This game manages to make the difficulty ramp up by doing more than just increasing the BPM of the songs/number of presses you need to do, and it also manages to have a story that on top of being pretty good (tho the dialogue feels a bit rough at times, which is probably a translation issue more than anything), actually mashes with the gameplay in a really cool way. The gameplay's awesome, the music is phenomenal, there's even a song from xaki, one of the composer for the hit visual novel Umineko: When They Cry which is a reason to play the game by itself if you ask me fr

if I had to recommend one game that I think definitely passed under people's radars, it'd be Mad Rat Dead. and it's almost criminal that it'd come to this with how good the game is!
such an interesting take on rhythm games and platformers, the controls do take some time to get used, and it certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea (I remember some parts being REALLY hard) but man is it cool!!!!
the game just oozes with style through it's cutesy/gorey artstyle, beautiful backgrounds, a soundtrack that KICKS ASS and a charming story that definitely caught me off-guard with how invested in it I ended being and how good it was overall.
definitely what I'd call a hidden gem!

This is crazyyyyy okayyy im finally getting to talk abt it after finalyl getting good at the game and finishing it.
SO if youre a little confused lookin at the profile for this game, this is a 2d RHYTHM platformer, first thing ive ever played like it really! And first i've ever heard of to do it on this scale, and after playing it
YEAH yeah you can see why really fast

It's got a lotta electro n orchestral ass songs with the OST, but to be honest with you i think there's only a handful tht rlly stood out To Me specifically.. some of them I outright forget because I was so intent on just the beat alone and livin in the moment with it all
MRD also has some really cool looking visuals and colors! I actually rly dig how this game can manage to be pretty cute and cheery and also KINDA ugly and grotesque(in minute ways)

and im VERY surprised this even had a story.. like.. let alone a pretty decent story!! I liked the boss fights and the vertical platforming and bits when youre in the air and youre tensed and focused cause you REALLY R E A LL Y dont want to lose your rhythm because otherwise it can be hard finding that spot to rewind back to and Oh My GOd did I rewind a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOT

yeahhhhhhhhh kay now im talkin abt why this isnt a 5/5 to me, I rlly like the kit Mad Rat has in this game! hes got a drop dash and a homing attack and even a charge thingie he can do
What sucks about getting used to this game is that there's moments in the songs where things will get slow or youll see moments where youre not at a very fast interval of the song and youre doing shitty hitting the beat, and i didnt know how this worked for the first third of the game I thought the Switch version was just shitty and that It was performance issues
but it isnt!! atleast not tOTALLY in the ways I thought

But this fucked me up on numerous occasions babes, you get a time rewind feature that doesnt really account for the timer system(you can toggle this but I felt like if I toggled it OFF it wouldve cheapened the feeling of completing the levels and getting good at the songs for me... i wish i toggled it off LMFAO), its a good rewind since you can just keep using it at infinitum!! its just also if you get fucked up, you REALLY get fucked up in this game by proxy of "oh where the fuck is the beat" "oh why is it slow now noooo iim in mid air and i cant hit it right with this jump nooo i need to waste more time and go back"

And sometimes some shit can happen to you without you even rlly accounting for it, i came across a couple bugs where mad rat clipped through the land and one where he practically teleported off the walljump into a pit but like..
these only happened once or twice so i dont really fault the game for it
I still cant believe this got released in 2020 and I didn't know about it.. It's definitely earned it's spot in my heart as one of those rhythm games thats a dime a dozen for its creativity and how even though it's not too terribly long(really why would you want a platformer level based rhythm game to be something like 40 hours anyways, thats so much music.. i dont think we're there yet pft)
it doesnt dwell on anything too long and keeps goinnn and goinnn and you gotta respect that for what it is

final thoughts: so yeah above all else the game is fun, i think the music is charming and the character design is coollll, i think its got some rough bits here and there with the gameplay but the kit is so fun to do that it gets my brain twitchin to the point where id genuinely just keep hittin shit to the beat back and forth without even progressing in some levels just because it was that satisfying
but on the other side of the coin it can get TOUGH and you Will be thrown some curveballs here n there
but im glad to see this genre combo works really well :>
i wonder if someone's out there doin anything similar
but yeah shoutout to my friend Aidan for helpin me nab this, hes such a peach <3

disclaimer: I only played the demo.

I really have to log this and put my thoughts out there. I love rhythm games. I am learning, though, that I don't like when rhythm games do... more. it's too much for me to handle. I thought I'd love Crypt of the Necrodancer. I... didn't. :( glad there was a demo of this. I was tempted to purchase it, but it was far too much money to spend on something I wasn't sure I'd like. the demo was longer than I expected it to be, so it gets points for that.
this game is SO cool stylistically and musically. like, it gets that all juuuuust right. but for me, the gameplay was very awkward. using different buttons really threw me off terribly. my shitty ADHD brain couldn't keep up and I didn't even actually complete the demo. embarrassing! but I'm glad I was able to try it.

I've wanted this game for, no joke, 3 years, and I finally bought it! It's good! It is hard carried by it's style, that is wonderful in every single aspect, I adore it it is EXACTLY my style. The animation definitely looks cheap but that's ok. The music is also, my style. Lots of electroswing which I enjoy, albeit in limited quantities. Songs started to blend together. The Forest level and City escape ones were the only ones I remember because they are GOOD. Ghost of Culvert and the one made by the frontman from Fake-Type are good too. My biggest gripe is that if you double jump you can't homing attack. Honest to god, that doesn't do anything but frustrate the player because the double jump is so miniscule. Besides that tho, good game!

An absolute delight for rhythm game fans. It can be a real challenge mastering the mechanics at first, especially since the tutorial doesn't mention some of the slightly more complicated tech.
That being said, this has one of the best soundtracks I have ever heard in a game, and learning to master a song to be able to get through a level without dying is incredibly satisfying.
All of this is packaged in a really nice little story that's surprisingly touching and just a real pleasure to experience.
However, the game isn't perfect by any means. There's some bullshit enemy placement here and there, and on occasion mechanics don't work as intended. First play throughs of certain levels can be pretty frustrating as a result.
All this being said, if you are a fan of rhythm games and have not played Mad Rat Dead, please do. It is one of the most underrated games I have played in recent years, in part due to really poor marketing in the west, and deserves much more recognition than it has gotten