In Hexagroove you make outstanding club music all while having to react quickly to the crowd’s wants, needs, and feedback. Its subtitle, Tactical DJ, is certainly appropriate.
Lemon-yellow strobes dance across the crowd of bouncing cylinders as I slip another beat loop into the mix. Just in time too – the audience soon grows weary of a different instrument and I’ve got mere seconds to turn that off effectively before the next wave of information comes at me.
Hexagroove is the debut title from Ichoichie, a new developer formed by two veterans from Linden Labs and iNiS. For me, at least, it’s that second company that’s of more interest. While employed there, the duo worked on titles such as Elite Beat Agents and Gitaroo Man Lives! — two exceptional games which did some impressive things with the concept of rhythm in games. This shines through in almost every moment of Hexagroove.
As a game, it feels as though it straddles the line between music-generator and traditional game, although the developers would tell you that it follows a lot of the rules of the strategy genre. The core gameplay loop is switching buttons on and off at the right time, with each of the eight buttons positioned in a circle to match the Switch’s analog stick axis. Once you’ve selected an instrument, you can then pick from four loops which all work on the same beat — so you’ll always be creating rhythmic music, even if you’re picking at random.
As each level, or track, progresses, the audience will grow tired of certain instruments – information which is fed to you through color cues. If you can drop out the stale loops and get new ones in within a decent time then, your score will start rocketing.
Multiple times throughout each song you’ll reach a point where everything is in sequence perfectly and you’ll be able to play through a short minigame. These range from matching your button input to a ball being bounced over the crowd, through to several mini-games which take you to separate screens. These feel much more like traditional rhythm titles, with one having you match inputs to a scrolling bar, and another having you point in a direction while matching taps. The latter appears as a track finale, also. While all of this is happening, the music is matching all of the inputs. There’s a real mastery of music here, even before the gameplay elements.
I was lucky enough to play through a handful of levels of Hexgroove whilst at Gamescom earlier in the year. You don’t have to wait for long to try it yourself; it launches onto Nintendo Switch in early October.
Hexagroove is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can follow its creation on the game’s site.
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