Rytmos Review – Music To My Ears

Anyone who makes or writes music knows that the path to a complete track isn’t a linear one. It’s a process where instruments weave in and out of the composition on the whim of the person making it. Sometimes, even when you see the end goal clearly and have the right vision, it can be difficult to get there. Rytmos, developer Floppy Club’s first non-mobile game, nails that feeling. The puzzle-based game uses puzzles to capture the joy, escalation and triumphs of creating music. It does this with tremendous success. 

You are given 18 puzzles to fix the worlds of a chaotic universe. After completing all puzzles, each of seven astral bodies will be rerouted into its orbit. It’s a simple setup, and colorful, spacey, lo-fi visuals give Rytmos’ art style a certain warmth that extends throughout the rest of the experience. Floppy Club builds each puzzle upon the same foundation – use the mouse or analog stick (on Switch) to move a red-orange disc through standing pillars on a track. Each pillar represents a different aspect of the song you’re building through these puzzles, and to complete a puzzle, you must move the disc through each pillar and back to the starting point, creating a loop. 

That loop is the first of six loops you’ll make to build the song. While the puzzles start out easy, they increase in difficulty at an exciting pace. Floppy Club adds different challenges to stimulate the mind, such as ice cubes which continue to move up to a wall or warp portals and origami-like stones that move along with your disc. What I like most about these puzzles is that, much like the rest of the game, they’re more about the feeling of building something than they are obstacles in your way of an end goal. There’s challenge to be had, and one particular puzzle left me stuck for roughly 15 minutes, but the puzzle-wary need not fear what’s in store within Rytmos’ few hours of play. 

I loved hearing each track come to life as I completed puzzles, and learning more about each system’s specific musical genre taught me new things, such as how an instrument is played, a genre’s place in a given culture, and more. One system’s music is inspired by traditional Mbira music from Zimbabwe. There’s another that uses early 1980s Japanese environmental music, which the game taught me was used back then to fill ambient spaces like grocery stores. I especially liked the system inspired by 1960s and ‘70s Ethiopian Jazz, and on top of these genres not often highlighted in games, each set of puzzles rewards you with the primary instrument used to create the track. 

Using the game’s built-in loop record system, you can then play that instrument to create your own beats. As someone familiar with real loop systems and the creation of beats, Rytmos’ recording procedure isn’t as in-depth as I would have liked, but it’s a nice introduction to how a loop track can work. 

However, even if they don’t like creating beats themselves, those who do will find enjoyment in playing around on the instruments. And there’s an excellent selection of instruments, too. There are the usual items, such as guitars. But Floppy Club is very respectful of the art and includes instruments from other cultures.

Rytmos’s short, sweet gameplay and soothing beats made me feel warm. Its puzzles match everything else the game is doing, and it all works together well to highlight the music, its inspirations’ place in history, and the instruments that create it. Rytmos reflects the expertise of Floppy Club in audiophiles. Although Rytmos was designed with music fans in mind, puzzle lovers will still find an enjoyable afternoon here.