On the one hand, the people behind I*CHU: Chibi Edition have done the world a big favour. The developers and publishers (PQube in the West) have taken a mobile gacha game that was effectively killed a half-decade ago and given players the opportunity to enjoy it in its full glory…
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Hello Kitty and Friends Happiness Parade was meant to be out much, much earlier in the year. It had even briefly appeared on some eShop storefronts around the world. Something must have been wrong with it, however, as it was unceremoniously pulled and put back into development for some months.…
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Samba de Amigo is a game of pure joy and high-octane energy (with some acid surely thrown in when it was being developed). It comes across as an even more explosive explosion of colour and humour than Bandai Namco’s excellent Taiko the Drum series. In the party context that this…
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Square Enix is a company that has many decades of history, and over that time has built a business filled with competitive advantages. It is a company rich with products, services and IP that are unique to it and continue to underpin its value. Perhaps its greatest single advantage of…
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The people at Bandai Namco have a good problem with their Taiko no Tatsujin series of rhythm games. They’ve created something that is mechanically perfect. Their cute drum mascot is immediately recognisable and endlessly versatile, and whilst other rhythm games require abstraction and concentration, Taiko is easily understandable and a…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. I actually think – and the existence of Alone Musc backs this up – that rhythm games are the most difficult things for independent developers to create. In theory, they should be quite easy, right? It’s not like the genre is known for AAA-budget graphics or…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Lyrica is one of the better rhythm games available on the Nintendo Switch. It might not be as well-known as the Taiko the Drum titles, or Hatsune Miku’s Switch outing (of course), but Lyrica had something different and compelling going for it: it offered culture. The sequel…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Red White Yellow is a useful game because it highlights some realities about game design – sometimes some of the simplest elements that melt right into the background really do help a game shine. Red White Yellow is so closely inspired by Lumines, and yet not…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. We’ve seen quite a few free-to-play mobile rhythm games be re-packaged up as premium experiences and released on Nintendo Switch. Deemo, Cytus, Voez, Musynx, Lanota, and probably some others that I’m missing. As a fan of the genre, I’ve enjoyed all of these, and I enjoy…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Rhythm Fighter suffers from excess. In trying to be so many mechanical and structural elments, and then backing it up with so much happening on screen at once, it loses any sense of balance that it might otherwise have had. While it’s a noble and even…
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