It's finally here after 3 years: Rhythm Storm version 1.0 is coming to Steam on July 25, 2025!
To celebrate the announcement of a release date, there's an all-new trailer:
The release date trailer was going to be a use remixed version of the original announce trailer song from 2023, but after watching trailers for other competing games, and looking more critically at that original trailer, I changed plans. I wanted to have the trailer represent the game more effectively, and I liked what games like 20 Minutes Til Dawn and Vampire Survivors did in their trailers. So I remixed world 3's music into something more trailer-friendly, and focused more on showing the game's progression and variety. The result turned out about as well as I could have hoped for the amount of time I had to put it together. Hopefully others like it too.
Three Years of Development*
I started work on Rhythm Storm in the summer of 2022. But I didn't work on it exclusively for more than a month or so at any time during the past 3 years. In that time, I've worked on 3 other games a similar amount of time (or more), including Instruments of Destruction, Speed Demons 2, and Fireball 2.
There were 2 major demos of Rhythm Storm in 2023, with the Alpha demo in February, and the Beta demo in June. But I wasn't really happy with the game after either demo, so I took a break from it for a while, and finally played similar games in 2024 (instead of just watching YouTube videos). Vampire Survivors is obviously the king of the genre, but in terms of direct influences, 20 Minutes Till Dawn is the game I paid attention to more closely when I reworked most of Rhythm Storm's game systems in early 2025.
As mentioned in the 2025 Demo post, development this year went very smoothly, and nearly every change I tried worked out. The result is a game that's far more enjoyable than the early versions but still retains the overall vibe and unique flavor. I've probably started over a thousand runs in the game this year, but I still want to go back and play more to try new builds and refine my strategies. After being something of an enigma for a couple years, Rhythm Storm's turned out to be one of my favorite games I've made.
Launch And Beyond
With 10 turret weapons, 10 body weapons, 10 powers, and 10 vehicles, along with hundreds of upgrades (and 21 modifiers), it's impossible to test every combination. I always think I've refined the balance as much as I can, but every time I play, I find a few things to tweak. So I'm expecting and looking forward to refining the game after its launch on Steam. Version 1.0 is definitely not the final version of the game.
I may also need to write up a beginners guide at some point, or maybe create a video, just to point new players in the right direction. You're only choosing between 2-3 things at a time in game, but the choices you make before the game matter, and your choices in-game compound quickly. Plus there's one late-game modifier (semi-permanent upgrade) that unlocks more new builds than you would expect.
After the Steam version is refined for a month or two (or maybe more, if the game is more successful than expected), I'll work on finalizing the ports of the game to Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. I'm planning to finish the console ports of this and Speed Demons 2 at the same time. Their release dates might even be in the same week, but that's far enough away that I'll worry about the details later.
FYI: I plan to leave the demo up until shortly before version 1.0 launches. So if you want to check out a snippet of the full game, you still have a few weeks left.