Rhythm Paradise, Rhythm Heaven, and Parappa the Rapper all involve a type of rhythm game based on call-and-response game mechanics. The song plays a melodic beat to a music bar, and the player has to replicate it as closely as possible. More recently, the superb Melatonin brought this idea to a pastel dream world aesthetic to great effect. 60 BPM is a smaller, bite-sized take on the call-and-response genre which focuses on getting a player more comfortable about replicating rhythms with fewer visual cues over time. It is a great setup that is delivered well.
60 BPM has four main visual setups that tackle rhythmic patterns in different ways. The first is a soda and coffee machine that creates drinks to a rhythmic beat. You’ll see the drinks get made a bar of circle beat markers move across a bar at the top of the screen towards a triangle marker to help you know when to press enter on the keyboard to replicate the beat. It is a simple introduction which feels initially a bit clunky but as you move through the songs, the melodies become more dynamic and less wooden. Each of the four visual themes has ten songs to complete and the visual cues to help you only appear on casual mode. Once you feel comfortable in casual mode, at the fifth level you must switch to spectacular mode, which removes the moving beat bar and gives you a static map instead. This means players will have to stay in rhythm through timing and memory rather than purely visual clues. This is what sets 60 BPM apart from many other rhythm games as it brings the player along a path to feeling the rhythm.
The three remaining themes add spins to the original challenge. A gun loads bullets and you then shoot them on the next bar in the same pattern. To add complexity sometimes your visual cues are masked and there is an additional laser gun fire which means you’ll need to switch between two types of melody. The next area is based around air hockey and is less about melodies and more about drum fills that trip over a standard four beat bar. As the puck bounces off the edges of the hockey rink it creates percussive drum fills for you to then snare drum or cymbal crash the end of. This area also changes up the tempo and pace regularly and spins the camera around so you have to rely even more on your rhythmic instincts than the visuals. The last style is a vending machine that uses other musical cues off-beat to put you off your rhythm. The vending machine area grabbed my attention less than the others but it still does a good job.
The finale of 60 BPM is a two song bonus round that switches between all four styles at pace and acts like a boss battle. It combines all the knowledge you’ve gained and tests your skills and this is where the game shines best. The soundtrack across the game has a lo-fi beats veneer to it but it does roam off into a bit of world music, jazz, rock and breezy electronica too. Just expect the genres to have a relaxed, lo-fi flavour to them. The music and amount of levels make up for the smaller scope of visual designs. Many may ask, why buy 60 BPM over Melatonin? I’d say that 60 BPM gives more songs around fewer themes, whilst Melatonin has way more themes with just a couple of songs in each. Melatonin is bigger, has the block level editor and higher production values but comes at twice the price. I would say both are worthy of your time and money, but if you are on a tight budget, 60 BPM is a great place to start and if you dig the gameplay, upgrade to Melatonin after.
One thing 60 BPM has over its competition is power-ups to help players out. You can earn coins through repeated play and spend them on some cosmetic changes to your user interface or buy some power-ups. The four power-ups can speed up or slow down a song, add a metronome in for a song, or allow the AI to take over for 15 seconds. If you are struggling to reach a B rank on a song to unlock the next one, these can all help, but the game’s skill bar for progression is quite low for the majority of your playtime. Only towards the end will regular rhythm action gamers get challenged.
I did run into two day one bugs. One prevented me from completing a level, where a note cannot be triggered and so the song doesn’t finish. Strangely, my final score was still saved so it didn’t stop my progression. The other happened on a couple of tracks where the visual beat bar breaks and just shoots lots of circles onto the bar that get stuck and never move. It didn’t prevent me from playing on further but if you rely on the visual cues, having that patched will help you out.
For the price point and scope, 60 BPM is a fine rhythm game. It is a smaller, focused take on Melatonin and Rhythm Heaven and its price reflects that. It offers a few hours of polished, enjoyable and relaxed rhythm action fun and the graphics, music and feel all come together to make it more than the sum of its parts. If you can, buy both. It is a luxury problem to have when two games offer a similar style but both do a great job. It is a problem I’m happy to have.
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