Midnight Riff

Midnight Riff is a really interesting rhythm game because it does not treat music as something that simply plays in the background. The rhythm is basically the combat system, and I liked how quickly that made every encounter feel different from a normal roguelike. I am moving through a fantasy world, facing strange creatures and trying to keep my timing together while building a run that can survive increasingly difficult battles. The main mechanic is especially clever because I am not just following a fixed rhythm chart. The game uses dynamic looping charts where I can place my own notes, which means my actions can directly change how I deal damage. I enjoyed experimenting with this because there is a nice balance between reacting to the rhythm and thinking about what pattern I want to create. A good section can feel almost like I am composing the attack myself. The roguelike structure also works well with the music system. I can collect relics that change how my run develops, and every playthrough can have different maps and situations. I liked having that layer of progression because it gives me something to think about beyond simply getting a better score. A bad run can still…

Pretty fun. Would love to see an update in the future. Didn't find many glitches other than when your remove all notes the game just wont start the next fight.

Honestly, I feel like it's a very original concept, a Roguelike mixed with a Music game, and I really like the combat system, it gives you this sort of freedom to build up your own style into the songs and how to actually play them. It was a bit hard to understand at first, but once you get the hand of it it becomes smooth, though it could use some quality of life upgrades (Like, notes having a sound based on them being hit or not, incorporating animations and more sound effects). Considering it is a college project and therefore, free, it's a gem, would love to see it more developed and I feel it has a ton of potential on becoming an unique and distinguished roguelike.

Pretty solid little game, that beat map for resonance could use some worj though. It may be because im usdes to it having way more notes in other games i have played that song in though. but yeah neat little rhythm rogue like, give it a shot it's literally free.

"Midnight Riff" is an incredibly bad rhythm/QTE game (think Dance Dance Revolution but awful) taken from the design perspective of someone who doesn't understand the primary point of these games is to learn the songs and moves, and thus cleverly replaced all such content with mindless, soulless, repetitive procgen. You know how amateur developers often think procgen is "ezmode" for content creation? This is a great example that proves why they're wrong. So this really only has one job and it failed... hitreg and repsonsiveness is unpolished and janky, where in this genre they need to be beyond precise. That's a big failure on top of an already incredibly weak technical delivery. So it's no wonder this was a huge failure on Steam Direct. The amateur pixelcrap visual presentation here at best could have been an attempt to use "retro" as a crutch, a weak excuse to avoid admitting the developer wasn't capable of doing the job of a game developer this decade and creating cutting edge, high quality 3D visuals. While a lack of skill or funding is the explanation for this failure, it's no excuse. The end result of this incompetence is a game that looks dramatically inferior to profes…

It was quite a fun game hope it gets updates in the future