Rhythm Doctor

Both of my parents work in the medical field. In fact, a large portion of my family tree works in the field of medicine. Not as doctors though. A majority of them are either pharmacists or nurses, but no matter what the position is we can all agree on something. Working in medicine is hard. It is hell to study and achieve a bachelor’s or master’s degree. It is brutal to work eight to twelve hours for five to six days a week. Going from normal cases to batsh*t insanity within seconds. With barely a second to breathe or slow down, because if not somebody might pass. The amount of horror stories I hear whenever my older sibling, mother, or father come home for the day. Now I’m not heading in the direction of medicine like my family. A few years ago I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and during a job shadowing I realized I did not want to go down this route. So I told both my parents I wanted to focus on computers as it’s always interested me, and they respected my choice. I may not desire to go into medicine, but I have a lot of respect for the people who work in this field. How much they care about patients, and the mean to vulgar statements they deal with to ensure wellbeing. Part of me still wants to contribute to health. Good thing software engineers can work anywhere. Including hospitals, that’s cool!

The reason why I bring this up is because of today’s subject matter, Rhythm Doctor. Little game that started off as a student project back in 2014, and grew into a modern hit. The devs were huge fans of the Rhythm Heaven games growing up. I’ll assume you know what that series is as just about everyone experienced in the rhythm game genre has touched an entry at some point. With the most recent one having come two weeks before writing this, and my sibling is having a blast playing it. (Good for her) Anyways, the devs loved Rhythm Heaven and how it was a game that only required two buttons to be pressed. The simplistic control scheme and how Nintendo were able to create an addicting core gameplay loop from it. Eventually one of them thought, “Wait, what if we made a rhythm game that only required one button to be played!?” Hence the idea of Rhythm Doctor came into mind. A silly project that became a full game. Wouldn’t doubt it if you saw it floating around Steam at some point. It was first released back in 2021 with only a few songs at the time. Then the devs kept working until the full version came out late last year. A lot of hype was surrounding Rhythm Doctor. It wasn’t just a unique concept, but the rhythm genre hasn’t been well supplied. Wasn’t until recent memory we started getting more cool ones. Hi-Fi Rush, Everhood, Hellsinger, Unbeatable, Rift of The Necrodancer, etc.

One of which I covered a while ago, so you can read my opinions on it if you want. I have been diving more into rhythm games recently after last year’s Rift of The NecroDancer hooked me. A common recommendation from friends was Rhythm Doctor, and I was skeptical whether to pick it up at first. Mainly because of how I was warned how absurdly hard it was. That and the several epilepsy warnings tied to it. Bright flashing colors don’t hurt my eyes unlike a majority of folks. It’s not being able to read the screen well that bothers me. I was planning to skip it initially, but a Steam Sale happened recently and unfortunately my mind doesn’t handle FOMO well. I picked it up, started playing a few days ago, and during one of my play sessions I sat down for three hours straight slapping my finger on the keyboard or killer-ass music. Okay, Rhythm Doctor ended up being good. Great even, I would go as far to say this is one of the best rhythm games I’ve played. Should warn you, Rhythm Doctor isn’t for everyone. As my friends warned, people who do not handle flashing colors well are not going to be able to play this. If not that then  high difficulty & demand certainly will. However, if you can get around all I just said you’ll find an experience made out of love for the genre. As well as a thank you letter to the medical workers out there. Let’s discuss Rhythm Doctor and why it deserves your attention. 

Story

The game takes place in the faroff Middlesea Hospital. A hospital much like any others. Always trying to stay on top of patients, give them the treatment they need, and attempt to not fall behind on schedule. With two long serving doctors being Ian and Ada Paige. Both of whom serve under head figure Gabe Edega. Shifts have been frantic lately. A majority of staff have either quit due to prolonged work hours, stress, harassment from patients, or how things keep getting worse by the day. To solve the declining number of workers a program was put into effect. The acceptance of interns no matter where they are in the world. A remote position, but how does one treat their patients when they aren’t there to physically help or interact? Thankfully there was a solution for that as well. A newly discovered and soon to be experimented treatment utilizing music. Doctors are to use buttons to synchronize with a patient’s heartbeat, and with good timing & coordination they hope to calm them down. Deduce what the problem is so they can give them the right stuff for recovery. It is an effort they hope reduces the cost of patient care and chaos.

