation?

Chart Design

A double play IIDX chart from the song ハイ＊ビスカス. [src]

For those familiar with my SSS model, I differentiate between the base system (the ruleset and variables of the game) and the scenario (the implementation of specific challenges and concepts within that ruleset). The sequencing of timing checks for each song, or the “note charts” (or “beatmap” from the Osu world), are the primary scenarios for rhythm games. While the control surface and the basic rules help us understand the way the game is played, the charts give us specific elements from these to focus on, which often are repeated between charts as particular patterns. For example, it’s conventional in Beatmania to have a “lane 1 kick,” or a repetitive pattern that matches the kick drum of a song mapped to the left-most key. This aligns with a general concept of having the left-hand keys match the rhythm section and the right-hand keys match the melody, although the designers are perfectly within their rights to subvert that notion for sections of songs to throw the player off.

As a more general convention, most rhythm games give each song multiple charts corresponding to broad difficulty levels (like “easy,” “medium,” and “hard) while also giving each chart a numeric rating that compares it to other charts. Some games, like modern IIDX and Sound Voltex, indicate multiple axes of difficulty for each song; for IIDX this includes focusing on single notes or chords, difficulty peaks versus even difficulty, hold notes, and heavy turntable scratching, all represented via a spider chart. It’s also worth looking at how chart design evolves over time for long running games. In earlier IIDX, there was a greater emphasis on “jackhammers” (or rapidly pressed notes on a single key) at all levels of play, while modern IIDX reserves this technique for specific occasions and endgame charts. This indicates to us that, for multiple reasons we can guess at (keys that are not “springy” and are too small to use two hands or fingers on at once, fan feedback, etc.), the designers chose to limit these types of patterns to emphasize others, like micro-rhythms, per-finger independence, and unusual chords.

Some questions to ask in your crit:

• How many charts are there? How wide is the difficulty range? How steep is the curve, and what difficulty do you feel comfortable playing at after a couple sessions?
• What kinds of patterns do you notice in the charts? Does the game have an emphasis on particular patterns or does it vary wildly per track? How are patterns represented from low difficulty charts to high difficulty ones?
• Broadly speaking, what kinds of overall challenges does the chart design encourage? Are they oriented towards specific qualities, like speed, chords, managing multiple inputs, or obfuscation, to name a few? Or do they offer a range between charts? Is the game specific about the challenges at all?⁹

Visuals and Audio

Of course, it would be malpractice to examine a rhythm game without considering the music itself! There are no rhythm games that I play solely for their mechanical merit; either I gravitate to a particular rhythm game because it matches my taste, or my taste reforms around a rhythm game I particularly like. The experience of playing a rhythm game, especially in an arcade environment, which is dense with loud, rapid stimuli such as flashing lights and booming subwoofers, relies heavily on the sensation you derive from playing it, moving in lockstep with the world that the game presents. Engaging with this unconsciously will suck you into the game’s world, and disentangling the sensations consciously will help you understand why you enjoy particular rhythm games over others.

Rhythm games are uniquely intertwined with reality, as their popularity makes them platforms unto themselves for emerging artists to spread their work, often through fan contests and doujin-scene distribution. Many amateur artists have parlayed hobbyist music composition into full-time gigs thanks to rhythm games, to the extent that major label imprints and professional music collective to these games have arisen thanks to the networking and built-in audiences these games bring with them. Taking the time to explore the artist behind your favorite songs, whether they be a long-time video game composer, a former amateur, or a professional DJ, unlocks a new world into the game as a cultural entity, beyond the game as a mechanical vessel. Not that every game needs to take this route; like for the aforementioned PaRappa series or Gitaroo Man, the game might tell a self-contained story with diegetic music. Analyzing these games involves a more traditional approach to art as standalone works, examining how the narrative wields music and the performance of music as a tool.

Some questions to ask in your crit:

• What kind of music does the game have? What genres can you identify, and which ones are most common? How does the musical style influence the visualizations around the game as well as the chart design?
• Who made the music? How were they able to put their music in the game? What is their background? Are they associated with any specific scenes (e.g. as mentioned prior, the BMS scene), labels, collectives, or other groups? Is the game sponsored by a particular group? If there’s a set of crossover songs from another game or prominent work, why were they included, and what do they add to the rest of the chart roster?
• Is there a narrative built around the music? If so, how does it use music and rhythm? Is it diegetic or just part of the texture of the world? How are gameplay concepts contextualized in-universe?

Where to Go From Here?

Go play some rhythm games! There’s plenty of opportunities for you to try rhythm games even outside of investing actual money or traveling, so try whatever you can get your hands on. If you’re at a convention, don’t feel bad about bumbling through a credit or two of a rhythm game just to get a sense of what it’s about; as someone who has been chirped at by rude players who are more skilled than me, it’s a behavior that isn’t your fault, and I see it very rarely.

Although I haven’t written as much about rhythm games as I would like, my ideas above have been put into practice: I wrote an extensive critique of Project Diva Arcade Future Tone on Backloggd that is three times longer than this article! But I totally understand if such a dense read with many, many hyperlinked video clips on a site that is not capable of handling such a piece is not to your taste. My recent review of Múseca is a quick read and demonstrates how I look at both physical routing and aesthetics for an arcade rhythm game. As an aside, I stumbled upon this nice blog post on rhythm game programming from fizzd, the developer of the rather cool A Dance of Fire and Ice. Give it a read if you’re interested in the technical side of how these games are made!

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