Thank you BitFinity for sending us a review code!

Tadpole Treble was successfully Kickstarted in 2013 and came to Steam and the Wii U in 2016. The game was well received and has rave reviews. I must admit that I haven’t played the original game, but the Switch version is very charming and fun to play. The encore edition offers new unlockables and an additional stage.

The main game is the Adventure Mode and after naming your character, you’ll be shown the tutorial which will teach you the basics. After the tutorial, the main character (a tadpole named Baton) gets separated from her family and whisked away by a stork. Your goal is to bring her back home.

Each level is literal sheet music from the background music. You’ll have to dodge landmine notes and collect purple bubbles, food, and health power-ups. Every level has one hundred purple bubbles and they’re used as in-game currency to unlock various game extras. There’s also a hidden fly in each level and if you can bring those back to the merchant frog, you’ll be rewarded.

A single playthrough will only take a couple of hours. Between improving your scores and unlocking everything there is a fair amount of replay value. If you’re looking for a challenge, try the Concerto Mode which is a single-life marathon of all thirteen levels. There’s a built-in editor that lets you easily design your own levels too.

Visually this title is very colorful and charming. There’s a wide variety of level backdrops and enemies to avoid. You’ll have to dodge piranhas, crabs, lightning, trout, tongues of thirsty animals and frogs and much more. One of the levels has old-school pixelated graphics, but most of them look good in HD. Unfortunately, this game didn’t stream too well as I encountered stutters on my Vidbox video capture device. When I wasn’t streaming and played in the handheld mode, it ran perfectly fine.

The jazzy background music is great and some of it has singing which is top notch. Though the soundtrack doesn’t seem to be available for purchase, you can listen to the songs in the music player which can be accessed from the main menu.

Morally this game is pretty clean. There’s cartoon violence as the tadpole’s constantly being chased and nipped at by various creatures. As Baton’s health bar gets close to being depleted, she’ll blink red. Once she runs out of health, you’ll have to start the level over from the beginning. There are no checkpoints.

The original game, Tadpole Treble is on Steam for $4.99. The Encore edition sells on Nintendo’s eShop for $8.99 normally and I have seen it on sale for $6.99. It’s definitely worth picking up if you’re a fan of rhythm games.