What Makes Good Rhythm Game UX?

Rhythm games depend on good UX. RPGs with terrible menus are fine. Janky shooters sell millions of copies all the time. But rhythm games with bad UX can be dead in the water. Building a competent user interface for a rhythm game isn't all rocket science, though. Let’s go over some basic must-haves for making a rhythm game UX, and some cautionary tales of games that didn’t hit the cue.

Featuring:
Parappa the Rapper
Vib Ribbon
Dance Dance Revolution
Rhythm Heaven Fever
Guitar Hero
Rock Band
A Dance of Fire and Ice
Beat Saber
Hi-Fi Rush
No Straight Roads
Crypt of the Necrodancer
BPM: Bullets Per Minute
Mad Rat Dead
Melatonin and others briefly

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#gamedesign #hifirush #dancedancerevolution

[JM-dqxn]

I still can't get over how HiFi Rush's audio-visual feedback effectively doubles as metronome - there's hi-hat sound when you dash on beat, a "hey" shout when you attack on beat, the "crowd" shouting when you keep S combo in a fight, etc. And even non-gameplay elements are synced - when Chai's running - he steps on the beat, when he's idle he snaps his fingers, when enemies move - it's on beat, when they're telegraphing / attacking / being staggered - their animation is also on beat.

[N]

As a reminder, NOT ONLY RHYTM GAMES or hybrids can take lessons of this. A lot of games who use QTE frequently need to understand those kind of rythm elements, most notably the visual interface. They luckily have more leniance than regular decks due to being minigames instead of main game, but still need to be understood.

[stardf]

As a rhythm game fan, I will say this: if your game involves some form of scrolling notes, one of the most useful things you can add is an option to change the scroll speed. Increasing the scroll speed actually makes it easier to read harder and denser note charts, since your brain has effectively less information on the screen at any given time to work with. Giving more granular scroll speed options is even better, since each player has their own "sweet spot" at which their reflexes and pattern recognition are at their best.

[Cametek.CamelliaOfficial]

As one of the composers who spend a lot of time creating music for their games, whether they are new or experienced, it is absolutely fantastic to see developers create something that players can easily enjoy with a nice UX. Thank you so much!

[Bluelink]

I wanna shoutout Theatrythm Final Bar Line for the absolutely astounding design they put on the stages. It would have been understandable if Lab Zero made some stages similar to each other because there are over 400 of them, but each one is a love letter to the song it belongs to, with so many having unique backgrounds and all of them having a carefully curated set of enemies that will make fans of the game beam when recognizing how they managed to re-enact moments for them with the very simple presentation. From stuff like how Crisis Core's "The Price of Freedom" has you battling an endless army of Shinra troopers on a desert, to how "A Long Fall - The Primals Version" from the Deluxe Edition has both the background and the chart itself reference the massively popular dance meme that the song spawned in social media, the sheer love put into the game elevates it into the tribute to the franchise's history it is meant to be.

[ChaosTheSalamander]

About beat sabre. I’ve done levels before on first tries after just kind of figuring out the ideal way boxes can be laid out. I call this “the trust”. The blocks are *usually* arranged so that each block is easily swiped where your sword is last used. When you swipe down on one block, you can almost be certain that the next block will need to be swiped up by that same sword, allowing for a more smooth, rhythmic dance that the game wants you to feel. So, “you can’t cut what you can’t see” isn’t a great way of saying it because it’s not that you NEED to see, you mostly have to *feel* at higher difficulties

[AtomicSuperMe]

Not really a rhythm game guy (but I do enjoy like rhythm based mini games in stuff), but loved hifi rush. was super fun trying to get on the beat and always felt very satisfying when you did pull stuff off

[rasmusdegn]

Honestly with how individualistic a lot of Rhythm game UX-design is you could probably do an entire episode of Good Design, Bad Design just about Rhythm games.

[Ludician]

Just beat Everhood last night. Very timely video.
Rhythm games do something that few other genres can - that flow state that hits when the soundtrack is killer, the difficulty is cranking, and you just tap into a transcendent place of being. It can be very emotional, and a great climactic moment in a game.

[BiFoxxo]

I'd like to make note of the QoL changes that are present in a lot of arcade rhythm games. Things like background dim and hitsounds help a lot with a game's readability, as well as having extensive options for note speed, and even hiding part of the playfield to help your brain parse the notes better. The latter options are mostly for people at higher level, but still are notable in how they help with a game being more readable.

[roqmz]

Someone actually mentioned mad rat dead when talking about great rhythm hybrids. Thank you, more people need to play it.

[brockmckelvey]

Accessibility in Rhythm Hybrids is extremely important!
My favorite character in Crypt of the Necrodancer is The Bard because he lets you ignore the rhythm/timing mechanic completely, so you don't have to stress

[TaroITG]

Ayo this video is really well researched :D
I'm happy to see a mainstream channel using terms like "sightreading" and referencing LIFE4, haha.
(And thanks for featuring our game!)

[terracannon]

Rhythm games can be fairly compact, so a lot of them are on mobile. Multiple anime or voice actor-based idol series have it (Utaprince, Ensemble Stars) but my favorite is Hypnosis Mic, which is constantly updating and improving the UI as well as timing. The rush with some of the songs is great because the timing and placement of the buttons on the screen works with the beat/melody of the song.

[BiggBossChanel]

I'm honestly very sad you didn't even mention mobile rythm games, there's a huge market in eastern rythm games that evolve the genre in impressive ways. The UI's continue to reinvent the way you use the touch screens in those games impresively, they even make the effort to make their regulat UI part of the story telling by shifting it around and changing the way you approach it, sometimes they go for a straight up mind blowing experience like the april's fools charts in arcaea, there's really a big discussion to have in this type of games and I'm sad there's no mainstream creators willing to cover them.

[longdo]

8:31 Shoutout to Craft Eggs rhythm games (Bang Dream, D4DJ, Project Sekai) for having speed adjuster allowing you to choose between faster notes with larger gap for more reaction heavy play and slower notes with smaller gap for speed reader (albeit the overall speed is still the same)

[saellanya]

Kinda surprised to not see Musedash in here. The only rhythm game that made me stick around. Heck I'm now able to clean some of the highest difficulty sheets at 85%+ accuracy, while at first I wasn't even able to finish a easy sheet

[Masterdramon]

As far as hybrids go, I've always been incredibly fond of the rhythm levels in Rayman Legends. Interacting with them AS a rhythm game is totally optional - you could turn the sound off on your TV and just play it as a normal platformer, and you'd be fine - but the gamefeel is transformed entirely if you time your inputs appropriately. It's honestly difficult to put into words just how satisfying it is to time each jump and slap to the beat of goblins singing "Black Betty, " or a mariachi version of "Eye of the Tiger, " and sail through the level in a few minutes of uninterrupted flow.

I even liked that the higher-difficulty versions were "just" remixes which messed with the visual interface in various ways, precisely because it turned engaging with the rhythm aspect from fun to mandatory. With the screen glitching out or flipping around every few seconds, keeping to the beat becomes essential to succeeding as you no longer have the ordinary crutch of visual cues at all times.

I know I wasn't the only player who walked away wishing Ubisoft would take a break from all the same-y open worlds and expand this concept to a full game.

[jtiza]

The LIFE4 shoutout! Never expected that on one of the best game design channels on Youtube. Much appreciated!
-Tiza and the LIFE4 staff

[UltimusTerminus]

Thanks so much for showing Guitaroo Man for a bit there, that is one of my favourite games and I feel it should be talked way more. It made me a Rhythm game fun back then. Completing Master Mode there felt so great, it is one of my proudest gaming achievements.