izigame.me

So I bought this game as I saw it was described as basically Rhythm Heaven. As a long time Rhythm Heaven fan and music game player in general, I immediately grabbed this game and played it excitedly. But it has a lot of room for improvement before it can capture the charm of Rhythm Heaven.
First off, I have a major issue with how the tutorials are set up. In the beginning of the game, there's a massive info dump about all the control schemes when you don't even use the arrow keys or hold down Space until Nights 2 and 3. The player doesn't need to know about everything at the beginning, it’s better to introduce them as you need to. I also feel the tutorials for the minigames were confusing. The text at the beginning of it doesn't help, and you're left to figure it out as you go along. As it's Rhythm Heaven inspired, I think it needs to take a page from that game and have just a short description for each cue as you do it.
I think it failed in taking advantage of the theme of the game: dreams. The first few nights were the main character dreaming about real life, and not using the fantastical aspects of dreams. I played long enough to get to the more surreal elements in Night 3, but I think it would lose the attention of most players by not introducing it that way. The game could take advantage of the fact that these are dreams and make rather absurd elements or wondrous, instead of his day to day life. Even “boring” everyday tasks like social media could be made more imaginative.
The minigames themselves are rather repetitive as well. Rhythm Heaven is quirky with its environments and characters, there's a lot of emotion and fun in how they express themselves. In this game, the backgrounds don't change, the visuals essentially remain the same throughout. In a few games, it will change, such as the Time one and the Dating one, but it's to make the game more difficult and IMO, doesn't make it more interesting. The gameplay can be static: I think of some of the Rhythm Heaven games that are rather static, like Tambourine or Screwbot Factory. But even in those, the monkey and the robot are very expressive. They'll jump around and smile brightly at you when you succeed, or break and screech at you if you mess up. The sound cues make it more fun, with the robots going ya-ta! or the nice chime from the monkeys. I feel you don't get any of that fun in these games.
On that note, there's hardly any change in reaction when you mess up. You get an Early/Late to show up, but nothing really happens past that. There’s also no sensory reward for succeeding. Only something happens when you miss, and that's only in some of the minigames. I feel it's a problem where what happens in the minigames, missing the beat doesn’t visually matter. Like the Nature minigame where you water, why don't the plants wilt when I miss? Or why don't they grow into massive plants when I succeed, leaning into the dream aspect? Another example is the dating minigame, where you can have more fantastical avatars to swipe from, such as a swipe left profile being a monster or Frankenstein instead of something you'd encounter in real life, like bots.
I do think the gameplay itself is fine. It matches what I would expect from the rhythm minigame genre. If the visuals surrounding it were more interesting, even with the same sort of gameplay, it would be a lot more fun to play through. And I think the graphics are very well drawn. The music is a lot more subjective, but I found a few of the songs nice to listen to.
Overall, despite my love for rhythm games, I found myself getting bored with it by the end of Night 3 and I couldn't continue. It has promise, but lacking the charm and fun of the game it was inspired leaves a lot to be desired.