Departing from developer Brace Yourself Games’ usual dungeon crawling discotheques, Rift of the NecroDancer is a more traditional rhythm game that innovates on some of the genre’s best ideas. With a foot-tappingly entrancing soundtrack from a team of talented composers and musicians, its creative riffs on stalwart rhythm game modes from classics like Guitar Hero and Rhythm Heaven — as well as loads of cool extras — make it a sort of “Greatest Hits” box set for rhythm games as a whole. Even when it occasionally goes off-tempo, I regularly had a hard time putting Rift of the NecroDancer down as I squashed slimes and skeletons while bobbing my head along to its pulsing beats, always striving towards a better score.
Before you can even start fighting monsters, Rift of the NecroDancer gives you all the tools you need to succeed. First, it tests your setup to determine your video and audio delay so you don’t fall victim to the possible milliseconds of pause between your headphones, inputs, or certain displays that could make or break a high score attempt. This level of accommodation goes a long way toward removing unnecessary barriers to entry, and makes it clear that your success will always be determined by your own ability rather than seemingly arbitrary variables beyond your control such as input lag. It’s a subtle touch that I really appreciated as I switched between devices, displays, and audio outputs.
After a brief tutorial, you can then either run wild in Rift of the NecroDancer’s 35-song tracklist or hop into a brief story campaign that sees series protagonist Cadence and her friends transported from the world of Crypt of the NecroDancer into one resembling our own. This makes for some cheeky fish-out-of-water moments about reckoning with how a person from a fantasy world would react to the woes of day-to-day modern life, but it mostly just serves as a vehicle for Rift of the NecroDancer’s main mode, Rhythm Rifts.
Rhythm Rifts will look familiar to anyone who has shouldered stringless, plastic guitars to rock out to licensed music in Guitar Hero: enemies (which replace color-coded notes) come down three lanes, each linked to a directional input. Every beat of the current song brings them one step further down their lane, and when they line up with a marker at the bottom, you need to press a button in the corresponding direction to squash them in their tracks. It’s a simple but effective and, engaging setup.
Unlike the notes in rhythm games like Rock Band, however, most monsters don’t just sit and wait for their turn on the way down to you. From the Red Harpy, who rushes you down quickly but folds in one hit, to the Black Skeleton, which takes two hits before running back up the lane to go down again, Rhythm Rifts aren’t only about hitting the right button on the beat. Instead, Rift of the NecroDancer keeps you on your toes by throwing legions of varied enemy types at you. It makes each song take on an almost bullet-hell-like feeling as you do your best to keep bad guys from getting past you.
This clever marriage of Crypt of the NecroDancer’s monster-bashing roots with Guitar Hero’s tried-and-true formula brings some fun evolution to well-worn territory. Mix in challenging surprises, like traps that alter how some monsters attack or move, and Rift of the NecroDancer will keep you in that idyllic intensity between a blissful, glazed-eye flow and frantically trying to regain your footing as you get beaten down by the beat. And if you do find yourself swimming in monsters, you’ll eventually get knocked out and need to try the song over again.
Cadence can take up to 10 consecutive hits before she loses, but most songs will feed you healing items in the form of food to help keep you in the fight for longer. And once you hit a long enough combo streak, you can also fill up a meter to activate Vibe Power, which makes Cadence invincible for a brief period. It’s a helpful get-out-of-jail-free option if you need to keep your head above water during a tough riff.
But that’s not all! Rift of the NecroDancer also features minigames that feel ripped right out of Rhythm Heaven, down to their cute art style and cheeky animations, which offer fun, less involved diversions from the intense Rhythm Rifts. Each situated at some point within the roughly 5-hour story mode, these minigames range from hitting yoga poses with Crypt of the NecroDancer’s playable pacificist Dove, to helping out The NecroDancer himself during a lunch rush at his fast food day job. And just like the Rhythm Rifts, all five of these minigames have extra objectives to grind for, giving them some decent replayability, though the limited selection and simpler gameplay compared to Rhythm Rifts meant I didn’t ultimately spend as much time with them. My favorite has to be this funny-looking minigame where Cadence dresses up as a giant mole for a children’s TV show and has to dance to a rap about moles. It’s certainly goofy, but that song rips.
Throughout the course of the story, you’ll also take on a handful of boss battles. These stages nicely shake things up again, kind of resembling a paired-back version of Osu! or Elite Beat Agents with a little bit of Punch-Out! thrown in for good measure. Circles will pop up in various parts of the screen with a ring closing in around each, requiring you to press a specific corresponding button just as the ring touches the outside of the circle. Purple buttons have you dodging a boss’ attack, while gold ones are opportunities for Cadence to strike back.
These fights are super well-animated and universally boast some great tracks that are worth the price of admission already, but the actual action offers something distinct enough from the other two modes to bring me back on its own. That’s partially because score and rank here are based on how quickly you can take down your foe. Perfect hits are still as crucial here as ever, but they’re a little easier to land, moving success away from timing alone. Instead, these boss fights put a focus on pattern recognition, with each boss having specific cycles that can make it easier or harder to win a fight quickly depending on how and when you strike.
This unexpected mash-up of styles represents exactly what makes Rift of the NecroDancer such a great sampler platter of rhythm game modes that still consistently innovates on what’s already been done. Taking a wider scope pays dividends by giving you more to choose from – for something chill and casual, ry out a minigame; For a more conventionally intense, arcade-like experience, try to best your scores in Rhythm Rifts; Or, if you want something a bit more out there, the boss battles provide a different enough flow. I liked jumping between them all, but the more classic Rhythm Rifts were definitely my favorite, and I’ve lost a lot of sleep chasing down high scores with a vengeance.
I really enjoyed this pick-and-choose smorgasbord of different options, but this wide focus does trade in the laser-focused, album-like nature of previous NecroDancer games for the piecemeal scope of a “Greatest Hits” box set. Although each song is masterfully composed and designed into compelling, memorable fights, Rift of the NecroDancer as a full package is missing a sense of cohesion at times, prioritizing a wide berth of ideas and choices rather than one singularly sharpened direction.
Again mimicking box sets and best-of compilations, it is positively packed with cool features and extras to dive into. Each song has a special challenge attached to it, ranging from only counting perfect notes toward your score to sudden death challenges that give you only one HP. And if you’ve already mastered one of your favorite songs but want to keep trying for a higher score, each track has a remixed version with different monster and attack patterns.
And if that still wasn’t enough for you, Rift of the NecroDancer’s community has already created a handful of custom songs in the Steam Workshop for you to download, play, and master. It’s so cool to see such in-depth support for a game like this at launch, and it’s been fun to dive into fanmade takes on other video game bangers like Megalovania from Undertale.
Of course, Rift of the NecroDancer’s baked-in songs are incredible on their own. Series composer Danny Baranowsky and talented composers/VGM YouTubers like Jules Conroy (aka Familyjules) and Alex Moulaka have delivered an exceptional soundtrack. Without it, everything else would fall apart, no matter how enthralling the design. My favorite tracks were the bluesy homage to Chess Records called King’s Ruse and Progenitor, a metal ballad that remixes Crypt of the NecroDancer’s theme. As the beating heart of Rift of the NecroDancer, this soundtrack delivers diverse, catchy tunes that gave me a reason to feverishly grind for a better score as I bobbed my head to the beat whether I was squashing monsters, fighting bosses, or doing yoga.
