Thank you EvilCoGames for sending us this game to review!

Terrorhythm takes place in a society that prohibits sound. As you blast your music in rebellion various security drones will attack you to restore the silence. Fighting them is easy enough with the press of a button, but can you do it to the beat of the background music?

As of this preview there are eight levels that can be unlocked in the campaign or played in any order in the custom mode. The included songs are great, but if you really want to use your own music it’s possible in the custom mode. The attacks must be timed with the beats per minute of the music track, and the faster the beats per minute (BPM), the harder it gets. The campaign songs start at 130 BPM and go up from there. If you’re really good you can double the speed of the songs for a real challenge.

For controls you can use a keyboard, gamepad, or even DDR pads if you have any laying around.  The up arrow will boost your attack which some enemies require while others are immune to it.  The down arrow will increase your attack radius.  The left and right arrows are used for attacking enemies in that direction.  

There are four difficulty levels: relaxed, normal, hard, and terror. The relaxed mode lets you play through songs without taking any damage. If you want to compete on the leaderboards and increase your rank, you’ll need to play at a harder difficulty though. In the hard and terror difficulty levels the enemies are harder to hit and require more precision. In terror mode, you don’t start off with much health/signal and there are no opportunities to replenish it.

I preferred playing on the normal difficulty level and appreciated the health and weapon drops from enemies. There’s a fair amount of weapon variety including discs, scythes, and katanas. There are fifty-seven Steam achievements and some of them are based off of weapon kills. Despite killing numerous foes with weapons, I haven’t been getting credit for it. The other Steam achievements seem to be working fine though.

The online leaderboards are a nice touch and I won’t be threatening too many people with my mediocre performance. I like how you get placed on the leaderboards even if you don’t finish the song before dying.

I really enjoy the soundtrack for this game and hope that it becomes available for purchase soon. There’s a DLC placeholder for it on the Steam store page, but it’s not available yet. The price is not yet revealed either.

The 2D art style is colorful and unique. I’m not a huge fan of the demon mask the main character is wearing, but there’s no option to customize or change it.

So far, this game is fun, but there’s some room for improvement when it comes to optimization and variety. I look forward to watching the progress of this title and can’t wait for the finished product. If you enjoy rhythm and fighting games you should add Terrorhythm to your wish list and pick it up when it goes on sale.