Thoughts on Bits & Bops rhythm minigames

2025-12-13

It's a collection of 21 rhythm minigames, each playable with one or two buttons and set to its own music. I backed it on Kickstarter a few years ago and was excited to see it finally release. It's a pretty short game and I've already gotten a Perfect rank on every minigame. And now I have opinions about them.

Best overall minigame

Snakedown

This minigame shows the best execution of the concept of rhythm minigames. It has an interesting theme, fun narrative, and catchy music.

In Snakedown, you play as a snake who conspires with a monkey to rob a snake charmer while he's sleeping. Suddenly, the magic carpets in the charmer's bedroom carry them all into the sky.

I also consider this minigame to be the most animated of the sixteen base minigames, and I mean that both in terms of liveliness and actual moving drawings. I estimate it has the greatest amount of character animation and the most dynamic scenery, probably tied with President Bird. Most of the other minigames have noticeably restrained animation, probably for budget and development time, given the modest Bits & Bops crowdfunding campaign. As a result, the on-screen action in those ones can feel somewhat stiff and less "alive" (though in the case of Hammer Time, that fits its theme well).

Most fun minigame

Globe Trotters

I love marching-style rhythm minigames for their intensity and ability to get me in a flow state. I loved Lockstep from Rhythm Heaven DS for that reason and now Globe Trotters as well. Globe Trotters frequently swaps between marching on the beat and marching on offbeats and it handles the transition between the two really nicely.

Hardest minigame to get a Perfect on

President Bird

This minigame has you play as a parrot who is parroting a speech dictated by someone backstage. In the progression of Bits & Bops, this is the last of the call-and-response minigames — ones where you have to repeat a prompt. As the last of those, it's appropriately the most difficult, with a few tricky syncopated patterns and gameplay using two buttons instead of one.

Among all the minigames, this one took me by far the most tries to get a Perfect. I had to carefully listen to a recording of my gameplay to figure out how to play some tricky parts. President Bird was the only minigame where I had to actually count out the beats while I played! What also didn't help was that the game initially didn't give clear enough feedback when I made a mistake, so I couldn't easily tell where I lost my Perfect rank. An update yesterday thankfully addressed this and added a more obvious sound to signal a mistake.

Least interesting minigame

Firework Festival

The theme of this minigame didn't appeal to me. The theme is that people are watching fireworks and you are detonating them; it's pretty but lacks the cuteness or humour of the other minigames. I also found the rhythm gameplay not as interesting or varied, especially for a minigame from the second half of the game.

Most confusing minigame

Octeaparty

You play as an octopus who serves tea. However, I found the cues to pour tea or drop a sugar cube to be too subtle. The cues are also fairly complex and don't hint at the expected rhythm very well. That problem is most apparent when Octeaparty reappears in mixtapes, where the tempo is faster and the tune is not necessarily lined up closely to the sound of the cues.

Cool theme, though.

Soundtrack highlights

Overall, I feel conflicted about the Bits & Bops soundtrack. All of the music is well-crafted and pleasant to listen to but I only find a handful of tracks to be particularly memorable. Those are:

• Flipper Snapper
• Meet & Tweet
• Hammer Time!
• Snakedown
• Globe Trotters

I was expecting much of the soundtrack to match the strong melody and energy of the game's theme music, which is used in the trailers. Those five I mentioned match my expectation but the others are more understated.

Game is good

That last part was a bit negative so I'll end this post by saying that I do like the game a lot and feel satisfied with the result as a Kickstarter backer. I can hope for more content in the future. There's apparently work on a custom level editor, which would be awesome.

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