“I’ve been waiting so long! I’m the one who needs help!”
Rhythm games, a genre that I have always been a super huge fan of. Whether it be spending time at the arcade playing some MaiMai, or grinding out songs in Unbeatable, I am a massive rhythm game fan, and I’ve played many over my years of enjoying them. Despite that though, a lot can feel rather sameish to me, and I’m usually craving one that sticks out from the genre. In comes Rhythm Doctor, a rhythm game that utilizes only a single button, a game that sticks out from the genre and pushes its gimmick to the maximum. Rhythm Doctor surprised me in how amazing it is, and I can confidently call it one of the best rhythm games in the genre.
Taking place in a hospital known as Middlesea you play as an unnamed intern who’s the test subject for their new treatment program, the remote defibrillation. The basic idea is that you can defibrillate people’s heart problems from anywhere in the world, allowing better treatment for others, and pushing the medical world forward. Every act in this game follows the basic structure of helping out different patients, learning about their struggle and who they are, while slowly following the overarching narrative about the state of the hospital and what the remote defibrillation program means to others. It has a rather slow start, but as it goes on the story becomes genuinely engaging, to the point that I was holding back tears in the finale. A lot of these patients deal with very real issues, some that even hit close to home, and you’re not only helping them physically, but mentally, helping them find a new purpose in life, and pushing them forward. Chapter 6 and beyond is especially great, focusing on a patient known as Mark and his relationship with the head doctor and he deals with an anxiety that torments him everyday. His songs all showcase this well too, being a lot tougher due to the much faster heartrate and the panicked thoughts he has of having to confront his old friend again. You grow to care for this cast immensely, and that final moment with all of them gathering together is incredible, it really exemplifies so much about why I love this game.
As I stated before, Rhythm Doctor is rather unique as a rhythm game due to the simple fact that it’s all controlled by a single button press. You’re just timing out the exact moment to press the button in order to ease the patient’s heartbeat, with the only thing really changing is the speed of when you press it. New gimmicks will be thrown out such as the ice and burn mechanic, or having to play in swing rhythm, and these do spice up the gameplay immensely, but ultimately Rhythm Doctor’s coolest aspect has to do with how it utilizes the game window. It isn’t there much at first, the most intense it gets is the window glitching out to try and throw you off your rhythm, but at the end of act 2 things start to take a turn. Your window will suddenly shrink, and it will actively move and try to throw you off constantly. It’ll split the window in half, it’ll move between your monitors (if you’re running two like I am), just doing all it can to throw you off and it becomes a genuine spectacle to just watch. It ramps up slowly, starting off as some rather basic windows movement, but by the end it is downright exploding fireworks on your desktop and smashing two separate windows together, it’s incredible. You’d think that it’d be impossible to play a song like that, that it’d be way too distracting, and I think for a lot of games that would be the case, but the simplicity of Rhythm Doctor makes it work super well, and long as you can count beats fine, you can manage the chaos pretty well. It really pushes this single button gimmick to it’s max, just when you think it’s out of ideas suddenly you’ll have a new mechanic to deal with, and the game ends right before it can get stale, being the perfect length for this kind of concept.
Rhythm Doctor let a lot of thoughts stew in and I kept thinking about how important interactivity can be to the medium. A lot of people are quick to dismiss games as being a lesser form of art, being something lesser than other artforms, and this has always baffled me. For me personally, I find games to be the most engaging form of art, as interactivity can add so much to pushing a narrative. Games like Zeroranger, Void Stranger, Anodyne, these games utilize the aspect of being a game to push its art to the limits, and I think a lot of game devs can lose sight of this. So many people get focused on the prose of a game, on the writing itself, and while I tend to agree that writing is important, I think combining the writing with the interactivity is what makes it stand out as something special. I want more games to understand this, I want more people to realize this, I’m tired of games being discarded as a toy to play with instead of it being an art form. It’s awful and the longer we push this narrative, the more limited games will be as an artform. For a good while I thought I lost my passion for art, I thought I was losing my love for this medium, but Rhythm Doctor reinvigorated that love, Rhythm Doctor made me remember why I love art so much, and it made me realize the importance of art as a whole. The way it utilizes the medium so well, the way it uses the window size to tell a story, it’s incredible, and I love how it does its story telling.
Rhythm Doctor managed to surprise me with just how well made it is, I didn’t expect to fall in love with it as deeply as it is, and it’s easily a top 3 rhythm game for me now. The way it pushes the medium, how catchy the songs are, how gripping the story is, the game is genuinely amazing, and I had such a good time playing it, I’m just sad to see it all over. It pushes so much with its simple gimmick, it really is something incredible, and I’m glad it’s out of early access. Check this out if you love rhythm games in any capacity, you won’t regret it.
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