I'm absolutely terrible at rhythm games, but this game hooked me and didn't let me go until the end when they throw a 240 bpm song at you with flashing lights in the background.
This is probably my new favorite rhythm game. I know there are various improvements in the sequels with different note types, extra singers, and more QOL, but this game is surprisingly forgiving of the learning process and lets you take things at your own pace instead of forcing you to replay hard ass levels from the start and making you deal with it until you're good (though, that's probably just me being bad at rhythm games.)
Something about there only being 4 buttons made this game very engaging to me, It's like ddr but without the headache of trying to find the right arrow. Now that I'm thinking about it that's probably a little dumb because the buttons are in the exact same order, but for some reason the face buttons are much more simple to grasp for me than the corresponding arrows, especially at such high speeds.
The track list is fun but definitely not anything to write home about. The game came out in 2009 when vocaloids were still in a weird state of pseudo-infancy and because of that most of the songs are by the same couple of producers that were popular back then. That and what seems to be an entire section of songs that were just really popular on japanese internet at the time.
Overall I think the simplicity of this game really helps it, even though some fans of the series would probably disagree with me. I love the colors and the cute anime girls, so this is the one time I'll allow my random vocaloid hyperfixation from middle school to surface and shine in the spotlight. Hachuche piku ftw.

Pepper grinder is short and sweet, but probably a little too short. The platforming itself is very solid unfortunately I was pretty underwhelmed by the brevity of the game after waiting numerous years for the release.
I have to give it to the developer, though, the art direction on this game is phenomenal. The animation is smooth as butter and it looks great.
At the end of the day I had a good time with this one, even though I was a little let down by a short runtime and a few underwhelming bosses after the long development cycle. Give the game a shot and give the developer a few bucks, the game is good.

What an absolute banger! Shovel Knight breaks free from the constraints of its genre influences, offering surprisingly little in the way of artificial difficulty or unfair game design. The pacing of the game is spot-on and the level design is honestly flawless.

The character writing and world-building in Shovel Knight are surprisingly compelling for a platformer game. While still simple, there's always something fun about a knight with a shovel going on a perilous journey to reunite with his long lost love. It's an all-around enjoyable experience and undoubtedly ranks with the great platformer hits of old.