Image: RibCage Games

Rhythm games of all stripes seem to be going through a bit of a boom era right now, and one of the subgenres getting the most love is musical action games. Alpha Nomos–released yesterday–might not have the blockbuster visuals of Hi-Fi RUSH or a soundtrack packed with classic rock anthems, but what it does have going for it is a cute setting and some surprisingly intricate musical character action combat, wrapped in Hades-esque roguelite progression.

While I'm not too deep into Alpha Nomos (the victim of a packed weekend), as a dabbler in rhythm games and a fan of Hi-Fi Rush, I can confirm that this one has some sauce to it. Set in a world of toys, you play as Cello, a clown puppet who wakes up in the middle of a strange forest and is immediately jumped by the local rag-doll ruffians. Cue character action combat - classic Devil May Cry-inspired combo action, mixing ground, aerial, and juggle moves, with combos changing if you leave a pause between swings. And being a musical game, every swing on the beat does more damage and adds additional notes to the soundscape, and perfectly rhythmic dodges let you completely no-sell attacks that might otherwise hurt.

The tradeoff for letting the player contribute so much to the audio directly is that if you goof up, the game is going to sound pretty bad. The (weirdly sinister-sounding) backing beat keeps going no matter what, but the melody can fall off, unless you turn on one of the game's many assist modes. It also doesn't help that the starting weapon is a pair of xylophone blades. Which–while fitting for Skeleton Appreciation Month–don't exactly have quite the same aural impact as a flying V guitar. But there are more instruments to unlock and upgrade, including a saxophone sword and (of course) an electric guitar. It's just that it'll take you a while before you can make your enemies gently weep.

My main gripe with it so far is that the environments are pretty downbeat. Forests, crumbling ruins, autumnal whimsy and decay punctuated with brightly coloured toys fighting amongst them. Even the little hub village you fall back to after losing a run is a bit dark and dreary, even if the inhabitants are a bright and cheerful-looking lot. Out in the field, Alpha Nomos does some stuff to liven things up, framing arenas in bouncing visualizer borders, and having background items like boom-boxes and discarded instruments pulsing to the beat, but this feels more like a world filled with musical items, rather than a world made of music. Again, no grand flaw, but Hi-Fi Rush set a very high bar.

Still, what it lacks in style, Alpha Nomos makes up for in mechanical depth. The combos feel intricate, the combat demanding, and the upgrades and unlocks continual and varied. Some perks can completely change your playstyle, like greatly increasing your damage on aerial attacks only, or giving you significant boosts to hitting the off-beats, and I'm curious to see how well the combat holds up when I dig deeper into this one, if I can carve out enough time for another jam session or three.

Alpha Nomos is now £12.95/$18, with a 10% launch discount until October 24th. There are a lot of discount bundles on this one, including recent musical goodies Bits & Bops, GRIDbeat, Steel Century Groove, and the recently released musical RPG Nocturne.