E3 2012: Hands-on with Orgarhythm for PS Vita

Orgarhythm is a very unique and odd game.

In essence, it’s an RTS rhythm-action puzzler where you tap and swipe the PS Vita’s screen to command your forces to attack evil demons to a driving beat and thumping tunes.

Every command is timed to the background music – from deploying archers to setting up siege engines - while a rock-paper-scissor hierarchy determines how well your particular troops fight against the your foes.

Each level sees your main commander swagger along the battlefield in a pre-determined path, three groups of coloured minions traipsing lazily in tow.

As enemies appear, your task is to tap once to determine which colour to deploy, again to determine what type of attack (flying, ranged, melee, siege), and then sweep your finger to deploy your troops in a line.

Every tap has to be timed to the beat of the music, with sloppy presses punished with lower grades at the end of a mission. Meanwhile picking the wrong coloured troop for the enemy is punished with heavy casualties in the resulting skirmish.

Certain foes, such as those hidden behind wooden palisades, require you to use archers to overcome, meaning that while the pace of your hero is fairly slow, there’s very little pause in the action before another quick decision needs to be taken.

At the end of each stage, a boss character rears its ugly head out from the ground. The first level’s creature – a rotating totem – is fairly harmless and can be ravaged by any type of troop, but latter stages introduce both multiple minor groups to trip you up, as well as bosses that do staggering damage to poorly grouped units.

Thankfully, you do have another trick at your disposal. After a certain amount of time, your hero is also able to cast support spells like healing or shield. These, too, require you to tap out to the beat, so the rhythmically challenged won’t find solace.

At first Orgarhythm seems needlessly layered – indeed, I spent most of the first level wondering what purpose adding rhythm action to an RTS serves.

But by the second level I’d slipped into a pattern of tap-tap-bamming, nodding my head in time with the music, and completely forgetting I was stood in the middle of a busy conference hall.

Much as with Sound Shapes, the close link between sound and visuals seems to make each action more impactful, and really ratchets up the connection between your input and what’s on screen.

We’ll see if Orgarhythm can keep the beat when the game launches on August 9th.