Fun and graphically beautiful indie game. I'm so used to games that rely on pressing buttons to rhythm cues that I do wish the movements matched more with the music, but it's not that big of a deal breaker. The game looked great on my Switch, but I can imagine it's a better experience on VR, which is what I'm guessing is what it was intended for. Would recommend to anyone looking at indie games for their Nintendo Switch! It usually goes for $20, but it goes on sale often, and I would argue a $5 price tag is well worth it.

Un juego con una premisa inteligente, original y atractiva, que por desgracia se desinfla al cabo de varios niveles y de confundir los sonidos.

Thumper es un juego que te invita a sumergirte en un estado de absoluta sincronía con los ritmos más básicos de la música. Su percusión rítmica y sorda me recuerda a los increíbles tambores de la banda sonora de Mad Max: Fury Road. En ese sentido, se trata de un ruido tan atractivo que una parte mía ha querido seguir jugando hasta el final, incluso cuando deseaba tirar el mando con todas mis fuerzas y mandarlo todo al carajo. Incluso con ese logro, tengo la impresión de que trata de abarcar tantas variedades y ritmos que pierde el potencial logrado en sus momentos más triunfales. Cinco niveles, sólo pedía cinco niveles!

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A game with an intelligent, original and attractive premise, which unfortunately deflates after several levels of confusion and frustration.

Thumper is a game that invites you to immerse yourself in a state of absolute synchrony with very basic music rhythms. Its repetitive percussion reminds me of the incredible drums of the Mad Max: Fury Road soundtrack. In that sense, it's such an engaging noise that a part of me wanted to keep playing to the end, even when I couldn't take it anymore and wanted to throw the controller away. Having said that, I get the impression that it tries to embrace so much variety that it loses the potential reached at its most triumphant. Five levels, I was only needing five levels!

There lives an inherent, inescapable, existential nightmare inside an endless-runner, a disarming feeling, only heightened when it additionally masks itself as a rhythm-game. Violent hits of industrial noise bang on my ear drums in unpredictable time signatures, till I am overwhelmed by a metallic taste in my mouth, then they tag-team up with skyscraping, iridescent exoskeletons to lift the ground from below and crush me with it.

When I was still letting top-shelf Zaza disrupt my circadian rhythm to an ungodly amount, a friend of mine would always want to play Thumper whenever he came over and toked Viennese Woppy Goldberg Furrbuger Deluxe Skunk Baba Kush with me. Back then, I caught myself having to find an excuse to play another game instead of outright telling him that I silently hid my panic attacks the last few times we smoked and played this.
Thumper can be a hell lot of fun. Weed can also be a hell lot of fun, your head just needs to be in the right place and Thumper always seemed to push my head, who wasn't in the right place to begin with, through the gates and away from "fun" part of that saying.
This thing achieved its mission to be the the first ever Rhythm-Violence-Game. It made me feel like I was dying when I stared down its barrel and saw a cloud of smoke in front of it.

I am teaching that friend the guitar and had to explain his ass, I don't know how many times, that there are four beats in a mesure (in most of western hemisphere music at least). It is really hard for him to follow the pattern my bass and a drum sample split time into. (His atmospheric playing is dope tho)
Despite, maybe even because all of that he rips my ass at this game, as the rhythm's primary conduct appears visually. He is just better at that and more comfortable with getting lost in the underworld orchestrating it.
I just couldn't. I couldn't let myself surrender to the flow of play with this Video Game. I was kind of afraid of it for some reason. Afraid of letting myself go. Afraid to offer myself into grip of its claws.

Even after stopping with the Scooby-doo dick, Thumper is still hitting some parts of abstract primal fear inside of my brain. Just like Yume Nikki it reminds me of Nightmares I had as a kid and it might sound kinda fucked up, but now I can actually appreciate it for this.

One thing responsible for the auditory dissonance in Thumpers harmonies is the simple fact that the levels came before the instrumentation. The game is a seven+ year collaborative effort from a small indie team, a "Drool" dripping from the corner of Brian Gibson's and Marc Flury's mouths. Gibson also pours one half of it's sweat and blood into a tsunami of noise struck by a "Lightning Bolt". My love for this two-piece band and his unconventional Bass playing in it were the main reason Thumper peaked my interest. The dude plays with a fucking cello tuning, two low bass strings and guitar or banjo strings for the highs, to really stab through the wall of sound, drummed up by the powerhouse Brian Chippendale. Before that he worked for Guitar Hero's and Rockband's "Harmonix" as the lead artist for over a decade. That man is probably in the Top 3 of the coolest MFer's in the entire industry. Although I can't think of anyone sharing that podium tbh, but I wanna leave space due to my Ignorance.