Paige & Ian paces you, the intern, into your job smoothly. Giving you lessons on music and how to help each of the specific patients. Learn about them, get to know who they are, and why they have come to this specific hospital. Things are going great, but also terrible. The patient numbers are building up, Edega wants to see better results from the new music procedure, and he wants more to be done within a shorter period of time. Demanding you, Paige, and Ian to work more despite there being less crew members to work with. Essentially one person is handling the jobs of four or more individuals at once. Multi-tasking is a requirement much like any job, but now you gotta ask yourself when a lot becomes too much. Will three crew members be enough for the ship to stay a float? I mean there’s holes pouring water in it, the engine is on fire, the captain has chosen to be passive aggressive, and a strange virus is running around with no way to pinpoint how to get rid of it. This is a hospital. It’s a hospital like many others, and you gotta help.

Gameplay

A big selling point for Rhythm Doctor is its key gimmick. That being everything you do is done with the press of one button. The game recommends using the spacebar, but honestly any key on the keyboard works. Get comfortable, because you’re in for a wild ride. There are seven acts and each act follows a specific set of patients. Each with their own mechanics, gimmicks, and beats you gotta master. When you boot up a level you have the patient and a bar. There’s a green part and a yellow part. Pressing a key causes a flash to react on the yellow portion. On the green side you’ll see a vibration pattern. That is the patient’s heartbeat, and what you need to do is press the button at the right beat. For example, the first patient you deal with is a samurai. Their heartbeat needs to be handled on every seventh beat. So you need to keep count of the beats and make sure not to press too early or late. Otherwise the heart, represented at the end of the yellow portion, is gonna slowly break. Do this well enough and earn a level grade based on your performance. The catch is that you need to acquire a B- or higher if you want to unlock the next level/patient.

The first stage is pretty easy, because the rule set before you is simple. “Press on every seventh beat,” and the rest of act one follows this rule. Occasionally speeding the tempo up and down to challenge you and make sure you’re paying attention. What’s interesting is that Rhythm Doctor often likes to break set principles by throwing in new rules, gimmicks, and mechanics. You have a patient who only uses two beats rather than seven. You have ones that block bits of the bar, so you gotta use good counting. You have a miner who requires you to hold the button down and release quickly. A baseball player who needs you to press the button a specific amount of times in one beat. Then you got the boss battles. Moments where lyrics are blasting, and the game then decides to take acid. Lots of acid. You don’t just have tons of flashing colors. No, the game likes to pull off some technical moves. At first I thought I pressed the wrong key and the game entered windowed mode. That was actually part of the song, and quickly the screen started to dance all over the place. Exiting the borders of my laptop, glitch in and out of existence, shrink, grow, and much more. Very cool visually and we’ll address a point later. Rhythm Doctor is not afraid to be both style and substance. Finding ways to subvert your expectations, and I’m all in for it. Kept me engaged and motivated to see just what came next. Let’s just hope you’ll stick around.

Thoughts

Rhythm Doctor is a very fun game that proves even the simplest of gameplay loops & mechanics can make a compelling experience. The core gimmick is executed very well and while just about every single level is throwing in some new rule I never felt confused or overwhelmed. Partially because the game has good pacing and tutorials. They throw you into a practice to showcase the new gimmick, have you mess around with it in an easy setting, and then throw you into a song where you use the mechanic actively. Tutorials are not so long that they become annoying, and you can skip them upon reattempting songs they’re tied to. I can see some people slowly getting annoyed with how many tutorials there are. I like when games make me figure things out alone, but Rhythm Doctor is one of few cases (pun unintended) where abandoning such things may lead to a rocky experience. The developers did the best they could to pace you in, and they did a great job. The songs never throw too much at you, and slowly they begin combining mechanics via the boss stages. These striking set pieces with killer lyrics and throwing everything you learned in a chapter. Every level in this game is memorable. Five years from now I can recall a specific level and describe well enough what happened. The patients how goofy they can be are interesting & well written. With heartfelt lessons about human experiences.

