Published , by Morgan Shaver
Published , by Morgan Shaver
Rhythm Sprout is a deliciously addictive rhythm game from the talented indie team SURT and publisher tinyBuild. It follows an intrepid little onion named Sprout who gets roped into helping King Brock solve a variety of problems plaguing his Vegetable Kingdom. Or more accurately, problems affecting King Brock such as finding his missing daughter… alive, preferably.
As the story progresses, its unique brand of humor and colorful charm does wonders to help ease some of the frustration that can arise from the intentional, ever-increasing challenge of Rhythm Sprout’s gameplay. If you’re a rhythm game pro, there’s plenty of complexity in Rhythm Sprout’s short, yet memorable campaign to keep you busy along with unlockable bonus content.
If you’re a newcomer to rhythm games, you may struggle at times to make it through to the end especially towards the latter half of the game’s campaign. That said, no matter where you sit in regards to skill level, Rhythm Sprout is a title that does a commendable job in rewarding player patience, encouraging you to stick it out even if that means replaying a level several times just to get past it.
Rhythm Sprout has a bright, breezy story that follows the misadventures of Sprout, the Chosen Onion. Called upon by King Brock to serve as a sort of knight-errant for the Vegetable Kingdom, Sprout is tasked with shimmying, sliding, and sword-slicing his way through a wealth of colorful levels and foes.
The campaign gives Sprout two main goals: vanquishing the supposedly evil King Sugar Daddy and his invading Army of Sugary Sweets, and tracking down the whereabouts of King Brock’s wayward daughter, Princess Cauliflower. As you work to accomplish these tasks, you’ll meet a delightful cast of characters along the way that make progressing through each level feel rewarding.
I enjoyed how the characters all seem to bounce between amusement at Sprout’s gullibility and naivety, to horror and shock at his prowess and ruthlessness in battle, to seeking him out as a potential friend (then promptly denying they were doing this in the first place). It tells you a lot about who Sprout is as a character, even with Sprout taking on the role of silent protagonist.
At times, you are asked to speak for Sprout by inputting answers to certain questions, but these almost always amount to a simple “Yes” or “No” and regardless of which you choose, the outcome largely remains the same. Despite aspects like this that feel a little half-baked, the campaign never ceases to feel cheeky, cute, and fun to follow.
Even if it never elicits a chuckle from you, Rhythm Sprout offers something truly unique that’s sure to make you smile at the very least. Not to mention, the campaign is more of a complementary bonus to what makes Rhythm Sprout truly worthwhile… the gameplay.
As its name suggests, Rhythm Sprout is a rhythm game through and through, and an impressive one at that. To progress through the 20 levels of the main campaign, players need to input buttons that correspond with colorful tiles along the ground. As they do this, Sprout moves forward and at various points encounters enemies where the music and inputs switch up pattern wise to be more evocative of a combat encounter, not only in terms of inputting movement but dodging as well.
Everything is integrated seamlessly, with the limited number of tricky-to-time inputs feeling reminiscent of other deceptively simple rhythm games like Taiko no Tatsujin. I played Rhythm Sprout on Xbox using an Xbox controller and noticed that inputting one note using buttons like A and another note using the D-pad felt along the aforementioned lines of Taiko no Tatsujin.
Shaking things up even further is the addition of a dodge button which on Xbox is input using LB or RB. The pacing of each level is dynamically different based on the music that accompanies it. In the Winter Woods level, for example, you'll find chill lo-fi beats with graciously laid-back pacing. Later on, that pacing is dialed up in intensity to present more of a challenge to the player, as seen with mini-boss type encounters with characters like Count Arelle.
Interestingly, the Count Arelle battle boasts upbeat electronic music that feels a lot like something you’d hear in Crypt of the NecroDancer, particularly in the vicinity of that game’s Shopkeeper. If that’s not enough to pique your interest, other genres you can look forward to in Rhythm Sprout include disco, EDM, Drum’n’Bass, hip-hop, light elements (more reference wise than anything) of K-Pop, and even metal.
A few highlights for me include levels like Fruitopia that’ll have your head bopping and foot tapping from start to finish, and a level in the game’s Prequel called Mrs. Chili which gives off shades of Megalovania from Undertale but dialed up to 11 in a heavy metal sort of way. If you’re a long-time rhythm game fan hungry for something especially difficult, I wish you the best of luck with the Mrs. Chili level, it’s absolutely brutal.
Speaking of the game’s Prequel, Rhythm Sprout rewards players for making it through levels and earning stars (either by hitting a target number of notes without missing, or score thresholds) with unlockable Bonus Levels and cosmetics for Sprout including outfits and weapons. In total, Rhythm Sprout offers 20 levels in its main campaign, 5 levels in its Prequel, and 5 unlockable Bonus levels for a total of 30 levels.
It’s noticeably short, but even so, there’s plenty to do long after you beat the campaign when factoring in things like needing to replay levels to unlock more stars, and the different ways in which you can approach each level. For newcomers, there’s a “Beginner Mode” that can be toggled on which makes it so you don’t need to do as much back-and-forth with the notes, instead letting you input anything you want for most of them with the exception of dodging which remains unchanged.
And for those seeking more of a challenge, there are other modifiers that can be toggled on or off such as Turbo which increases the speed of a level, Mirror which flips the notes to the left side and inverts the inputs, and Randomizer which is great when it comes to challenging a player’s muscle memory by switching up the notes and making them less predictable.
With the disparity between the modifiers that are present, Rhythm Sprout once again feels like it’s tuned more for die-hard rhythm game fans than those looking to dip their toes into the genre. In the future, it’d be nice to see the addition of more beginner-friendly features found in other rhythm titles, like being able to slow the speed of a level down a notch.
Rhythm Sprout excels at what it’s trying to do, and serves as one of the more refreshing, no-nonsense rhythm titles that I’ve played over the last few years. That said, Rhythm Sprout is something that’ll almost certainly resonate more with rhythm game fanatics than it will with newcomers. As someone who considers themselves obsessed with games of this genre, I was hooked on Rhythm Sprout from start to finish and able to breeze through the entirety of it (Prequel and Bonus Levels included) quite quickly. Surprisingly so, in fact.
With this, I can’t help but wish the game’s campaign was an hour or two longer, with there being a number of opportunities where it could’ve been extended such as after the surprise twist with one of the game's characters. Honestly, the reveal that happens could’ve and probably should’ve been dragged out a bit more; even if only for the opportunity to have more hilariously named “Daddy” levels like Daddy Elevator and Daddy Club.
Nitpicks aside, Rhythm Sprout serves as a brilliantly executed delight in the rhythm game genre that delivers an experience as polished as its AAA competitors despite being a debut title from a small indie team. Developer SURT should be incredibly proud of what they've accomplished here, and I can't wait to see even more from them in the future.
This review is based on an Xbox digital code provided by the publisher. Rhythm Sprout will be available on Wednesday, February 1 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.