Thank you Jelle van Doorne for sending us a review code!

Viola recently lost her mother and has been trying to play the violin to honor her memory. Unfortunately, she’s not happy with her playing skills and in her frustration gets sucked into her instrument’s fantastical world. Viola arrives through a black hole in the sky and she’s not the only one who makes use of this portal. Monsters have also arrived and Viola must clean this mess up while figuring out how to return home.

There’s a lot of enemies out there, but thankfully Viola will make some new friends who will help her fight these monsters. Throughout the campaign, she’ll meet ten creatures that will befriend and fight along side her. In her homeworld, Viola doesn’t have many friends. By fighting alongside your companions and learning more about them, you’ll unlock a personal quest for each one and can achieve an S rank bond level by completing it. If you have an S rank with each party member, you’ll unlock the ideal ending for the game.

Unfortunately, I experienced a game-breaking bug that made it impossible to finish this title. By not adding my final party member (Emerald) until the end of the game, it apparently doesn’t register them in my group. Each party member has an elemental affinity and without all of them represented, you cannot access the final area of the game. I have approximately 8 hours into this title and I don’t have time to start over from scratch so I’ll wait for a patch to correct this issue. The developer has been very responsive in the Steam forums so I’m hopeful for a fix.

Another glitch I encountered numerous times was Viola getting stuck inside of the surroundings near jumping boards. Sometimes I was able to play the travel melody and escape, but other times I had to restart the level and lose progress. There’s not much leeway with a checkpoint save system. The final issue I experienced was occasional button presses not being registered in the battles. Most of the time missing a button press was my fault, but not all the time.

Those are some pretty concerning negatives, but let’s switch gears and talk about the positive aspects of this game. This title was solely developed by Jelle van Doorne which is a pretty impressive feat. The pixel art is very detailed and the characters are nicely animated. The melodies are catchy and wonderfully composed too.

Gameplay wise, Viola: The Heroine’s Melody is a mashup of rhythm, platformer, and RPGs. Traversing through the levels will require mastering double and wall jumping so if you’re not a fan of those, you’ll want to look elsewhere. The default battle system requires you to press the buttons in sync with their moving symbols on screen to land a successful attack. If you prefer traditional Final Fantasy-style battles, you can disable the rhythm mechanics in the game menu. You can also make your party invisible if you want to focus on the story more than healing your characters with potions every battle.

There are some moral issues worth noting including fantasy violence, magic use, and some language. I came across the words *ss, p*ss, and d*mn.

In the end, Viola: The Heroine’s Melody is a fun but flawed game. Repeatedly getting stuck was annoying but not being able to complete it due to a glitch makes this title hard to recommend. Hopefully these issues will be addressed in future patches. I wasn’t the first or last one on the Steam forums to experience the game-breaking bug. With that being said, I look forward to more games made by Jelle van Doorne.