Orgarhythm Message Board

Orgarhythm drops today! Don those headphones because you’re going to want to turn up the volume on this one. To make this easy for the uninitiated, the curious, or those of you scratching their heads, here’s the bottom line on XSEED’s latest PS Vita offering.

Music! Strategy! The unholy union of rhythm and little tribal guys that you can send into battle! Orgarhythm is a hybrid rhythm/real-time strategy game where you direct your own personal army by using the touchscreen to keep the beat. Destruction and creation vie for dominance on this fledgling world. You play as the God of Light, boogieing through each level in your quest to take down your brother, the God of Darkness, and you do it with style.

Orgarhythm employs a flawless use of PS Vita’s sweet touchscreen feature. The controls are very simple, the interface beautifully responsive, and your ability to direct your soldiers, absolute. Step 1: Tap the screen; Step 2: Tap again to select an elemental soldier; Step 3: Tap to choose an attack; and Step 4: drag your finger to send him out into the field to do a dance-off with the enemies trying to bar your way. Remember that: Tap -> Tap -> Tap -> Drag. Easy!

Earth (yellow) > Water (blue) > Fire (red)

If you can keep the beat you’ll also power up, build your army and add new layers of music as you play. Strategy also comes into play when you face off against your similarly color-coded foes. Orgarhythm uses a paper-rock-scissors system where certain elements are strong against one color and weaker against another. So in order to maximize your advantage when sending troops off to battle, your best bet is to deploy whatever element opposes the kind of enemy you’re facing.

This kind of elemental advantage (and disadvantage!) becomes very important to master when you get ready to face the level bosses. These titanic foes are often huge, can switch up their own elemental power at will or command hordes of elemental foes, and are always unforgiving.

(For a bit of size comparison, you are the jam between their toes. The bread crumbs under their mighty heels.)

You’ll dance through 12 stages with insane bosses, ranking and online leaderboards, extreme data tracking that records every possible detail of your play in the game, ad-hoc co-op and versus modes (2 players), and a mean AI that will switch up enemy tactics when you replay levels. And in addition to an already awesome original soundtrack of techno, rock and club beats, we also plan on releasing DLC of fan-created music!

Anyway, as I mentioned in the last blog post, Orgarhythm is a weird game, but one worth your attentionif you like rhythm games with a twist. I also plan on destroying you all on the leaderboards, so if you think you’ve got some chops when it comes to music games, challenge me. ;)

Orgarhythm is a game that’s going to puzzle a lot of people. It’s certainly not a premise that I’ve ever seen before, much less played. In short, Orgarhythm is the marriage of music and strategy — and some very nice touch controls. It’s a game where you march to the beat, literally.

The premise is simple: There are two brothers, one that embodies creation, the other destruction. Together they settle on a planet and set about pumping out hordes of mini-tribal dudes who seem to really enjoy dancing. The God of Light (the brother who thinks growing stuff is neat and probably listens to Jack Johnson) is making great progress spawning kittens, erecting maypoles or whatever kind of idyllic stuff you might imagine a sparkling deity likes, Meanwhile, the other God (of Darkness) would rather just break all of his brother’s toys. Understandably vexed, the God of Light decides it’s time for a dance off and begins his slow-mo march to battle.

That’s where you come in. Using the touch screen controls on your PS Vita, you’ll direct the God of Light’s backup dancers and tap-tap-tap your way through enemies. The key controlling concept of the game is something called the tri-tap. Tri-tapping is done by tapping the screen to the beat whenever one of three sets of icons comes up.

• Tap the God of Light – This will bring up the first set of command icons.
• Select one of the groups of your color-coded minions (According to the data tracker in the game I am apparently really partial to yellow)
• Select an attack – Strikers, Archers, Catapults, Sacrifice (ßBOOM TROOPS)
• Then, drag your finger on the screen to send your troops off in that direction
• So: tap-tap-tap + draaaaaaaaaaaaag

As you’re doing all this, a variety of tribal, techno and off-world-sounding music will be pulsating in the background to give you cues on when to tap. So tap-tap-tap and drag to the beat. Easy.
Well, okay, that probably doesn’t sound easy for a rhythm game, but having played through it, I assure you that you’ll hit your stride very quickly and doing the tri-tap will come naturally. Words are wind, though, so check out this quick gameplay video to get a feel for the beat.

This also wouldn’t be a rhythm strategy game without some tactics. Those come into play with the game’s color-coded troops (on both sides), who employ a paper-rock-scissors system.

Using this system, you’ll want to send off the appropriate troops to tackle the appropriate enemy. The type of attack you select is also pretty important (getting into complicated-sounding territory again, I know…), but once you get the hang of the battle system you’ll feel the joy of what it’s like to be the conductor of a very violent orchestra.

There’s a lot more depth to this game than I’ve gone into, but I know what you guys really want to know.

Is the music good?

Yes. It suits the game perfectly and as you tri-tap successfully, you’ll actually add layers of extra sound to that music. It’s pretty cool. You can check out the tunes here. We’re also looking to add more music to that repertoire, so stay tuned for more info on that, all you budding musicians.

Is this the game for me?

If you like rhythm games, are into music at all or appreciate quirky gameplay, then I think you’ll like this game. Multiple difficulties, unforgiving bosses, smooth controls and unlockable content all make an addictive package, plus the in-game data tracker makes it deliciously possible to obsess over the most minute details. There are also co-op and versus modes to keep you entertained.

Will this game increase my sex appeal?

Oh, absolutely. I would not lie about this. With a title like Orgarhythm, how can it not?

Anyway, that’s just a brief look at our upcoming game. It’s music, it’s strategy, it’s unabashedly weird, and it really doesn’t do the game justice for me to just talk about, so I hope you guys’ll check out some of the gameplay videos and listen to the music. I think you’ll be intrigued. For more details, follow us on Facebook and check out the Japanese official site.

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Fight off the bad guys to an epic soundtrack in Orgarhythm.