Editor’s Note: Vincent Mahoney is filling in for Neal Sayatovich this week. You can check out all of Vincent’s regular columns over on the Save State section of GiN.

Welcome back to Fresh Look where the best things in life are free, but it’s difficult to find the P.O. Box for the birds and bees. How else can you give your free things to them? It’s not like they have mailboxes. You’re getting an extra dose of Vincent this week because Neal is otherwise indisposed trying to find how birds and bees receive mail. The Barrett Strong song references aside, I had to quickly rack my brain for something appropriate for the Fresh Look column, and I noticed a title sitting in my Steam library that seemed perfect for just such an occasion: Rift of the NecroDancer.

Now, anyone who reads my column or reviews will have likely heard me praise Crypt of the NecroDancer and its Zelda-themed spin-off Cadence of Hyrule. These are games that mix rhythm game mechanics with top-down Legend of Zelda and roguelite gameplay and wind up being significantly more fun than the sum of their parts. Seriously- if you’ve never played either of these titles, I can’t possibly recommend them enough. Of course, the next obvious step from roguelite rhythm games is to outright make a full rhythm title with loads of entertaining tracks and charts to play, and that’s precisely what the developers did with Rift of the NecroDancer.

In Rift of the NecroDancer, you once again play as Cadence as she falls into yet another rift, getting pulled into a different world ruled by rhythm and rhyme. There is a brief story mode, each section of which is largely demarcated by which of Cadence’s friends need her help, though it is really nice to finally see some personality out of all these characters you may have previously encountered in Crypt of the NecroDancer. Each episode of the story is pretty succinct, and the writing works well when coupled with the charming cartoon art style of this game.

For actual gameplay, Rift of the NecroDancer looks somewhat similar to Guitar Hero in visual presentation. You press one of three keys as monsters reach the bottom of the track and earn points based on how close to the beat your inputs are. You can play with a controller or keyboard, but I vastly prefer using a keyboard since I can use fingers on both of my hands to hit the keys when needed on harder songs. While you really only need to hit three arrows in time with the music, the later songs can get extremely intense in spite of only having three lanes to worry about.

What really sets Rift of the NecroDancer apart is that all of the notes you need to hit are enemies who move and groove in their own ways. Most of the enemies in Rift are from Crypt of the NecroDancer, and you’ll have to know how to deal with them in order to get high scores. Slimes simply vibe their way down the track, which makes it easy to judge when to hit a key to slap them away, but bats may take more than one hit to beat and can jump from one track to another. It’s obviously going to be too involved to explain every single enemy and how to work through them while you’re playing a song, but there are around ten enemies (read: note types), and this is a really inventive way to add a lot of depth to a rhythm title.

Not to mention, the track list for Rift of the NecroDancer has a great variety of genres within it. A lot of songs are remixes of ones from Crypt of the NecroDancer, but the track list has everything from EDM to synth rock to chiptune beats. The composers are also all great, with DannyB, Family Jules, and many others contributing to Rift’s stellar soundtrack. The great track list coupled with its charming, cartoony visuals helps this game make a lasting impression in terms of presentation.

Rift of the NecroDancer also features full Steam Workshop support and a level editor, which means people have already uploaded full charts for songs like We Will Rock You by Queen and Undefeatable from Sonic Frontiers and also includes everything else from Splatoon to My Hero Academia to Hades II. There are also plenty of accessibility features for those who need assistance or just want to improve their skills because there’s color blindness support, early and late note indicators, and audio-visual latency calibration.

Rift of the NecroDancer also features chibi mini game stages that seem Rhythm Heaven inspired, where you help a little Cadence through her yoga class and things of that sort. There are also boss fights, which are a lot more fun than you’d expect and break up the pacing of the gameplay quite solidly. These tie in quite well with the usual gameplay of Rift, which looks incredibly straightforward but packs an incredible amount of depth in such a tiny package.

If you’ve read Save State, you’d know that my wife and I have been pretty heavily addicted to Theatrhythm Final Bar Line, with us clearing all of the series quests and working on collecting every feat in the Switch version of the game. We’ve effectively been on a pretty big rhythm game kick, with me buying her a copy of Voez to play on her Switch, and me playing Rift of the NecroDancer when I just want to jam out for a half hour or so. Rift of the NecroDancer is one of those rhythm titles that’s very easy to pick up and play when you have a spare moment and just want to chill.

Rift also has a remix mode that changes up the charts you play for various songs to keep you on your toes, and daily challenges to keep you coming back to beat the high scores of your friends. So, all in all, Rift of the NecroDancer is a great step into the full rhythm game genre, and if you enjoyed titles like Theatrhythm, Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, Muse Dash, etc., Rift of the NecroDancer can be an excellent rhythm game to sink your teeth into.

That being said, when I think about it, my wife and I have really been playing a lot of rhythm games lately. In the last few months, we’ve played every single rhythm title I’ve listed in this column for at least a couple dozen hours each except for Theatrhythm Final Bar Line, where our total collective gaming time has been at triple digits for at least a month or two. Does Sega know how much money I’d throw at a Sonic the Hedgehog rhythm game? I would buy and dress in a full Shadow the Hedgehog onesie if I could co-op Live and Learn with my wife in a Sonic rhythm game. Who am I trying to kid, you know I already own the Shadow the Hedgehog onesie.

That’s it for this week’s Fresh Look. Neal will be back with you in two weeks’ time because he’s just messaged me that apparently birds and bees don’t have P.O. Boxes because you need at least a valid photo ID in order to even open one, and posters from the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds don’t count. Why would Barrett Strong tell us to send free things to birds and bees if it’s this difficult? Maybe the song was about something else, it was a little esoteric. Guess I’ll never know.