Rhythm Quest

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• Announcements·7 Aug 2026Official

  Devlog 86 - Backdrop Redesigns

  This month I finally started drawing up new backdrops for existing levels, trying to up the visual fidelity and quality (to bring them more in line with the other ones). Here's a video of those new ones in action: Level 5-4The old backdrops for level 5-4 were pretty plain -- just a bunch of partially-transparent floating bordered rectangles of various sizes: Visually the "theming" for world 5 revolves around translucent, "glassy" shapes. I took a look at some other videogames for inspiration on ideas that I could pull from, especially Crystal Man's stage from Mega Man 5, which not only has these nice "prism" shapes making up the floor, but does a good job of layering detail in the background: Here's the same section as above, but with the new backdrops. There's some more detailed hexagonal prism shapes in the foreground, and opacity is lessened in the background layers to provide a sense of depth (along with the parallax scrolling), and to help with readability. As with some of the other levels in world 5, there's also some diagonal light beams, which adds a subtle touch. Level 2-1These sky-themed levels from world 2 were definitely prime candidates for reworks. Here's the old version of level 2-1 (drawn over five years ago!), with a bunch of really simple cloud shapes. At the time I hadn't experimented at all with controlling the opacity of different layers, so I only had a very limited set of colors to work with. When I first thought about reworking these backdrops I was torn on whether to actually utilize transparency in the earlier worlds since "transparent cloud layers" was something that I had specifically first introduced in world 4, and became a defining conceit for that set of backdrops. Ultimately I decided that I would find other ways to differentiate the worlds thematically, and that "making things look pretty in general" was ultimately more important. It also didn't make sense to "save the best graphics for the latter half of the game" since first impre...
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• Patch Notes·7 Aug 2026Official

  Rhythm Quest Demo v0.42.0 Released

  The Rhythm Quest Demo has been updated to version 0.42.0. This update brings new reworked backgrounds for levels 2-1 and 2-2 and tweaked floor/ramp graphics for world 2, as well as the usual slew of bugfixes and improvements.Full changelog:Version 0.42.0 - New backdrops for level 2-1 - New backdrops for level 2-2 - New (thicker) floor/ramp graphics for world 2 - Tweaked charts for level 2-2 - Tweaked antialiasing for ramp graphics across all worlds - Fixed level 1-3 water effect not respecting level fade settings - Fixed enemy y position not updating when enemy spacing was changed mid-level - Cleaned up handling of enemy spacing with different enemy types - Fixed respawn scrolling behavior when respawning before first level spawn point - Allow normal jumps/attacks after level end with strict inputs enabled - Made early input detection slightly more responsive - Fixed strict input still allowing certain extra inputs (mid-air jumps) - Fixed strict input not signalling early input attempts properly - Fixed issue where attack cooldown was not handled correctly by track freezing mode - Slightly tweak density chart rendering - Fixed blending/coloring issue with transparent foreground layers - Fixed level 2-1 coin/metronome sfx being pitched too high
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• Announcements·4 Jul 2026Official

  Devlog 85 - Level Fading

  It's been a long while! Summer months tend to be a little slower for me since I have other stuff going on, but I've still been chugging along when I can. A lot of the work I've been doing has simply been easy/hard charting for bonus levels that are still missing those two difficulties -- Violet Hyperwave, Flower Fang, Super Mega Zero, Let's Have an Adventure, Fur Elise, Rondo Alla Turca, Standing Here Alone, and Song of the Sea have all gotten easy and hard mode charts in the past months. None of that is really devlog-worthy, but I have some other neat stuff to report on now too.Level FadingThere's a new "Level Fading" advanced setting that will add an extra challenge by either hiding obstacles until you're about to reach them... ...or by making them fade out in advance, forcing you to look ahead and remember them. Both versions also have a more intense variant that is more extreme with its timing. And for those who =really= want to challenge themselves, "Invisible" mode will do exactly that -- make everything completely invisible, forcing you to memorize the entire chart! Rather than implement this through making every obstacle and terrain segment in the game fade out dynamically (ugh!), I instead implemented this by drawing an extra copy of the backdrops above everything except for the player sprite. This is kind of quick-and-dirty trick that just happens to work since almost everything I need to fade out is on a lower layer than the things I still want to show. There were a few special cases I needed to handle explicitly (water zones, and grass), but they weren't too bad to handle once the basic effect was working.Steam Achievement ReworkSteam achievements are a system that I haven't touched for years, so the old achievement definitions are hopelessly out of date. I took some time to give that an entire overhaul, defining new achievements for each of the different difficulty levels, as well as a few extra ones like your 1,000th respawn, or collecting 2,500 coins ...
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• Patch Notes·4 Jul 2026Official

  Rhythm Quest Demo v0.41.1 Released

  The Rhythm Quest Demo has been updated to version 0.41.1. This release brings a new "level fading" challenge feature which can be enabled to increase gameplay difficulty, and changes the default coloration for wings (blue by default, green only if an attack is present).Full changelog:Version 0.41.1 - Change default wing color skinning - blue for both air jumps + flight paths, green only if an attack is also present - Added "Level Fading" feature, which increases challenge by making obstacles fade in or out, or be entirely invisible - Fixed visuals for color skins/enemy spacing settings not rendering in main menu settings - Float "Back to Menu" item in level browser at top of screen - Increase size of world headers in level browser to account for new scrolling logic - Fixed level stats not updating in level browser for difficulty changes - Fixed max coin value not updating in level browser for difficulty changes - Fixed music preview restarting in level browser when selecting a song to play - Consistently capitalize "UI" in strings - Fixed flight beatgrids being slightly offset from other sprites placed in same location - Adjust coin physics so they don't collide with "invisible" spikes (e.g. World 2) - Exiting Discord after automatic Discord presence integration no longer causes repeated errors to be logged - Updated translations from weblate
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• Patch Notes·6 May 2026Official

  Rhythm Quest Demo v0.41.0 Released

  The Rhythm Quest Demo has been updated to version 0.41.0. This release fixes some strange menu issues that surfaced in the 0.40.0 release, and enables the Indonesian and Lithuanian translations in-game.Full changelog:Version 0.41.0 - Add Indonesian and Lithuanian translations - Fix various errors with menus in version 0.40.0
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