When it comes to rhythm games, I often have a really good time, unless something has really gone wrong. Rhythm Sprout is a bit different, as it’s a rhythm action game, full of fast paced sword swinging and fighting action as well as both funny characters and interesting stories.
At the start of Rhythm Sprout you are set up with your story. You are an onion knight, and King Broccoli wants you to go off into the world to find the Sugar Daddy, which will stop the sugar kingdom from attacking your vegetable kingdom. You also need to, maybe, find the princess, but King Broccoli is very unclear on if this is really a task, or something he is just saying out of obligation.
You are then on your way, going through the world to find the Sugar Daddy. At the start of each level, you do get a bit of context as to what this level is. I found these small narrative moments to be really funny, well written, and interesting within the context of the game. But, their stories didn’t seem to actually wrap up, with there being more questions than answers. You can interact and talk with these characters; I told a frantic carrot I would help him clean his home so that his wife wasn’t mad, but then I marched forward, killed some candy bars, and left the area without any help or closure on if his wife left him. I do wish these moments were tied up with a little ending scene.
The gameplay itself is all through rhythm. Your movement is through hitting the right keys as they appear on the bottom of the screen. I played the Xbox version of Rhythm Sprout which had three colors of keys; blue, yellow and pink. Blue buttons were the triggers, yellow was the left D-Pad and pink was any of the letter buttons. This control scheme does take a bit of getting used too, and when I first started I was a little bit frustrated that I needed to move forward in such a stop-go-stop way, it was just jarring, but after one level you really do get used to it.
In many levels, there are often bosses to defeat, which are also done through rhythm. You will get into a battle mode, where your yellow and pink keys are attacks and your blues are dodges. You do have a health bar which is quite small, but you can gain more health by getting combos. You can also trigger a frenzy mode if you have a high enough combo which allows you to hit any button for any key, changing all of their colors to a glowing shade of blue.
Rhythm Sprout is a fun, quirky rhythm game that isn’t afraid to challenge you. After taking on a ghost that laughed at me, I struggled and had to try many times to defeat a strange and lonely mushroom. These characters all have their own stories, personalities, and music to take on — and I enjoyed every aspect of it, trying again and again to defeat them. The music is lovely, a sort of retro-RPG feeling soundtrack to bop around too. I really enjoyed the challenge and funny aspects of the story too!
You can find Rhythm Sprout on Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Playstation ad PC.
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