let's give it a sniff: Bits and Bops

This review is honestly going to suck to write. Bits & Bops is a game that we wish we could praise. That we wish we could whole-heartedly recommend. A game that, taken in a vacuum, would be a favourite of the year. But Bits & Bops can't be taken in a vacuum, because it is a Rhythm Heaven clone in everything but name. It wants you to compare it to Rhythm Heaven. At every turn the game is built to invite that comparison, and, unfortunately, it doesn't compare favourably.

To be fair, the game never really pretended it wasn't a clone. It was crowdfunded, essentially on the promise of making the new Rhythm Heaven game that Nintendo weren't making. The overall structure, of 4 minigames then a remix (here called a "mixtape"), is the same as Rhythm Heaven. The dialogue writing is in the same style. The games themselves have the same structure. Some minigames are practically reskins of rhythm heaven minigames from the past. The musical style is extremely similar. The side mode endless games are practically the same. The system where you unlock music tracks and little extra bits of lore by getting high scores? Taken directly from Rhythm Heaven.

The game apes Rhythm Heaven so much that anything original about it feels like an artefact of it being worked on by a different team, rather than a deliberate choice. The art style is different, but that feels like it is purely because it is being drawn by different artists. The only new thing that feels like a deliberate choice is replacing rhythm heaven's perfect campaign with a "perfect" rating you can get on any game at any time. It's a good change, but only serves to highlight how little else Bits & Bops changes.

If we evaluate the game as a rhythm heaven clone, it's mostly a good one. The music is nice, the animation is fluid, the design has some of the same quirkiness and charm that we love rhythm heaven for. The minigames are, for the most part, pretty nice. The game runs smoothly and plays nicely. It does a good job as being what it is, with a few frustrations.

Bits & Bops is far more lenient than rhythm heaven. It's is perfectly willing to give you a passing grade for extremely sloppy play, and we never failed a single level in our whole playthrough. This might be to make up for the fact that the difficulty curve is out of whack, with some games feeling like they were placed randomly. Flow worms, a minigame near the start, is a lot harder than most of the other minigames, even the ones unlocked after it. The game is also extremely short, with all of its content able to be experienced in less than two hours (longer if you take more than one try on each game, but you are unlikely to, because of the extreme lenience). By the time we got halfway through the game, we started to find it frustrating. "Do something original!" may have been shouted at our screen multiple times, especially when we reached minigames like Firework Festival, which is lifted almost 1:1 from the first rhythm heaven game.

Bits & Bops is an expensive concert by a boring cover band. It plays Rhythm Heaven's hits well, and you can have a good time with it, but it is devoid of original ideas. It's too in love with Rhythm Heaven to take risks or do its own thing, and destined to become a near-forgotten footnote in history once Nintendo releases another rhythm heaven game. It's a damn shame that a team that clearly had the skill required to do something truly special with the formula delivered something so bland.

If all you want is another couple hours of rhythm heaven, it'll scratch that itch. But it will do it in a way that plays it so safe that it becomes frustrating how little the game has any personality of its own.