I don't know if my needlessly word playing style of writing way too long sentences, frontacted by trauma dumps pretenting to actually be about Video Games appeals to anyone other than my need to call my therapist again. I kinda like to vent in flowery ways to random gamers I will never actually know, while maybe trying to reach a single person who might relate to any of it or some shit.

Don't smoke as an ecape from your problems, especially not the ones inside. And fucking share with someone when you experience panic attacks, or just when you feel like fucking shit. Even more so when there is a friend right in front of you.(by now I tell that friend all that shit and listen to his)
Hit me up if you ever feel like you need one.
And if you are a stoner who thought about quitting, this Mark Fisher K-Punk Blog Post helped me to genuinely want to change myself.

Anyhow, here is a certified hood-classic Lightning Bolt live performance that encapsulates my panic attacks and eventuall panic-attack-surfing while playing this game.
When I first played Thumper my brain was the security guards, now it's Chippendale.
And neither would have been possible without Gibson.
I hate that I love you so much, it is bad for me.

Thumper is a decent nightmare to haunt your dreams with. If you are up for that or just a kinda half-baked, audio-visually abstract 'rhythm-game' give it a go. But don't touch it if you are already on a tipping point while also dangerously high.

about ten years ago I was goin thru a crosswalk when a car sped from behind, narrowly missed me, and drove full speed into the side of a house. I didn't see shit cos my back was turned, but the sound it made was otherworldly — impossible to describe

thumper trades in that kind of inexplicable catastrophic energy: a series of collisions in staccato; moments of grisly impact sped up, slowed down, and looped on repeat like endlessly rewound homemade horror tapes

monolithic droning violence that goes on & on til it takes the form of a numbing agent, delivered thru increasingly off kilter time signatures, railway tracks that churn and coil in on themselves, and a haunted windows media player visualizer aesthetic

its stubborn insistence on stretching a single tonal idea into a homogeneous sprawl won't be for everyone, but I can't imagine it any other way

something like this should feel like it lasts forever

I've played a fair few rhythm games this year and was starting to think there was nothing you could really do with the genre. Bland nothing-games that rip off Guitar Hero and Audiosurf are apparently a dime a dozen, and the only ones that have stood out have either merged the genre with something else (e.g. Metal Hellsinger) or put most of their work into the presentation and set dressing around the standard gameplay core (e.g. Trombone Champ).

Thumper doesn't do either of those things and still stands out as something different and fresh, and I couldn't be happier for it. I've never played anything that feels like this; at base level it does indeed look pretty Audiosurf-esque, but the sheer velocity, aggressiveness, and variety of different actions you have to take to the beat here blew me away. You aren't given buttons to press or a line to follow with your mouse, you get shown a bunch of obstacles, taught how to deal with them individually, and then its up to you to figure out how to navigate some of the tricker set-pieces. It almost feels like a puzzle game or even a platformer at times as you try to work out what you even have to do.

The game isn't afraid of playing around with more complex rhythmical themes as well; an awful lot of actions need to be taken offbeat, and its up to you to work out how they fit in, and each set of levels is in a different time signature which makes each of them a challenge in a different way. When you put it all together, Thumper is a daunting game, especially towards its later levels, but it is unbelievably satisfying when you pull off a section perfectly on your 34th attempt.

But for all this freshness good gamefeel, I do still have a fair few issues with this one. I was unsold on the music at first, which seems like a killing blow for a rhythm game. The only music in the game is ambient noise with drumming. I think the idea is that the diegetic noises your character makes are supposed to create the music as you weave in and out of obstacles, but in the earlier and sparser levels this doesn't really work and the game can end up feeling a bit flat.

The level length distribution is also absolutely barmy. Some levels go by in 20 seconds or less, whereas some seem to drag on for minutes at a time, normally being extended by repetitive but not difficult sections that are easy to accidentally mess up. Because the checkpoints are at the end of each level, and you're only allowed one mistake per checkpoint, this means that the super-long levels end up being an absolute nightmare which I always dreaded playing.

