Thumper DEALS
Thumper Game Review
For those of you who follow our twitter, you may well be aware that I have been playing the rhythm violence game, Thumper quite a lot lately.
This game is a lot of things. It’s fun, frustrating, addictive, fast, beautiful, and many other things, too. However, the one thing is is not, is like any other music/rhythm game you’ll have ever played before. The closest this game comes to anything I’ve ever played is Audiosurf – a game the procedurally generates a “track” for you to follow and collect points, based on whatever song you load in to it. Although, beyond the “track” style level design, there are still very few similarities that can be drawn between the two games.
I’ve been playing Thumper for a while now and decided that I would write a full “Thumper Game Review” and talk about what I like and dislike about the game. And, more importantly, whether or not I think you should buy/play it or not. But first, here’s some trailers:
Who Is Behind The Thumper Game?
Drool are the developers who created Thumper. It is the first game they have released using this moniker – and hopefully not their last.
Drool is a 2-person team – Brian Gibson and Marc Flurry.
Marc is the game’s programmer and designer. He developed the game engine for Thumper and co-designed the game. He is also a co-organiser for the Seoul Indies monthly indie game developer meetup.
Brian, on the other hand, is the creator of the game’s art, music. He also co-designed the game, along with Marc. Brian Gibson is already know as the bassist for the American noise rock band duo called Lightning Bolt. These guys are absolutely mental, I really suggest you give them a listen. Here’s a link to their Spotify artist page.
Knowing these few facts about the developers really explains a lot about the game they created.
Thumper Game Review: Gameplay
The basics of Thumper are easy for anyone to pick up and start playing. There are very few controls & button combinations to learn throughout the entire game, which is good because this game gets real crazy, real fast! Although a perfect sense of rhythm isn’t required to play Thumper, being able to understand and relay rhythmical patterns will turn a game of frantically bashing at buttons in to a something somewhat smoother – and less chance of of causing injury.
You play as a space beetle that is travelling along a track as a repetitive, catchy rhythm plays in the background. Periodically, “thump pads” will be set down on the track that you must press the action button as you travel over it. The more of these you hit correctly, the more points you will get. There are other obstacles that you need to navigate/avoid, such as turns and spikes. Again, simply pressing the correct button at the correct time will gain you more points and further advancement.
All these “thump pads”, obstacles, twists and turns are all well tied in to the rhythm that is playing. So if you can keep good timing with the rhythm you will generally find it easier to know when to press buttons at the right time.
Each level is broken down into multiple smaller sections. Each section acts as a sort of “checkpoint” that you will return to the start of it you get destroyed by smashing in to a turn, or spikes, or space snakes, or lasers or many other things that will kill you.
Each level also has more than 1 boss. Typically, you will have an easier mid-level “Mini Boss” and a harder “Final Boss” at the end of each level.
The boss in Thumper is a giant head. The mechanics to defeat the bosses are practically the same except for a few small additional mechanics. These mechanics are based in looping sequences. You must complete the sequence correctly. If you don’t then you must try again when the sequence starts again.
During a boss fight there will be green thump pads. You must hit all of these green thump pads, without missing a single one. If you miss one then the rest of the pads will turn to standard blue thump pads and you must make it through to the restart of the sequence and try again. If, however, you do hit all of the green thump pads, then there will be a big shiny green thump pad – hit that and it will fire a blast that will cause a direct hit on the boss. After several direct hits the boss will be defeated.
Some times, the boss will be protected by a shield. These need to be broken first, by smashing thump pads, before the green blast thumps can get through to hit the boss.
There is an incredibly good guide on the Steam Community pages, that explains all the game mechanics and has some great tips on how to “git gud” at the Thumper Game: Steam Community :: Guide :: How to “git gud” at Thumper
Thumper Game Review: Graphics
Thumper is a visually incredible game from start to finish – and this really means something for a game that is so simple. The ambient area is, at times, filled with nebula-like colours that can give this game a beautiful and awe-inspiring quality.
As you travel along the “track” psychedelic swirls and patterns will grow and mutate from the track itself, giving it a very organic feeling at times. However, this organic-ness can very quickly become much more digital and “controlled”. This is really hard to explain in words and is something that you really need to see for yourself to fully understand and appreciate.
The colour pallet used is typically very neon, with a lot of high contrasting colours set on the dark, space-like background. However, the creators have done a great job at making the important things stand out so that your eye is able to pick them out as quickly as possible when you’re flying through the track at blistering speeds. This is important, because when you only have split seconds to react to obstacles you need to be able to identify them as quickly as possible.
Although Thumper will be winning no awards for incredible next-gen graphics, Drool did a good job at making this game look great.
Thumper Game Review: Sound
Sound is a huge part of this game. So it was important the the creators got it just right. However, Thumper never wanted to be just another Rock Band or Guitar Hero copy.
The pulsing, rhythmic beats start off slow and almost relaxing in the early levels. However, it’s not long until thumper builds a hostile tension with ever increasing speed and intimidating industrial sounds as you bash away at your controller in an attempt to keep up and not screw up. It truly is both mentally and physically draining. But man is it a lot of fun.
Brian Gibson really did leave his musical mark all over Thumper’s sound design.
However, it’s clear from the much older Teaser Trailer videos that they changed the sounds somewhat before release. I actually kind of preferred the older sounds from the Teaser Trailer video.
Thumper Game Review: Value
Thumper is a pretty solid £15.99 ($19.99) across all platforms. You can also buy the Pocket Edition on Google Play Store and Apple App Store for around about £5, too. I think this is a good price for the game. However, I wouldn’t pay much more for it – maybe as much as £20 maximum.
For your money you will get a brutally thrilling game that plays great, is well polished and will provide you with hours upon hours of increasing challenge. And once you complete a level, you can go back and replay it on Play+ mode for an even greater challenge.
The scoreboard give you incentive to want to go back and get better scores on levels you have already completed and gives you the ability to see where you rank globally, and amongst friends, too.
I highly suggest picking this game up when you have a spare 16 quid in your pocket.
The Review
Thumper
PROS
- Fun & Exciting
- Original
- Looks awesome
- Sounds great
- Replayability
CONS
- Some parts are really hard
- Somewhat repetitive
Stadia
Steam
Xbox
Nintendo Switch
PS4
