A rhythm game styled like some kind of autoscroller fighting game. If you’ve heard of UNBEATABLE, this game is that but with more enemy variety.
There is actually plenty of differences though. In Muse Dash, you choose a character to play as between Rin, Buro or Marija (or one of the collab companions), who each have different abilities. As you play the music, you have to fight off enemies standing in your way as you run towards the right. Pressing one of the lower row buttons attacks pink enemies on the lower row, and the upper row buttons to attack the blue enemies on the upper rows.
In Muse Dash, there are 4 main enemy types. Basic enemies just require a tap on the right row; Sheets (hold notes) require you to hold the button on that row; Mash enemies can be hit with either button and then mashing all the buttons will boost your score; and gears must be dodged by hitting the opposite column. There are also blue notes that give you 200 points for collecting them and do nothing else.
But wait, didn’t I just say that Muse Dash has more enemy types than UNBEATABLE does? Yes. While UNBEATABLE has more mechanically different enemies, Muse Dash has far more enemy movement patterns. Raiders which jump up from the bottom of the screen after they are already half way towards you; Ghosts that turn invisible as they approach; Hammers that swing down from the top; and Bosses which literally throw various types of projectiles at you, some move in a straight line, some bounce, some with an arcing projectile movement, and even just face slamming you (which you hit like a mash enemy).
Lets talk about scoring and health. In Muse Dash, you are just a girl running forward through the enemies, therefore you only take damage if an enemy hits you. If you miss it, but aren’t in the same column as it, then you don’t take damage from it. While I don’t know specifically how the score works, this game only has two judgement windows, Perfect and Great. Everything else is a Miss. As you get perfects, you build a fever meter, which when full gives you extra points for its duration. However, because of this, hitting perfects does not recover your health. Instead, certain enemies will have a red heart icon. Hitting them will recover 80 health, or give you 300 points at full health. Also worth noting: Muse Dash does not have release timings for hold notes.
Muse Dash is relatively inexpensive, only a few bucks, but whats not explained is that since it started as a mobile rhythm game, there is a lot of DLC. With the base purchase, you get about 40 songs, with an extra 4 paid songs made available for free every week. Thankfully the usual DLC spam is mitigated by their Muse Plus DLC, which unlocks most of the games content, most importantly raising the amount of available songs to around 500. There are still some elements locked behind other DLC packs, but Muse Plus gives you an extra discount on them as well. Note that this doesn’t transfer between platforms.
Steam (Base Game): https://store.steampowered.com/app/774171 £2.99
Steam (Muse Plus): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2593750 £27.99
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prpr.musedash £2.69
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