[Noisz Starlivht] Alright, I'm making this an official pitch plurk for people on my timeline who play rhythm games and might be into this.

Noisz Starlivht is a mobile hybrid rhythm game/danmaku.

It has the standard four-track rhythm game section, with tap notes, slide notes, directional notes, etc...

But, the boss that you're fighting will occasionally switch things up, and shoot out danmaku bullet patterns that you have to dodge instead by tapping and dragging your finger outside the rhythm tap zone.

There's also occasionally rhythm segments inside the danmaku segments: for example, there's a special kind of note that appears inside the danmaku area that you have to hover over with your character in time with the beat or it counts as an error.

Sometimes, the game will attack with a danmaku pattern and a note pattern at the same time, meaning you have to dodge with one finger and tap out the beat with the other, but these segments are simplified on both ends.

Notably, each time you tap a note you're attacking the boss's healthbar.

It starts at -100% and goes up with each note you get, and once it reaches 0% or higher, you start getting "overflow bonuses.'

Both your health and the boss's reset with each "verse," or phase of the song, so you don't need to worry about being perfect for the entire song.

I'm a rhythm game AND danmkau baby, and while the game can get pretty hard, it's great to learn things on and I've been having a blast.

Now, about the actual story.

The premise is that you're the producer of a new idol group which has been formed by shady megacorporation Antiphon, which is responsible for most of the technological advancements.

It turns out that, surprise, the new idol group is, in a way, ANOTHER weird, shady experiment. Mysterious monsters called Noise Beasts are starting to appear at concerts to stop time and make musicians disappear, and the idol group Starlivht has been given the power of Noisz to lure and defeat these Noise Beasts.

Only one person can wield the Noisz at a time, but their powers get stronger as the rest of the group supports them, making cooperation and bonds crucial.

The plot is very interesting, and each of the four main girls and even the faceless Producer (that's you!) are well fleshed-out, fully developed characters.

And, well. Okay, everyone on my plurk knows I can be a grump about the idea of "diversity" being a selling point.

But Noisz Starlivht is aggressively diverse in a good way, especially since each character's marginalization aren't the be-all end-alls of their characterization but instead influence everything in important ways. It's very much not "teehee we'll leave you guessing," either.

One of the idols, Hakuno, is trans, and one of the very first conversations that she has with another idol is her having a hard time tucking before their first concert, which is important because the skirts are short. The entire game is like that, it's... really frank about these kinds of things to the point where it feels grounded in real experiences.

Even the nameless, faceless player avatar, the producer, is wheelchair-bound and during the band secret-sharing section it turns out she ALSO likes girls along with most of the rest of the band.

Each member has their Own Shit going on to a big degree that they struggle with, and it's great.

IDK Noisz Starlivht is a game that like. I feel like most of my timeline would ADORE and you should play it.

Also, a note about its monetization model.

Noisz is not a gacha! Instead, you get an interstitial ad you have to watch between every two songs, and you have to use coins to play songs above Easy...

However, you can get rid of ALL of that by paying $20. Once. $20 once and the game is just YOURS.

There's also really expensive skins for each idol, but the devs specifically call out that it's not worth it and you should only buy it if you want to support the game.

and like. man i've barely started but i've already seen positive representation of something that a lot of my friends have and it's so rare to see it handled well and positively that even though i don't deal with it i'm happy to see it on behalf of my friends

progressed through the story a little more and, once again

i HAVE to fucking stress that this game is so good it's criminal that i'm not seeing more people talk about it

the name of this game keeps tripping me

...it would wouldn't it,

whoops

it's ok i also mix noiz/noise all the time bc of my wol, none of these are words anm