Drum Box

Genre: Music Creation Application / Music-Rhythm

Players: 1

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Review:

Drum Box, released on Nintendo Switch in 2021, is an Application that lets players play a simulated drum set on their Nintendo Switch. In addition, this game has a campaign mode that plays like a Music-Rhythm game, and more specifically one that plays a bit like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, with players hitting the correct note in time with it scrolling along a horizontal bar.

Despite being designed specifically for the Nintendo Switch, Drum Box does not make any use of the unique features of the Nintendo Switch – it has no gyroscopic motion controls and no touchscreen. Players must learn to make use of the button assignments to play the drums in the game properly. The drum set in this game includes a kick drum (AKA bass drum), low tom, mid tom, high tom, snare drum, hi-hat, ride cymbal, crash cymbal, and cowbell.

Learning to play these various instruments reasonably well using the button assignments is where the game’s main campaign mode comes in. In a way, it acts as a tutorial of sorts for how to play rhythms using a controller to control the drums. Unfortunately, as a Music-Rhythm game it falls short in a number of key areas. There are only eight songs (each with multiple unlockable difficulties), and none of these are licensed. Rather, each song is a generic instrumental song in a different style (reggae, rock, blues, etc.). They all sound nice, but the lack of recognizable music here is still disappointing.

The other problem with the Music-Rhythm game elements are that this game seems to expect players to use button combinations that aren’t exactly natural, like alternating between simultaneously pressing A and Y and B and Y without pressing other buttons. You could try to contort your hand to suit whatever combination is needed, but then soon enough you’ll have to move your hands back again to use the ZL and ZR buttons again. And this is in addition to the fact that this application is asking players to press a much greater number of buttons than Guitar Hero or Rock Band ever did.

Of course, players can also make use of this Application as a toy to simply play the drums freestyle. In this, it performs fairly well, even giving players some options like changing the type of drum set you’re playing to support different genres. However, as a toy to play freestyle drums, Drum Box is lacking due to the inability to use the touchscreen. Also, there’s no in-game ability to record your works.

While I respect that Drum Box tries to be both a Music-Rhythm game and a drum simulation Application, but unfortunately it falls short in both areas – the Simulation elements do not integrate well with the Music-Rhythm elements and the lack of licensed music or even a decent variety of music makes it hard to recommend this game as a Music-Rhythm game, and the lack of touchscreen support robs this game of the visceral fun of using it as a drum simulation Application. As a result, I don’t quite know who I would recommend this game to. While not terrible, it doesn’t really excel at anything it attempts to do.

tl;dr – Drum Box is a game that combines Music-Rhythm elements as well as being an Application that simulates playing a drum. Unfortunately, it does neither of these things particularly well – there’s not a good variety of songs and no licensed music for the Music-Rhythm elements and the simulation elements mess with the Music-Rhythm gameplay, and this doesn’t succeed as an Application to simulate a drum set because you can’t use the touchscreen. The result is a game that tries multiple things, but doesn’t truly succeed at any of them.

Grade: C

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