Rym9000 Review
- Rym900
- Developer- Sonoshee
- Publisher- Sonoshee
- PC (Steam, itch.io)
A storm of pulsing beats and raucous feedback, Rym9000’s psychedelic visage obfuscates what is otherwise a straightforward shooter. Its draw is in the aesthetic exercise. Its unrestrained use of color creates an intense energy that never lets up, and the soundtrack continues that high. The waves of enemies come in familiar patterns, smartly placed to provide a steady rhythm. Each explosion lets off another burst of blown out sound and feedback to complement that rhythm. All of this is covered in severe visual artifacts, distorting the view and giving Rym9000 the look of an image file trying to constantly recover its data from corruption.
Rym9000 manages to always be readable despite this. Threats are rendered with broad, circular shapes, lined with heavy outlines and contrasting colors to keep them from blending in with the linear visual artifacts. The ship also gives off burst of light to mark incoming waves a second before. Still, Rym9000 requires immense concentration, and a willingness to repeat patterns until their motions are ingrained. It was hard to approach casually. Any discomfort kept me from slipping into that warm zone of ambient shooting. Which is why its a shame that these distortions and obfuscations stretched into the technical parts of the game.
Controller support issues, problems with the Steam overlay, images carrying over from one part of the game to another–these are issues I’m usually willing to overlook within reason in games the size of Rym9000. But certain design elements of the menus brought me a lot of aggravation that kept me distracted from the game itself. Each menu is a contained screen you can scroll through using the left and right keys, but long animations and visual distortions obscured the function of each of them. On top of that some parts of the game only respond to keys being held, so it wasn’t always clear that I was even using the right key. This is on top of strange problems like the D-pad on almost every controller I tried being reversed or unusable, with some not functioning in the menus but being fine in game. There’s an inconsistency in the both the technical aspects and visual language of the menus that feels bizarre given how effortless Rym9000’s aesthetics and feedback come together in game.
When I could get the technical issues to behave, Rym9000 pulled me in, letting me enjoy the simple pleasures of bathing in audiovisual stimulus. There’s an admirable sense for visual design here, and the weapon feedback is satisfying enough to carry it. It’s a cool aesthetic to submerge in.