Invector: Rhythm Galaxy Review

Invector: Rhythm Galaxy is the latest entry in the critically acclaimed rhythm game series; Invector. The previous entry was AVICII Invector, a game made in honor of deceased Swedish EDM artist AVICII, a.k.a. Tim Bergling. A portion of the game’s royalties was sent directly to The Tim Bergling Foundation; an organization created to battle depression and mental health issues. Following the success of the original game, developer Hello There Game is back with Invector: Rhythm Galaxy.

Invector: Rhythm Galaxy is a rhythm games where players can play through a selection of songs across various genre and get the highest score possible. Given the limited variety, the gameplay is similar to Amplitude or Frequency, but unlike Harmonix’s rhythm games, the game makes use of more than three face buttons.

In the “tunnel view”, you’ll have to quickly press the button that will appear on screen. The more buttons pressed in successful fashion, the higher your score will be. And as you’d expect, miss a not and you’ll break your combo. The game also offers four difficulty setting for players of all skills: Casual, Normal, Hard and Ultra. As you complete the throwaway story, you can also unlock new tunes

While Harmonix’s classic musical experiences had players play with the face or shoulder buttons along with the arrows to change instrument, Invector: Rhythm Galaxy features a mix of all buttons; even on the easier difficulty setting. In this game, arrows are a normal press button. And the higher the difficulty, the more challenging it becomes by increasing the game’s speed and number of buttons.

If you have experienced in the genre (or solid finger play), you can begin with Normal difficulty, although I do recommend giving Casual a shot of a song or two to acclimated with the game’s mechanics. While there’s four difficulty settings, the songs difficulty ramps up by itself i.e. the lower you go in the playlist, the harder the tunes are.

While 2015’s Amplitude offered freestyle sequences where you could do whatever you wanted on the controller, Invector: Rhythm Galaxy also have similar freestyle sequences, however you get to fly your ship through some rings. The control does feel a bit flaky, but it’s a nice diversity complementing the tunnel sequences.

What’s also interesting is that the better you perform, the faster the notes appear. While this sounds “hard”, it’s really not. It all comes down to getting the beat of a track down and it all comes naturally. You also have a boost meter; once full, it’ll make the ship go faster and notes will obviously appear at a faster rate. But if you miss a note, the game will slow down to its original speed.

Invector: Rhythm Galaxy’s overall presentation is one of the best experiences of 2024 both visually and aurally. The game is colorful and visually impressive. The ship which you control is simplistically designed so players can both focus on the button prompts and enjoy the visual spectacle on-screen. And the soundtrack is a nice mix of pop, rock, classic and EDM. There’s something for everyone and there are certain tunes you’ll find yourself replaying over and over.

While there isn’t anything overly wrong with Invector: Rhythm Galaxy, there are a few minor nuisances such as the fact that you cannot disable the controller’s vibration. So when you use overdrive, the controller vibrates so hard that it’s noisy and can make it a bit harder to hit the notes properly. There’s also the lack of a tutorial; while there’s no better way to learn than diving in, some people might struggle with dexterity and might need a bit of practice. Oh and the game’s barely out, and the main menu already has a DLC options which leads nowhere for now.

Invector: Rhythm Galaxy is definitely one of the must play experiences of 2024. Despite the lack of a tutorial and (quite frankly) nigh useless Campaign/story mode, this game offers a capitvating experience where you’ll constantly be like “one more song”. Fans of the genre will be happy to have something new to chew on because let’s face it the rhythm game genre is often overlooked while newcomers/casual gamers can play something that’s quite unique as opposed to the typical shooters an open-world experiences. Invector: Rhythm Galaxy is great investment of time and money.