I've dabbled in the Rhythm Heaven series and enjoy what those games offer, so seeing this pop up randomly absolutely caught my attention. What we have here is basically a Rhythm Heaven minigame except it's WAY more intense and anxiety inducing, somehow.

You play as a seal clapping along to a set of notes. First you hear and see them, then you click to clap them. Simple enough, right? Well, it starts off that way, then it gets harder, achieved by becoming WAY more complex. You start to tense up as you see the "SPEED UP" messages and breathe sighs of relief when you see the "SPEED DOWN" messages as you try to learn the rhythms you need to survive to get a high score. "Is this one going to be on the backbeat?" "They put HOW MANY notes in this part?" These thoughts and more will swirl through your mind as you try to keep up with the pace.

Despite how scary it sounds, it's a super fun game. It's kind of like a horror game where the thrill comes from how much it puts you on edge but instead of being chased down by a creepy creature, you're trying to clap along to a song playing as a cute seal. It's free and will definitely help make some time pass by and leave you satisfied. The itch.io page for it can be found HERE!

My high score is 14, by the way!

I just wanted to play the funny seal game, not a ''trying to not get fired'' simulator, I could play that in real life!

To say I was charmed to hell and back by the original Rhythm Hell animation when it released back in March would be an understatement, because it kinda was the thing that put me in the mood to basically eventually beat the entire Rhythm Heaven series this year (or at least the ones I hadn't beaten or even played already, which was three quarters of them); it's funny, creative, has a neat visual style, has seals, and it's cruel as fuck... that's a Rhythm Heaven minigame if I've ever seen one! And as its playable own thing, it’s a perfect representation of the original thing; it is indeed pure suffering!

Taking control of it makes you realize how much it does pass as something that could have perfectly been in one of the games as its own bigger side-game; it reminds me a bit of the minigame Quiz Show a little bit if it was more technical and music-dependent, but I mean, this is way better, ‘cause c’mon… this has SEALS. And I really mean that it’s more technical: you better have some basic knowledge of musical notations and symbols, ‘cause even if you do, this game is here to screw you up. That in tandem with the speed ups and slow downs make it tricky to get just an ‘’Ok!’’, tho it’s worth if only to get to see the funny little end-cards.

It's cool, it’s funny, it’s can be cool to try to get high-scores, it gets the job done; it’s the definition of a novelty game, something that it’s noteworthy for what proceeds it and what it’s trying to imitate, and it’s really nothing beyond that… but it’s one of those things that it’s just neat that it even exist, this is something that anyone can check out and give a try and that makes me smile, mainly because the original video made me smile, but also because… well, it’s a pretty fun bite-sized experience that it loved what it’s alluding to, and even if it’s HARD, it got me in the spirit for some rhythm, you could say I do got a bit of rhythm after all…

Check the original animation if you haven’t already btw, probably pretty much everyone already has by this point, but it’s always worth sharing funny stuff… specially it has SEALS WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-

EDIT POST-MAESTRO

Returned to it today to get the coveted Superb and turs out this game pulls some cheeky stuff. The real ''ending'' is locked behind the 12th round, but from that point on, rounds won't have any sound clues, and even tho that goes against what the original series was about (even at its hardest), this is no heaven, this is hell, and seeing as a cruel yet hilarious extra challenge for those willing to get even higher scores, it really works.

I myself I'm done, and I do not have it in me to put myself through that and I wouldn't recommend it to even my worst enemy, but to those brave and skilled enough, who knows, you might have a blast trying to achieve even higher numbers...

An entertaining game based on an equally amusing rhythm game animation by Louie Zong. While it doesn’t offer much gameplay variety aside from its “follow the rhythm displayed on screen” game design, it’ll sure as hell give you a hard time and WILL test your sight reading skills. The later rhythms can become extremely chaotic and repetitive due to its endless nature that consistently ramps up in difficulty, but honestly it would already be impressive enough if someone could even get to those later levels and continue past the score of 20.

Also, not sure if this is an issue on my end or not, but I did experience some input latency on the Windows version. Not an entire deal-breaker though since it’s consistent and you’ll get used to it fairly quickly.

Overall a fun game, but I probably won’t find myself coming back to it unless I have to practice sight reading polyrhythms or something

A fun little game based off of Louie Zong's Rhythm Hell video. Very simple experiment, solid piece of work. The bar constantly dropping especially when the tempo gets slow is part of the hell, of course you can't win. But satisfying to get the claps, especially when there's minimal audio delay.

Gets a step difficult in musical reading difficulty after score 12 with the audio guide disappearing, which adds a fun element. My high score is 19, fun to revisit for a quick play every time I open itch.