Developed by Second Impact Games and produced by KONAMI, Super Rhythm Castle is a musical puzzle adventure game that mashes Overcooked and Guitar Hero into one. You play as one of four unlikely heroes as you work together to make your way through Rhythm Castle, and your goal is to defeat the current slightly mad King Ferdinand at his own game, completing all of the challenges and overcoming the obstacles in your way using the power of music to claim the throne. Meet the wacky inhabitants, unlock secrets, and complete puzzles to help you navigate the weird and wonderful castle pathways and halls.

As mentioned above, the gameplay of the stages and boss fights consists of you hitting or holding the corresponding buttons at the correct time. similar to that of Guitar Hero as an example, however, to add a little more chaos to the mix, there could be a second set of notes, and if you have a friend playing with you, they can hit those. If not, welcome to hell as you franticly run around trying to do the job of at least two people.

Friends are highly recommended to play this game, and without it can become quite frustrating, like trying to play Guitar Hero and juggling knives while riding a unicycle – pretty impossible. Trying to keep the rhythm while the levels distract you, and running between two different rhythm strings can be very overwhelming. Solo play is hard, and I don’t recommend it, but hey, if you want a challenge, then this will be a perfect test of your timing, coordination, and multitasking skills.

So, I want to talk about the multiplayer part for a moment, just so everyone interested in playing this understands how it works. At least for PlayStation. Okay, first off, there are no matchups. It is purely by invitation only. Either someone invites you, or you invite them, but they have to also own the game.

One list is your friend list, and the other is a list of people who own the game, but there’s also a list of random people you have played with before. This last one showed all of the random people I played COD with in the past. Safe to say, no one showed up on the owned list, and this is why they need to add a party-finding tool to help us lonely souls out.

Here we are at the crux of this game, and most of the time, the hardest part of a review to write – the sound and music. This game literally revolves around music, and it’s not just the type that’s whipped up on an AI music generator – it’s proper music by artists with lyrics. On top of that, most are absolute bangers, and I have been desperately searching Spotify for some of them, but have only managed to find a few, so I hope they release their soundtrack soon.

Even walking around is musical, and some of the paths you take will be made of piano keys, for example, that will play a tune as you run across the keys, and items you obtain take on a musical theme, like herbicide-blowing bagpipes, because why not? Right?

Does it pass the sound check? In my opinion, yes. It is the basis of this game and the highlight. My main gripe with any game lately is the lack of voice actors. There are so many funny lines in this game, and even 4th wall breaking, self-aware jokes, so having a good cast vocalise them would be the cherry on top.

I haven’t been able to put my finger on it for a few days now, but I have been searching for the annals of my mind to find a way to describe this game. It looks great – not too flashy, but flashy enough that it looks right. The name is Super Crazy Rhythm Castle, and if it looked overly realistic, it would probably be classed as a horror game. It’s cartoonish enough, but not over the top to the point it starts to look silly.

All the characters are weird and wacky with their tropes and blend in with the craziness well. There is a nice variety in the main characters you get to choose from, but no standouts, except for Trinity, my favourite, because she looks like a messed up Karlach.

This is a fun game that is better than you would maybe expect, not taking into consideration the slight difficulty in finding others to play with. However, should you find yourself with friends who also own the game, this will be a great party game, and if you are not so good at the keeping rhythm part, there are other things to do that will help your party out. I’m here for it, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Written by: Adam Brasher