Some theorize that the issue with Cyberpunk 2077 is that it was too ambitious in development. Bringing together Night City without nearly any loading screens proved rendering to be too difficult on last-gen consoles. This resulted in a number of game-breaking bugs and even the game itself crashing, which ultimately impeded the game’s strong storyline. But a little indie game known as Rhythm Doctor, on the other hand, proved that games can be simple and still be successful.
Interestingly, the two games have similar timelines when it comes to their development processes. When it comes to triple-A titles, they often take a long while in the developmental stages because of the sheer about of coding and polishing that needs to be done, often resulting in years of work before a game is finally ready to launch, despite the number of employees on the project. This was the case with Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part 2, which involved 14 studios to complete.
Indie games, on the other hand, take several years to complete simply because they have such small teams. Sometimes, even, development studios are mostly made up of one person who creates and codes the game themselves, such as with Eric Barone who solely developed Stardew Valley. And even though Rhythm Doctor was in development for more years than Cyberpunk 2077 and had a smaller team of people, the game ended up more beloved by fans who were similarly anticipating the game over the years.
Part of the reason many fans are so heated about Cyberpunk 2077, aside from the number of game-breaking bugs it had at launch, was because it began marketing too far in advance. While it’s normal to see a triple-A game be conceived so early, over the years and especially in more recent E3 conferences, many felt that the marketing over-hyped the game.
Aside from players feeling that CD Projekt Red cut a ton of content to get Cyberpunk released in 2020, the marketing resulted either in a game that wasn’t what was promised, fans feel, or players creating an idea of a game in their head only to be disappointed in the end. However, looking at Rhythm Doctor, it didn’t suffer from the same problem despite being vocal about its creation so many years ago.
Rhythm Doctor began nearly a decade ago, originally as a free Flash game developed between 2011 and 2012 by a group of college students on summer break. Now that 7th Beat’s team is full-time, they have been working to make Rhythm Doctor a full release, and the fans have been waiting patiently over the years after finding the Flash demo. Last month, it was finally released on Steam, though only in Early Access.
But unlike reception to Cyberpunk 2077, which many felt was disappointing after so many years of waiting for what was supposed to be a groundbreaking game, Rhythm Doctor fans are saying that it was “worth the wait” after so many years in development.
With “Overwhelmingly Positive” reviews on Steam, many reviewers clock in at around 9 hours of gameplay for a game that should only take a couple of hours to beat. The single-button rhythm game supposedly has fans crying over its X-2 mode for its rhythmic complexity. Despite it being a short pixel-art game with a singular control and a simple premise, fans are calling it a “masterpiece,” the same term many were hoping to use for Cyberpunk 2077.
Even though 7th Beat had set strong expectations with its Flash game Rhythm Heaven and its other release A Dance of Ice and Fire, perhaps Rhythm Doctor highlights what went wrong with Cyberpunk 2077: it bit off more than it could chew trying to raise the bar.
Rhythm Doctor is out now for Early Access on Steam.
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