Reviews from

in the past


Turns out high-fiving balls is not as fun as slicing blocks...

Synth Riders is a very graphically impressive hand waving simulator. I enjoyed the visual presentation of the stages, but the gameplay requires a lot of extrinsic dancing to feel fun. There's a lot of music available, but most of it is exceedingly repetitive and about 10% too long. Very few of the tracks felt like they utilized the mechanisms appropriately in any given mode. This is just barely a rhythm game, but may be appealing as a kind of soundscape sandbox for dancers.

(I was given a code for free by the developers)
Synth Riders is an interesting idea as the scrolling stages and rhythmic gestures allow some amount of freedom with how you control the game, but it's a little too hands off for my liking and falls into one of the biggest VR rhythm game traps, wherein notes are caught by just holding your controllers out and you're not required to actually perform any rhythmic actions.

When I first saw Synth Riders, I blew it off. After all, I already had Beat Saber, and that was my go to Rhythm game. But one day I saw Synth Riders on sale, and decided to take the plunge. Absolutely worth it! If you're on the fence, feel confident in purchasing it.

It helps that I'm already a big fan of the Synth genre of music, but I don't think that's going to matter for a lot of people because of how much fun it is to play this game. At first, you'll feel a bit clumsy, the movement will feel unnatural and restrictive, but it will all be timed well and to the beat. After your first play session you'll come back and want nothing more than to improve and master your favorite songs.

As I became more in tune with how I was moving my body and interacting with the game in subsequent play sessions, the game started to feel less restrictive, and it began to feel like I was out on that platform just dancing away with the developers in these songs. On Master difficulty, every note is punching to the beat, every Synth is a delightful slide across the tracks, and you can't help but add in your own moves freestyle, as you're just vibing to the music... from the journey to Master difficulty, to feeling like you you can dance to any song without skipping a beat, Synth Riders is a blast to play, and that's in a way I'd argue no other VR rhythm game will ever be able to surpass, period. The songs, mechanics, and everything else are indeed THAT well designed and fun.

There's incredible songs in every pack to where you should be able to find a few favorites across the board, and I HIGHLY recommend the Electro Swing pack, I'd purchase that right at the time you purchase Synth Riders honestly, because all of those tracks and their song maps are GOD TIER. Why they haven't added in more Electro Swing, I don't know, but it's a shame because it's definitely some of THE best content they have to offer. Not to mention the "Experiences" they have where they have dynamic scenes for you to move in like a music visualizer in virtual reality. The MUSE Experience is one of my ALL TIME favorite VR moments, so definitely give that a try. To top it all off, I'd say the skill ceiling is really quite high, and the game makes for a great work out.

While I think Synth Riders may feel a bit niche to recommend to many, mostly because of the track list and the aesthetic, I believe it's well worth the dive, even if you think you've already found your favorite VR rhythm game.


21st Century Jazzercising, loads of fun, highly recommended if you enjoy VR Rhythm games

The struggle of justifying playing this when I could play Beat Saber instead. Not my jam.

Fun and challenging game to keep you in shape.

Synth Riders is a cool VR game that shares the same idea as Beat Saber. You have two different colored ball glove things and punch balls of the same colors on the beat of your chosen music track.

You got blue balls (hehe), pink balls for your left and right hands and also come across yellow and green balls. The yellow ones are punched by holding your hands together and punching the ball with both hands. The green ones can only be punched with one hand and, in this case, which one of your hands used, does not matter.

The game got a fair amount of build in music packs and tracks to choose from and can be expanded by buying DLC packs or using custom tracks that you can download from the official Synth Riderz community page.

On the Synth Riderz page, many people mapped their own songs into worthy Synth Riders maps and uploaded them for you to download. I myself also mapped a fair amount of maps and although this takes a lot of time (everything needs to be mapped by hand, one note at a time), it is worth it in the end. People can leave votes and reviews on your maps, so you know where to improve. My only complaint with this system is that people leave down votes without explanation. It would work better when you needed to give a reason or some feedback on why you did not like the map.

What makes Synth Riders stand out from Beat Saber, at least in my opinion, is that it plays more smoothly and you have more control over the incoming notes. This is mainly because of the fact that you only need to focus on the colors and their positions, rather then slice a note in a certain direction, something I am really bad in. With Synth Riders, you just punch the right color and you are set. You also ride some colored rails which is very satisfying.

You can compete on leader boards and battle against other people and friends to receive the highest score, something that makes the game pretty intense sometimes.

The best thing in this game is the community behind it. Like I said, it has a official fan community website in which people can make and download custom maps, it has a discord server for mappers and interested people and overall, this game feels more alive than Beat Saber, because of its active community behind it.

Definitely recommend this game for your VR headset.

Not super rhythmic but fun and relaxing in its own way. Requires accurate movement of hands and arms in a way that makes it feel more like a dancing than rhythm game. Not as satisfying to try and master the tracks as other rhythm games, but worth trying all the (free) songs nonetheless.

My absolute favorite VR game so far. Just a total blast with its synthwave music. If that's not your thing there are very different DLC packs (punk, Lindsey Stirling, electro swing, etc) plus loads of custom songs from the community. Pretty much every time I have a VR session I end up playing a song or two from this.

I need to play much more of this but thus far it's similar enough to Beat Saber that I can do it (spin arms in rhythm) but it's also totally different and focuses more on getting you to move around than be precise, so it's a really fun time.

Custom maps are thriving and work well so that's awesome. Biggest complaint thus far is that the failure system seems really weird and unclear, sometimes it feels like you've missed 1 note per minute of the song but on the 3rd miss you lose, and other times you can miss a bunch but somehow finish with a good score