Soundodger 2

At first glance, Studio Bean’s newest game looks like one of those insanely difficult bullet hell shooters where you’re stuck in a circular arena and doing everything you can to stay alive. But look again, because only part of that describes Soundodger 2. Yes, this is a game where you’re stuck in a circular arena doing everything you can to stay alive, but this is no shooter. That’s right, it’s a bullet hell rhythm game, where the goal of each stage is to avoid the circles, squares and spikes being generated by the eclectic mix of pop songs. It’s a fun way to shake up both the shoot ‘em up and rhythm genres, creating an instantly likable sequel that I had a hard time putting down. This is my review of Soundodger 2, out now on PC.

After years of playing and dancing along to some of music’s biggest hits, it’s time for those songs to get their revenge. That’s the premise of Soundodger 2, a game that generates challenging bullet hell scenarios from the beats and sounds found in the music you’re listening to. It’s your job to guide a small circle around the arena, all while dodging anything the song will throw at you.

Of course, this is a lot harder than it sounds. Just because you’re not actively shooting down enemies doesn’t make one of those bullet hell patterns easier. You still have to carefully weave through the different shapes, most of which won’t give you much room to maneuver. These songs are aggressive, no matter what difficulty you’re playing. The shapes will hunt you down and force you to make split-second decisions, and that’s before the song starts adding extra obstacles and even shrinking the playfield. Like I said, dodging anything and everything is a lot easier said than done.

This is one of those games where the concept is so simple that you expect it to become boring and repetitive after only a few songs. Thankfully, that is not the case. Part of what makes Soundodger 2 so much fun is that each level feels like its own musical experience. It’s in the types of shapes they throw at you, the way the stage will change around you, the fact that the colorful playfield will suddenly go black and white, and the way the action will intensify to the beat of the music. Every one of the 40 stages offers something new and unique, and I couldn’t wait to see how they would visualize each song.

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It helps that the game starts to add extra wrinkles as it gets into the harder tracks. You’ll soon realize that it’s about more than just dodging, because there are dotted circles that you’ll need to interact with before they fall off the screen. Sometimes you’ll have to stay in one area in order to charge up a circle, something that will greatly limit your ability to dodge attacks. There are even a couple of stages that will push our little avatar outside of the playfield, essentially turning it into a 2D action game. This is a game overflowing with innovative ways to shake up the fairly simple gameplay.

For as much as I love dodging the shape patterns, the real strength of this game is the soundtrack. I often complain that most smaller games in the rhythm genre tend to be boxed into a corner when it comes to the music. Filling up the playlist with recognizable hit songs is expensive, so many games turn to bands that can create generic versions of the various music genres. That’s not the case with Soundodger 2. I never got the impression that these were half-finished songs made specifically for a game soundtrack, but rather real songs from up-and-coming bands. It feels like a sampler disc of bands that will be popular five or six years in the future, and I genuinely love most of the music in the game. There are a bunch of tracks that I would listen to on repeat outside of the game, which is not something I can say about most smaller rhythm games. If there’s not already a YouTube playlist featuring all of these songs, then somebody needs to get on it immediately.

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Personally speaking, I feel like the game’s 40 songs offers a lot of variety and hours of fun, since each level has different difficulties, as well as challenge modes. That said, if you still want more, there’s a level editor that allows you to create your own bullet hell stages. You can also download and trade songs with other players, though you’ll need to do that outside of the game, because there’s no way to upload your new stages to some sort of centralized server. That would have been convenient, but I’m sure it would have been a licensing nightmare. Thankfully, I feel like there’s more than enough content here to warrant the price, even if you never even dabble with the user-created content.

If you’re the type of person who thinks that every review needs to be highly critical, then prepare to be disappointed. As far as I’m concerned, Soundodger 2 does everything just about right. The cursor is incredibly easy to move around the screen with either a mouse or controller, the graphics are bursting with style, the soundtrack is top-notch and there’s enough content to keep you playing for hours on end. As somebody who loves both shoot ‘em ups and rhythm games, this was a game that I had a hard time putting down. It’s near perfect for what it’s doing, and outside of a better scoring system and online leaderboards, I’m not even sure what you could possibly add to Soundodger 3 to make it any better. This is one of the year’s biggest and best surprises.