Rizline is a casual mobile rhythm game with anime-inspired music and a minimalist art style focused on simplistic lines and shapes.

Pros

• minimalist art style with circles and lines

• solid line-up of soothing and relaxing tracks to play

• fun for casuals, challenging for hardcore players## Cons

-Possible performance issues that might affect gameplay

Minimalistic vertical lines that flow through the screen, lines that are swaying along with the music. and a two finger simple touch controls that anyone can follow — Rizline is a new rhythm game from Pigeon Games — the same makers of another popular rhythm game titled Phigros. I had the chance to try this game out and it’s really a lot of fun and can cater both casual and hardcore rhythm enthusiasts.

Gameplay Analysis

The gameplay of Rizline involves tracking various lines with falling circles, and tapping the screen once it hits the bottom circle. The player’s accuracy and timing are measured using a scoring system, which rewards players for hitting notes timely, correctly, and penalizes them for missing or hitting notes at the wrong time. Miss too many notes and the run will fail, but the progression is still recorded if it’s a new high score.

There are only three types of circles dropping. A blue circle where it requires a tap, an elongated blue circle that signifies a timed hold, and a white circle that requires any type of hold. It’s a bit confusing at first — having two different types of “hold” mechanic — but I’ll admit it gets intuitive almost immediately once it clicks.

Minimalist art, minimalist controls

Rizline’s rhythm game mechanics is easy to learn and only requires two fingers from each hand to use and tap the screen. The circles are only dropping one or two at a time, albeit in all sorts of challenging ways, and the players won’t have to use many fingers in a very convoluted screen mashing action even for higher difficulties. As for precision, players just need to tap the general direction of the corresponding bottom circle and not tap directly on it. Something that I erroneously tried to do in my first few song runs.

The gameplay experience is slightly customizable, as players can adjust the speed of the notes appearing on screen. It does not modify the song’s tempo, just the speed of the notes, whether they drop down almost instantly or appear early but slowly drop to the bottom. Players can also adjust the timing or delay of hitting notes, perfect for those who are using external or wireless audio solutions or just have personal issues as to how the timing works.

Consistent difficulty levels

The lowest difficulty for the songs are easy enough and I keep finding myself perfecting them, however the hard and insane difficulty is another story that will require practice and great timing or reflexes to even complete. The number of notes are significantly increased, and the amount of swaying, wobbling, swapping, and additional distracting elements can prove to be too much for the casual player, and that’s where the hardcore players come in.

Trying out many different songs, the difficulty has been more or less consistent with the easy, hard, and insane difficulties. The experience has been a mix of enjoyable and challenging. It’s an easy time-killer, you can easily play a short 2 minute song, play it again and again in the hopes of doing better, and without realizing it, an hour had already passed.

A solid line-up of soothing and relaxing tracks to play

Ofcourse, a rhythm game is only going to be as good as its accompanying music, and Rizline delivers in that department as well with a solid line-up of tracks to play consisting a mix of soothing EDM music and a relaxing anime-esque soundtrack. It starts off with 3 amazingly crafted songs, with more to unlock and download (in-game) as you play.

In the version that I have tested, additional songs are very easy to unlock and only require gathering enough points from completed runs, and I was able to unlock a lot of songs even in my first few clears. I did not see any pay-to-win or in-app purchases for any additional songs, but I expect this to change once the game releases and the monetization model is finalized.

Possible performance woes

As for the performance, in my admittedly limited testing, it did not perform to satisfaction in my older android (2018 flagship) device considering it only had simple shapes and lines for its visuals. Resulting in many unwarranted misses that is probably caused — If i were to guess —by microstutters and frame sampling issues. However, when I tested it on my newer android device (2020 flagship), it performed as expected and I was able to convincingly hit more accurately.

Conclusion:

WIth its minimalist but still beautiful art direction, accompanied by a well crafted selection of songs to play, Rizline is a solid mobile rhythm game that is sure to bring a fresh and challenging experience for both casual and hardcore rhythm players alike.

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Originally posted on TapTap.