A few days ago, I noticed that I had a few extra dollars in my Steam Wallet funds and was look for a new cheap game to play. Eventually, I found out that the rhythm game Muse Dash was on sale for less than two dollars, so I decided to check it out. Here are my first impressions on the game.
Muse Dash is a side scrolling rhythm game where different notes come from the right side of the screen in two rows. You have two keys that you can use to hit notes on the top row, and you have another two keys that you use for the bottom row. I find this kind of similar to another rhythm game called Taiko No Tatsujin, but it’s still pretty different at the same time.
I think what makes Muse Dash a different kind of rhythm game for me is that you’re controlling a character which hits the notes that come from the side. Your character has to hit the notes and sometimes avoid obstacles on the ground as they run through a song’s level.
There are basic notes that you just hit once, notes you hold down that look like music sheets, and objects that you have to hit as many times as possible in quick succession. Those are the main things that stand out to me, but there are still other objects that you come across that the game kind of lets you figure out on your own. Another thing to note is that the different objects you hit are themed to each song’s level. In one song you might be hitting clouds and another you could be hitting a combination of cars and hats. This kind of fits with the game’s cartoony type of story, but at the same time there’s no real story.
One of the things that I don’t really like about the game is how you can unlock certain characters that give you special perks. Some characters can boost your overall accuracy at the end of the song and another can make it so that you’re immune to obstacles. I feel like rhythm games with aspects like these make getting good scores kind of unfair in way because there’s no guarantee that everyone will unlock the same characters. The way it works is that every time you finish playing a song you will get an item which goes towards unlocking any random character. This makes it so that it could take a long time to get the items for a character you want or need. People that have “better” characters will have some sort of advantage of other’s that don’t. I think this takes some of the skill away from these types of games, but I know some people probably like having another game element besides the main content.
Another thing that I think is worth mentioning is that the game only has around 40 default songs for you to play unless you buy the DLC packs. The game does temporarily unlock one song from each DLC pack, and every week the song will rotate, but there’s still a limited selection of songs. There’s no community level design opportunities unlike osu!, so you won’t be able to play all of your favourite songs.
Overall, Muse Dash for its base price even without the DLCs has still be pretty fun. The levels do get quite difficult, but without community involvement I think that high level players must get bored sometimes. However, I think Muse Dash is generally more of a casual type of game which I think is still fine. I’ll probably keep playing it a bit more and see how much better I can get.