Rotaeno

Did you know, that in terms of arcade and mobile gaming, rhythm games as a genre are the most innovative? Like, you have games with knobs, games with levers, 2D input areas, mashups with entirely different genres, and now, games that utilise the gyroscope in your phone.

Rotaeno is the kind of rhythm game that not only can be played with thumbs (most MRGs recommend multi finger play,) but explicitly expects that it will be, because the game doesn’t want to be laid flat on a table or stand, it wants to be held like a steering wheel, and driven around to catch notes that are fixed in place by gravity instead of the bounds of your screen.

What it means is that you learn rather quickly that it’s a lot easier to move the notes to your thumbs than it is to move your thumbs to the notes!

There are 4 kinds of notes, blue/green tap notes, yellow slide notes, purple flick notes, and smaller purple catch notes. Most of these are self explanatory, but the catch notes require you to use the game’s main gimmick, because to collect them you don’t even need to touch the screen, you only need to line them up with the small catch areas on the outside of the play area. You’ll know when they’re coming though as those areas will glow with a purple highlight when they do. There are also slam notes which are presented as blue or red rings, which require you to quickly rotate your phone in the direction of the ring. Red is clockwise, blue is anticlockwise.

The game comes with a currently simple story, as we only have the first chapter of it, but you get a lot of songs to start with for free, and a bunch more to unlock with traveler badges that you acquire by playing charts and levelling up. Beyond that, song packs and singles are purchased from an IAP store for about £1 per song. There are no ads here, as the game already has a small fee to get started instead.

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xd.rotaeno.googleplay £2.29