vivid/stasis

vivid/stasis is a rhythm game with a story and fairly difficult puzzles. The rhythm game part is a vertical scrolling 4 key rhythm game with one gimmick - bumper notes. These notes take two lanes and you can just press a key within those two lanes to confirm it. This spices up the game play and makes the reading a bit harder.

The bumper notes are probably what rhythm gamers will get stuck on the most, since you can choose what key to press to confirm them. The good thing about them is just that you just need to hit them within a certain window. In higher difficulties, I just concentrate on confirming them be it early, on time or super late.

The songs in the game are great and if you are a fellow rhythm gamer many of those songs or artists will be known to you. The charting is very good in general at least until level 12 and contains long notes. I'm not a fan of long notes but the LN charts in this game make sense and made me even change my opinion about long notes in general (that require a release at the end). They are well placed and fit into the music. The higher level charts 13 and higher sometimes seem a bit chaotic, they seem less coherent. Still way better than many custom charts I played in other games.

The game can be played casually with no life bar or you can decide to pick a different life bar to make the game more challenging. The harder the life bar the more points/battery you will get (used for unlocking songs/story).

There are options to make the rhythm game part of the game more enjoyable with different kind of usual settings (speed, stats shown/hidden etc).

Vivid/stasis does not have different skins or noteskins though which may be a disadvantage to some. There is not even an option to change colors, which makes it harder for me to play as I can't see pink color well (and need color blind mode for games using pink).

The story part of the game is like a visual novel style game. It's about a group of girls going out on an adventure saving yet another girl. The story is for everyone to experience on their own. There is a lot of things that reflect how many people from the rhythm game community feel and that also may be one of the reason why many people can be very attached to the this game. Even if people won't enjoy the story that much, I would welcome if they would think about the behavior and feelings of the characters in the game.The game features unreal elements but the dialogues and thoughts are very real, realistic.

The story lets a player choose what to do in certain scenarios and depending on that the game will take a certain turn. At the end of the chapters there are puzzles (or locks) to solve and they can be quite difficult to crack. One needs to be attentive to details and use logic to solve them. I liked them very much (I stared at the screen for quite a while before I realized where I could even start).

The game has nice visuals and pixel art style ui. There are also many neat details (animations) that are enjoyable to watch.

Vivid/stasis is very unique game, a mix of rhythm game and a visual novel. The rhythm game part is suited for any kind of a player - be it a total beginner or an experienced player. Unfortunately for beginners, there is nothing like a tutorial and the UI elements and settings may be very confusing. For more experienced players it can still be a bit confusing, but if one doesn't simply try to figure out what does what, doing the puzzles may be a nightmare.

Difficulty-wise there are 4 of them and they start very easy and teach patters fairly well. I think the learning curve is good in this game (I played all difficulties, which I don't usually do).

I enjoyed the story a lot and also like the fact that both parts of the game are intertwined. On the other hand this fact can also be a downside for others.

Verdict: 4/5
I would recommend this game to anyone who likes rhythm games and wants a change from their regular rhythm game of choice. I would also recommend this to anyone who likes nice cryptic puzzles. As for the story, I would recommend it to everyone, because it gives a very good insight into certain people's minds.