Take part rail racer, make it musically rhythmic, and add a trippy but interesting background and you have Thumper. A rail-based music game that will have you in a trance.
General Gameplay
You are a space beetle, well… an armored space beetle on a rail going with the music flow and destroying barriers with your body, grinding the rails and timing your jumps right to get a glowing power up on the rail to move fast. Now, imagine doing this with a visually interesting background and to the music. Combine part Rock Band and part rail-racer and that is what this game is.
Audio
The audio surprised us during testing; it’s just background riffs and garage metal sounds that accompany the game’s actions. The music has a beat to it, and as you follow the cues on screen, you will hear how your actions will affect the game’s music. During our play testing we did not run into anything that would be offensive to any gaming member of your family. If anything, that game’s music is very garage techno and nothing more to it. The game’s (we tested this on the Nintendo Switch) audio comes out very well on surround sound systems and headphones, however, some of you may want to adjust the in-game audio to either make it louder or softer to your taste. Parents, as always, be sure to use caution with extended use of headphones for the game.
Visuals
This is where it gets interesting. Thumper can either be a game that is beautiful in its design or a bad nightmare, but in either case, the graphics will haunt you well after playing the game. The game’s graphics are very sharp and easily seen on both the monitor and on the Nintendo Switch tablet. With our play test, we did see that some of our younger gamers were kind of scared at first by the graphics, but after a short while playing the game, they were perfectly comfortable with the graphic style. The game does not support a colorblind mode but as the graphics and colors are very sharp and clear, one is not needed. If you own a VR headset, we highly recommend playing the game in VR.
Controls
Control setting for the game are simple – one button for actions, the left thumb stick to move the space beetle around. The controls are made to be simple as the game is very fast-paced. During our playtest on the Nintendo Switch, we did not run into any issues with the controls as all our gaming family members were able to play the game without any trouble. We have not tried it on the PS4/Xbox One (at the time of this review) but we do not suspect any issues with the controls on those consoles. One thing that we did notice during our playtesting is that the game is meant to be very fast-paced, so some of the gaming members in your family may get the controls down, but it will take time for the timing to get comfortable. Please keep this in mind as the game is meant to get harder as you go into more advanced levels. During our special needs game testing we did not run into any issues with the controls, as it was very simple for our gamers to play the game. The game does not need any special controller to play, but again for Nintendo Switch users, we would recommend using the Pro controller.
“In its haunting visuals, rail-based traveling and rhythmic gaming, Thumper is a game that you will love from start to finish. Keep in mind that this is a very hard game to master”
Delivery
Thumper is a beautiful, haunting game that will punish you with multiple fail attempts at each level that you progress. The blending of industrial music with the beat matching in the game is a beautiful blend that just adds to the experience of this game. If you are a fan of rhythmic music or challenging racing games, then Thumper is a game that we highly recommend. Now, if you are a person that gets frustrated with games quickly or someone that is not good at rhythm matching games, then this may not be the best fit for your digital library. What the game is not is “grey” in its difficulty. It does not have a difficulty setting that you can adjust, so for those who want to play a more casual challenge, it is simply not there. The game is very brutal in its difficulty so if you like games that are more challenging then you should be ok; for casual gamers, well, maybe look elsewhere.
Family Friendly
As you are reading this review you are wondering why we gave this game a score of 8.5. With its hard difficulty and basic gameplay, this would be something that most reviewers would avoid, but when we did our playtesting we did see something interesting that made us feel that Thumper should be in your digital library. First, the game is challenging, yes, we all agree on this but it teaches children to notice patterns and then react to them. This we saw when our younger gamers (ages 9-14) were playing; once they learned the patterns of the level after a couple of attempts, they were able to complete the level and feel a level of accomplishment. Rather than resting on their accomplishment, they were given more challenge to conquer in Thumper, and we were happy to see that they did. We do stand by our statement that if you have someone in your gaming family that gets frustrated with failing a part of a game over and over again, then this may not be the game for them. The game is hard, but in a good way of showing that you can overcome a challenge with the right amount of practice and patience. If anything, that we saw in our playtesting that persistence was the constant thing from our younger gamers. Also, in our special needs playtesting, we saw that our gamers with Autism especially loved the game because of the challenge and the pattern action on rails. If anything, with 3 of our gamers with Autism ages 9, 14 and 20, all were able to understand the game and enjoy it a lot. They learned the patterns quickly. Again, this is a hard game, so if you can download a demo or watch gameplay footage of the game being played, it will help you to see if this is a right fit for your digital library.
We’d like to add that while Thumper is a completely different game, it shares something in common with Aaero – it breaks the boundary between the physical aspect of cognitive development and most video games. By making rhythm and color the underlying foundation of gameplay, this game could help with developmental skills in a few ways.
Closing
With a good mix of challenge, rhythm matching and overall fun, Thumper is a great game. Keep in mind that this is not an easy game to master.
