Thank you ARTE France for the free review code!

Vectronom is described as a “psychedelic” rhythm platformer, though it’s got a bit of twist to it. Like many rhythm games, there are lots of differing colors—the entire background changes with every beat, and certain “circles” around areas like the finish also change the color of any object within them, all with the techno music that’s used throughout the game. Indeed, the game itself warns you right upfront to take frequent breaks, and I can see it being overstimulating to many people’s senses if played for a long period at once. However, with most rhythm platformer games, objects come at you and your character has to jump or slide to the beat. In this game, the entire stage itself changes with each beat.

To further explain this, it’s best to state up front what the goal of each Vectronom stage is. You’re a slightly stretchy 3D cube, and the rest of the stage is filled with 3D static cubes (both of the normal and bouncy variety—the latter can bounce you up and ahead like a small trampoline) or spikes, which will of course destroy your cube if you land on them. If you step off the world (or if the world disappears beneath you), your cube will plunge into the void and you’ll respawn. Your goal is to get to the “finish area” of the current screen, which is made more apparent by the circle of differing colors appearing around it. Unlike basically every other platformer game, though, in Vectronom you do not jump, you simply move. Up, down, left, right are the only controls here, and each press of the key will move you forward one cube’s length at a time. As the main beat of the level continues, certain cubes in the level will disappear or reappear, as will spikes. They start you off with relatively little changing with the beat, but by the end, woo! There aren’t really any “safe spaces” between the beginning and end platforms.

To show just how much a level can change, included with this review are three screenshots. They are all of the same level, just at different beats. Mind you, each “section” can last for multiple beats or only one. The challenge isn’t making sure you can make your jump or dodge an incoming obstacle; rather, it’s all about figuring out the patterns and then moving your cube along with them. It seems simple, but many of the later levels in the relatively short campaign have rapidly-changing levels where the available platforms appear to have little correlation to each other. The magic of Vectronom comes from discovering these patterns and moving along with them. The cubes don’t slowly disappear or reappear, mind you; they abruptly pop out of existence or back into it instantly, meaning often you will have to take “leaps of faith” knowing/hoping that the next beat will put a platform in front of your bouncy cube as it hops forward. Once you get the pattern and are moving completely with the beat, it’s an absolutely marvelous feeling, like the world itself is laying down before you. It’s a fun feeling that I’ve rarely gotten from any type of platform game—usually you have to move your character through obstacles in the world, but get it right and it’s the other way around here.

If you just go through the base game from start to finish, it won’t take you particularly long—it largely depends on your skill of course, but for most players of average skill it should only take you about 3 hours to get through the main campaign, which is composed of 31 levels made up of three segments each. Die and you’ll be transported to the beginning of the current segment, which—last level excluded—is never particularly long. Thus, even though you’ll fail—a lot (I got an “achievement” for dying 1,000 times before I even completed the game), the checkpoints are thankfully pretty forgiving.

There are aspects to lengthen the campaign for completionists; there are some highlighted, smaller cubes scattered throughout each level that are essentially optional pickups. You get a badge at the end of each level for getting all of the pickups; there are also two additional optional badges. One—getting to the end without dying once—is self-explanatory, and is usually the most difficult to get. The last badge is called “Perfect Tempo”, which means you can only move your cube with the beat. (If you look at your cube at the start, it wiggles slightly with the beat, making it easier to tell at what frequency you need to move.) Every time your cube hops forward, it will flash brighter briefly if you’re going along with the beat so you can keep tabs on your progress in this respect. The game gives you a LITTLE leeway in that you can miss a step or two, but much more than that and you’ll have to start over to get Perfect Tempo—it’s more difficult than it seems, as the game can be quite exacting here.

What vastly improves the value of this game is that there’s a level editor. It can take a little getting used to what keys do which—especially since when playing the game, you only use the arrow keys—but after that brief learning curve, the editor is easy to use, and it takes relatively little time to create something. You can use one of the game’s many tracks, or make your own; the game says it’s compatible with MIDI keyboards. Once you then beat the level to prove it’s playable, you can upload your finished level to their server for others to play; as of the time of this review, there’s literally hundreds of levels uploaded, thus greatly lengthening the time you can play this game and still see new material. (In case you’re interested and have the game, I created a level called “Frogger”. Level code AKNMK2.)

Given that the graphics are just 3D cubes and triangles, there isn’t really much to wow over (though the resolution is pretty high). The psychedelic feel of the colors and the fairly rapid changing of them is what sets the game apart. That said, if the colors are too much for you the game gives you a plethora of options. For one, it has a display option for every major kind of color blindness, so if you have difficulty distinguishing your reds from your greens (for example), this game has got you covered. You can also simply select grayscale to make everything black-and-white. You can also turn off the game’s default setting of changing the background color with every major beat if you want a lighter touch.

For a game based on music, the techno beats are good, but not quite what I would expect from a rhythm platformer. Granted, keeping the beats a bit simple is probably good in some respects—it keeps you from not knowing which of the many beats to move to. However, as a soundtrack it’s only a bit above-average when compared to your average game, which is decidedly below-average for a rhythm game. You probably won’t have these tunes stuck in your head for long after you play.

Since you simply use the arrow keys, you’d think there wouldn’t be any downsides with the game controls, but unfortunately there are. Since there are no gradual appearances or disappearances of platforms, sometimes you have to be very exact when taking those “leaps of faith”. The slight delay between hitting a key and then your cube hopping over to the next square occasionally can be a bit off—for some of the longer levels where you have to keep to an exact pattern or you fall off, I died many times without having any idea what I did wrong—somewhat often I would hop to the next box just in time for it to appear, but my cube would fall through the box and into oblivion anyway, even though I seemed to be keeping exactly with the beat. It didn’t happen enough to outright make me give up the game in frustration, but it did happen enough to be annoying on the more difficult levels (especially if you’re going to for the “no deaths” badge). I tried using a controller to see if this alleviated the problem, but no dice. The game can also be played with a Dance Dance Revolution-style footpad, but I imagine this would only add to the frustration given the slight additional delay of you putting your foot down on the direction you want to go.

Additionally, although this game can be played by more than 1 person—up to 4—I wouldn’t recommend it, at least with a keyboard. Player 1 can use the arrow keys and Player 2 can use the WASD keys, but after that the keys get a bit weird, not even necessarily lining up with the “up/down/left/right” configurations you would expect given the placement of the keys. Imagining 4 people playing this game on 1 keyboard seems pretty ridiculous. Controllers might be better if you're playing multiplayer. On a lesser note, the game doesn’t recognize the mouse—this isn’t a problem for the regular game, but in the level editor being able to use the mouse definitely would have made level creation a bit easier.

Morally, there’s nothing to worry about with this game at all. You’re just a cube hopping around on boxes—the most “violent” things will get is that if you hit a spike, your cube will shatter into smaller cubes which will quickly disappear. Since there’s an online component to it, I suppose it’s possible someone could have posted a lewd level (either in the name or design), but I played through quite a few user-created levels and I didn’t find any. (I don’t know whether the developers look over the user levels, or how often.)

Overall, Vectronom is a wonderfully unique game, taking the general idea of a rhythm platformer game and upping the ante by changing the entire layout of the level along with the beat. Figuring out the pattern for many of the levels is quite thrilling, and the multiple goals for each level help lengthen the short campaign some, with the addition of user-generated levels easily making this worth the full price. If the constantly changing sets of colors are too much for you, there’s ample options to make the game less visually demanding. The only significant downside to this game from a programming aspect are the slight control glitches now and then. If you like rhythm platformers, this is a fairly easy recommendation. -Beastbot