But overall, it's a good rhythm game, and the best I've played for quite a while. Don't expect a masterpiece or anything, but this showed me that it is indeed possible to create something unique in a genre I genuinely thought to be dead and buried.

A rhythm game like nothing I've ever played before. Thumper is incredibly intense and unforgiving from the first minute of gameplay. It's a rhythm game where there isn't really music per se. But rather patterns you learn how to react to.

As I progressed through Thumper, I kept hitting skill walls where it felt impossible to progress. Moments where the speed and cadence of the game felt like too much. But through practice and determination, I'd break through that wall and it felt amazing. Thumper is one of those games that always feels fair and always gives you every tool you need to succeed. It asks a lot from the player and that's exactly why it feels so satisfying to play.

I've started this one on and off for the past 4 years but this time everything finally clicked. I S ranked every stage and I see Thumper for the special gem it is. There's nothing like it.

Thumper fuckin rules.

This game has a really cool aesthetic and I think it's an extremely interesting game. I don't think there are any rhythm games that feel quite like this one. Unfortunately, That's all I feel it has going for it. At a certain point you've seen all the mechanics the game has to introduce, and although the challenge increases, it's just far too monotonous. The music always stays basically the same with a different light show in front of you. The game gives a pretty strong sense of anxiety when you're deep into difficult sections, but for me the root of that anxiety was me dreading the grind when there's still 20 something levels ahead.

Basically it couldn't end fast enough. I really had to force myself through it past like level 4. I still think it's kinda neat though.

A gritty, loud, raw experience that is only enhanced by a VR console. If you like beat saber but don't want to be active, I recommend this.

Never beat the game, but from what I played it was actively challenging, fun, and replayable all at once. Each level adds a new mechanic that makes it a bit trickier.

Gotta talk a bit about the soundtrack. The only way I can accurately describe it is Gorey. The crazy time signitures and instrumentals lead to a great experience and add to the challenge.

Thumper is an unusual rhythm game. Instead of focusing on the music, it focuses on the rhythm instead. Industrial sounds go well with the overall moody and eerie atmosphere.

The gameplay itself is also really good. The rhythm always correspond to the chapter number (4/4 in Chp. 4, 5/4 or 5/8 in Chp. 5, etc..), and so what initially seems to be chaos, actually is very much ordered.

Gameplay is simple but requires fast reflexes, though thanks to the liberal checkpoint-system and quick restarts of subsections, they can be easily replayed multiple times. This is especially useful when going for S-ranks.

Thumper

is undoubtedly my game of the year and made its way into one of my all time favorites

Despite identifying as a Rhythm game, I'd argue that it's far similar to reaction intensive action game because of the sheer amount of mechanics and the freedom of choice the game provides in terms of how you play it while remaining obscenely simple and satisfying to play

But the game's simplicity doesn't undermine the game's difficulty at all. In fact, this is one of the hardest games I've played and no it's not because it's a rhythm game and rhythm games are supposedly "hard". The difficulty of this game LITERALLY stems from each and every one of the 9 levels having increasingly more and more difficult tempos. For example, level 6 has a time signature of 6/8 and the successive levels all increase the time signatures to sync up with the level number thus providing a consistent challenge to overcome. So even if you're rhythmically adept this game will definitely still be challenging regardless since it's not just a countless notes falling down in the same tempo which is most rhythm game's way of making things artificially more difficult which I find revolting

Now onto the elephant in the room or more like the lack of one, the music in this game is a whole bunch of nothing. It's all abstract noise but that is intentionally done as it's up to the player to find the rhythm through the gameplay and it's far more intuitive than you might think. I myself was guilty of thinking this was stupid but once I beat a few levels and got accustomed all the different mechanics, it all clicked. Music would only hamper the structure of the game and I'm glad there's none

One of my biggest gripes with your regular rhythm games is the fact that those games constantly shove these obnoxious "Perfect/Great/Good/Okay" text pop up in your screen during gameplay but in Thumper you're either right or you're wrong, no annoying text pop ups cluttering your screen it's all you and the gameplay

This is one game I pretty much have nothing really negative to say simply because of the fact that there's no padding and the game is relatively short. But if I had to squeeze out some nitpicks I'd say the visuals can be a tad bit overwhelming at times and can obfuscate SOME notes but that's rarely an issue and a complete non-issue when you learn to play with the rhythm

As far as Rhythm games go I doubt there will be another game like this, ever. Genuine masterpiece, play it or miss out.