Developer Floppy Club launched their musical puzzle game Rytmos on PC and console earlier this year, and now this week it’s made its way to iOS devices where I feel like it’s probably most at home on the touchscreen. It’s an important distinction that this is a musical puzzle game and not a rhythm game, as you aren’t playing to the beat of the music or being scored on your accuracy. This is more like a puzzle game where the music is integrated in a really wonderful way, and it also serves as a celebration of some pretty uncommon forms of music and the instruments that are used to make it.
Rytmos is split up into 7 solar systems that are each based on a certain style of music. Within each solar system there are 3 planets, and each planet is focused on a specific type of instrument. The planets are cube-shaped and so have 6 different sides each, and on each side is where you’ll find a puzzle to solve. Each solved side introduces a new sound, and as you solve more sides more sounds come into play, eventually creating a full song once all sides are solved. It’s very fun to see the music broken down in this way and makes you appreciate every note and beat that goes into creating an entire song.
The puzzles themselves are kind of like block-sliding puzzles where you draw a line from a starting point and must create a loop across the surface and end right back where you started. There are nodes in each level that will trigger a part of each song, and to earn Gold on a level you’ll need to incorporate each node into your line loop. Hazards, moving objects, and the layouts of each level make this much trickier than it might seem at first, but thankfully there’s no time limit or any reason to rush so you’re free to try as long as you like to figure out that Gold solution. Or you can settle for less than Gold and simply move on, coming back later to conquer the Gold if you wish.
I think that’s what I like so much about Rytmos, it is a very chill game to play and in a lot of ways feels just as much like a musical toy than a game. Some of the solutions to capture every node are very clever and satisfying to figure out, and it’s fun to do it against the backdrop of all this interesting music being created. Beating a planet also means you unlock a little interactive version of that planet’s specific insturment which you can play and even record little clips of if you want, further adding to the toy-like nature of Rytmos. This one is free to check out the first planet with a one-time $5 IAP to unlock the full game and I highly suggest checking out at least the free portion if you’re into unique interactive musical experiences.