There’s one patient that’s a baseball player that tore an arm muscle. Wanting to heal as soon as he can so he can go back into the field. Saying this is all he has left in life, and if he stays away for too long his work will be meaningless. The only purpose he has will be thrown out the window, and he’ll be slowly forgotten to time. In some way his story is about burnout, and as I stated in my Wanderstop review earlier this year it’s a theme I connect quite a bit to. Actually a recurring theme throughout Rhythm Doctor is obsession and becoming so focused on one particular thing that they are unable to help themselves physically and mentally. Growing detached with society and feeling like mice trapped in a cage. Its serious themes placed into a game with a lighthearted tone and humor, which I’m not against. Compared to most games that can’t figure out what tone they exactly want, Rhythm Doctor stays positive throughout. Knowing when to deliver emotional bits of information without becoming depressing or toxically positive. I opened this review up by saying a good chunk of my family members today work in the medical field. I’m not experienced in medicine myself, but what I can glean from conversations I have decent understanding. This game is set in a hospital and I wouldn’t doubt if someone who worked on this is a medical worker. There's no complex terms, but it conveys what the work is like.

The stress, hours feeling like an eternity, and the people you have to deal with. Whether it be the cranky patients or higher ups always judging how you perform your services. You have doctors and nurses who genuinely care about the people they’re treating. Constantly struggling due to a system who sees medical care as a way for profit. The line between empathy and capitalism blurs like an alcoholic’s nightmares. Staff quit either due to stress or work conditions. I remember my sibling working in a grocery store pharmacy once, and when their manager got replaced a large chunk of her team left. Cuz the new manager cut down breaks, made them eat while working, got angry when things didn’t go their way, and was too busy climbing the corporate ladder. So your staff quits, but instead of trying to take lessons from these actions you instead force what is left to push onward. Never once considering their well being, mental health, or if realistically they can handle it. At some point Rhythm Doctor even addresses AI and how robots are sent in to take after jobs humans should be running. With a once efficient workplace. becoming dysfunctional. It is a game that manages to say a lot. Again, it’s a game with quirky uplifting humor and feels aimed towards younger players & audiences. Yet, it says this stuff and I’m happy it does so. 

We have simplicity at its best here, but just because it’s a well executed idea doesn’t mean there aren’t any flaws. I mentioned there’s tutorials at the start of almost every level, and a few players will get annoyed by this. There are a ton of flashing colors and lights, and similar to Everhood this is not a game I can easily recommend if you are a person whose eyes get hurt easily by this. Then you got the crazy visual and technical effects during the boss stages. Where the game shifts the screen around. Sometimes the screen shrinks, enlarges, or vanishes. Sometimes the screen stutters or glitches, and that is intentional. The screen zooms around and exits the outlines of the computer. It’s cool, but at the same time this is why the boss stages that quite a bit to master. All video games use visuals and information to tell you what to do, or give an idea of what to do. If a game isn’t showing you information well then it makes it harder to act accordingly. This game tests your ability on doing what’s right without having clear signing, and at times it can get a bit annoying. Knowing you failed because you either didn’t keep up, or there was too much going on to the point you couldn’t read the room. The game does have accessibility options that allow you to turn this stuff off, so I guess this point of critique can be negated. Aside from all that I can safely say Rhythm Doctor is a game I strongly recommend. It’s not long and personally I don’t expect to come back to it the same way I do with Rift of The NecroDancer or Unbeatable. I had a fantastic time despite everything and no matter how hard things got I kept coming back. There’s a strong foundation and good enough writing to make me care. Easily sandwiching between the aforementioned two as one of the best. In the end I am gonna have to give Rhythm Doctor a 9.5/10 for being superb.

9.5/10, Superb