Deemo

Genre: Music-Rhythm

Players: 1

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Review:

Deemo is a Music-Rhythm game that was originally released on smartphones and then ported to PlayStation Vita and later the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. However, far from being throwaway shovelware, this is a game that clearly had a lot of love poured into it.

Playing this game, I saw a lot of parallels to Voez, a game that features a similar style of gameplay, and a similar history of originally being released on smartphones before coming to Switch (ported by the same developer and published by the same publisher, no less). Since I reviewed Voez, I have been celebrating it as the best music-rhythm game on the Switch. Now, I’m not so sure about that anymore – Deemo makes a pretty significant claim to that title.

Like Voez, this is a game that is best played in handheld mode, where the gameplay has notes falling down towards you much like in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. However, while Voez shakes this up by having the position of these notes dancing around the screen, Deemo is more focused on making the experience feel like playing a piano.

It doesn’t do this using an on-screen piano, like the Frederic games do. Rather, it tries to give players a decent approximation of the sort of movements their hands might make if playing the piece in question on piano. The game is much better for this – the presentation is clearer and the detection is more forgiving than Frederic’s, and making the gameplay an abstract of piano-playing results in moments like dragging your finger across the screen to simulate a “glissando” (where the pianist does a similar motion on a keyboard).

Now, I should say that I suck at playing piano in real life. I took lessons ages ago, but most of that has been lost to time. However, the fact that this game’s representation of piano-playing is abstract means that doesn’t matter – this game is wonderfully fun to play even if you’ve never tickled the ivories. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a youngster playing this game felt inspired by the game to learn how to play a real piano.

This game can be played in docked mode as well, though some of the magic of the game is lost this way – players simply tap buttons on the left side of the controller for notes on the left side of the screen, buttons on the right side for notes on the right, and hold L or R for glissando notes. It gets the job done, and it works well enough to be decent, but this is a game that clearly shines when played with a touchscreen.

With this game’s focus on the piano in the gameplay, it shouldn’t surprise players to find that the musical selections here are very piano-centric, although there’s a good variety of music here from various Asian composers, from classical-style pieces, Jazz, J-Pop, even a few songs from the developer’s other games. The soundtrack variety here is limited somewhat by the focus on the piano, making it less varied than what was in Voez (and overall, I prefer Voez’s soundtrack), but it’s still all quite good. And with over 200 songs to unlock and play, this game boasts an absolute wealth of content for players.

That generous helping of content is accompanied by a generous amount of flexibility in how the game is played. Every song offers three difficulty levels, and players can also adjust how fast notes scroll on the screen, as well as separately adjusting the volume of their notes and the volume of the backing song.

As for the game’s graphical presentation… this game is both fantastic and underwhelming. On the fantastic side, this game has a story about a young girl and her tall, black stick figure-esque friend that is illustrated by absolutely gorgeous artwork. What’s more, every song in the game has cover art depicting one or both of these characters in various scenarios vaguely related to the song in question, and this artwork is absolutely beautiful and wildly imaginative.

However, on the other side of things, absolutely none of this beauty filters into the actual gameplay, which all features a background of a still-frame close-up of the header of a page of sheet music in a darkened room. I understand not wanting to distract from the gameplay, but I feel like far more could have been done here to bring the color and beauty of this game’s art into its gameplay.

Overall, I feel like Deemo and Voez are about on par with each other when it comes to what the Switch’s best music-rhythm game is. Voez is more colorful, more playful, and has a wider variety of music, while I feel Deemo edges out Voez in its gameplay, has absolutely gorgeous art, and a greater focus on its specific musical focus. There are no wrong answers when it comes to these games – both are excellent. And music-rhythm fans on the Switch should absolutely consider Deemo to be a must-buy, just like Voez.

tl;dr – Deemo is a wonderful Music-Rhythm game with gameplay that recreates in abstract the feeling of playing a piano. It has a huge selection of music, a good number of options, and some absolutely gorgeous artwork, although the gameplay itself is unfortunately visually bland. While you can play Deemo fine in docked mode, this is a game that’s really designed for handheld play, which may limit its appeal. But if you enjoy Music-Rhythm games, this game is a must-have.

Grade: A

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