The Rhythm Storm Alpha demo released in early 2023, when the game was announced. Though the demo hit a lot of goals I had for the game, I didn't really enjoy playing it that much. After some additional refinement, a Beta demo was released in mid-2023. It fixed a couple minor issues, but some fundamental problems remained. At the time, I thought that the rhythm and upgrade elements were a bit too conflicting, but there was something else not quite right. So I took a break from the game while I finished Instruments of Destruction.
The difference between the Alpha and Beta demo was fairly large, and the new 2025 demo has received even more revisions. The fundamental gameplay remains that of a bullet heaven or swarm survival game with music-synced elements. In the end, I didn't change much with the music syncing, but instead the process of upgrading is very different from previous demos.
With the Alpha and Beta demos, XP was gained automatically, with enemies dropping an "upgrade" powerup when you reached a new "level". Enemies also dropped energy instead of XP, which was used to fuel your powers, minor powers (in the Beta demo), and drone respawning. Balancing the energy dropping in particular proved difficult, as more enemies spawned more energy which made it far easier to destroy lots of enemies at once.
After playing a bunch of bullet heaven games in 2024, it was obvious that the fundamental changes I made to enemy drops was one of the core problems. Enemies dropping XP was far better than them dropping energy.
The other issue was the upgrade process was just too cumbersome. You want to look at the the choices, make a decision within a second or two, and jump right back into the gameplay. That was impossible with the double upgrade system. Choosing 1 of 3 items in two different columns, plus deciding whether to reroll one (or both) column just added up to way too many choices and controller inputs.
The 2025 Upgrade System
In the 2025 demo, you upgrade by pressing left or right, then pressing A (or clicking twice with the mouse). That's the whole process when you first play the game. Later you can press X to reroll one to three times. There's a bit of reading to do if you want, because each choice gives you 3 upgrades at once. But you can also just look at the first word of each column and generally know what you're choosing between.
When you first start a run, and after each world, you'll select 4 out of 6 upgrade sets. These upgrade sets are categories or filters, essentially. When you upgrade or reroll, the game chooses 2 of your 4 sets, and populates them with random upgrades from those categories. There's more to it than that, but it gives you a little more control over which upgrades you'll see while still remaining fairly randomized. And it streamlines the upgrades in a way that feels good.
The 2025 Demo
The full game will have 8 vehicles, 20 weapons, and 10 powers at launch, and the demo gives you access to a good number of those (4, 16, and 6, respectively). The major limiting factor in the demo is not the content that's not available, but the game stopping part of the way through the second world. Some of the really powerful upgrades are just becoming available around then, and you'll only briefly see some of the ultra combos if you're lucky.
Having played through the full game hundreds of times at this point, I'm always a bit disappointed to have the demo end, since I'm usually just starting to see the full power of my build in action. I think the overall demo length, and the progression in it, is enough to show a pretty good preview of the full game, but it's possible I should be letting you unlock another column of modifiers (and one more vehicle) or play through through a bit more of the 2nd world.
The demo version now has its own page, mostly so it's easier for players to give feedback through reviews. Having lots of people play the game (and leave feedback) is a great way to refine a game. Or to find out that they hate it. I'm hoping for the more of the former than the latter. Either way, if you missed the new demo trailer on the main page, here it is:
Full Game Release
The full game is nearly done at this point, so its release will be this summer, at least for the Steam version. Because of the variety of builds and upgrades and ways everything can interact, the plan is to update it multiple times post-launch. The 1.0 version will still be the best I can make it, and this demo will help, but I'm sure there will be some builds or strategies that I've never thought of that need balance tweaks.
If the Steam launch proves successful, I hope to add more content in the form of additional vehicles and a lot more secret upgrade combos (and maybe alternate music/worlds if things go really well). Either way, I'm really happy with how the game has turned out after not feeling good about it a couple years ago. It's not guaranteed that design changes to a game will make it better, but it seemed to happen with surprisingly frequency these past couple months.
[Special shout-out to 20 Minutes Till Dawn, my favorite bullet heaven to play while trying to sort out the issues with Rhythm Storm.]
PS. After the game balance stabilizes post-launch, it will be coming to Xbox Series X|S and Playstation 5.