Video Game / Rhythm Doctor

Rhythm Doctor is a "tough-as-nails one-button Rhythm Game". Openly inspired by Rhythm Heaven, the gameplay is hypothetically very simple: heartbeats are analogized to musical beats, and the player remotely applies a defibrillator with a single keypress to a patient on (typically) the seventh beat to keep their heartbeat going. Songs start at serious and steadily get vicious with tempo changes, off-beats and skipped beats, poly-rhythms, syncopation, and many other rhythm complications.

The original demo was released in 2014 and was selected for the IGF's Student Showcase Selection that year. The full game became available for early access in February 2021.

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This game provides examples of:

• 24-Hour Armor: Deconstructed. The Samurai wears his armor even in the hospital, despite the fact that wearing heavy armor all the time is what's causing so much strain on his heart in the first place.
• Adjustable Censorship: One tutorial uses a "medically trained spider" to intentionally scare the patient and induce a different kind of rhythm for the player to track. For arachnophobic players, the game gives you a prompt to hide the spider before starting this tutorial.
• Arc Number: Seven, the typical number of beats in each patient's heart rate.
• Baseball Episode: Act 5 has a baseball theme, with the player being tasked with helping out Lucky, a famous player who suffered a Game-Breaking Injury. The chapter's climax has Lucky become a coach to the hospital's patients, teaching them how to play baseball and helping them win a match against the local university's team.
• Big Game: Stage 5-X, "Dreams Don't Stop", has Lucky become a coach for the Middlesea patients, turning them into competent baseball players who are challenged to a game by the local university. They fall behind, but thanks to a Rousing Speech from Lucky, they make a Miracle Rally in the ninth inning and end up winning the game. The only element of the trope that isn't shown is the villainous Opposing Sports Team dominating for most of the game.
• Big Red Button: The button used to defibrillate patients is one of these.
• Bilingual Bonus: The tutorial at the start of the game has a nurse counting in Mandarin rather than English, making following along easier with knowledge of said Mandarin.
• Bland-Name Product: During "Song of the Sea", Nicole mentions listening to Cole's music on Bandcloud, a mashup of music-sharing platforms Bandcamp and Soundcloud.
• Book Ends: The first early access build ended at Act 4, meaning the Insomniac was both the first and final boss at that time.
• Canis Latinicus: Connectifia abortus, an in-game bacterial infection that somehow disrupts wireless connections. As in, the wireless connection the player is using to remotely defibrillate the patient's hearts.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Logan and Hailey, two young patients who obviously like each other, but neither one can work up the courage to be the first one to confess.
• Career-Ending Injury: Maximo "Lucky" Jonronero, a baseball player, has a downplayed case in that he tore his rotator cuff. While it's possible for him to make a full recovery, this would take months of physical therapy, and spending this much time not playing would kill his career's momentum, as the injury happened right as he started making a name for himself. As such, he is desperate for a miracle cure, which Dr. Edega offers him. However, in the end, he turns it down, realizing that while he'll likely never become the star player he nearly was, he can definitely become a great coach when he whips the Middlesea Hospital patients into a talented team of amateur baseball players.
• Catch-22 Dilemma: The lyrics to "wish i could care less" show that for Cole, trying to overcome writer's block has only trapped him in a vicious cycle: to motivate himself to write more songs, he punishes himself by neglecting his mental health, telling himself that he'll start treating himself better once his writer's block has been dealt with. However, the resulting stress and depression only make it even harder to write songs. He won't improve his mental state until he's written some more songs, but he can't write songs because his mental state has deteriorated too much.
  Sometimes I'm angry I'm not doing better than I thought I'd do at this point
  I punish myself by depriving my health of the things that I like until I fix this
  But it doesn't really help, I just get more depressed
  I do even less, 'cause I can't work when I'm stressed
• Character Customization: The intern's shirt sleeve can be repainted in-game, and the hand's skin color can be changed.
• Company Cross References: One of the soundtracks introduced in Act 5 is titled "A Dance of Freeze and Burn", referencing A Dance of Fire and Ice, another rhythm game developed by 7th Beat Games.
• Crossover: The game has a handful of optional levels based on other rhythm games, marked as "Collaboration" on the level select.
  • "Worn Out Tapes" is a collaboration with upcoming game Unbeatable, featuring a collection of patients from the game and set to the titular song composed for it.
  • Muse Dash gets three stages for an optional mini-act, where you treat Rin, Buro, and Marija to the tunes of Blackest Luxury Car, tape/stop/night, and The 90's Decision. This crossover was also the first appearance of the "multi" SVT beats that would later be formally introduced in Act 5.
  • "Meet & Tweet" is a reference to Bits And Bops, in which the blue wren from that game's minigame of the same name meets the cockatiel from this game. It borrows the minigame's song for the level, as well as its gimmick of Show, Don't Tell speech bubbles depicting stories the birds are telling each other.
• Distant Duet:
  • 2-X, All The Times, features both Cole and Nicole singing verses of the same song, with the player alternating between treating each.
  • 3-3, Distant Duet, is an example of the trope in spirit even though the song isn't a vocal song; It features both Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson being treated as they're separated from one another due to their respective convalescence.
  • 4-4N, Murmurs, alternates between the pairs of Cole/Hailey (on the train) and Nicole/Logan (in the hospital's cafe), with the former in each pair playing guitar and the latter being treated alongside, while conversing about their love lives.
• Dream Tells You to Wake Up: In the latter half of Lucky Break, after the midway intermission reveals the level to be a dream and begins to take a turn for the nightmarish, the scoreboard flashes "WAKE UP" a couple times among the garbled symbols it displays.
• Dysfunction Junction: The patients of the hospital quickly prove to have many issues beyond just their medical health, and even the doctors have a lot of baggage you have to help them with.
• Easter Egg: Before Act 5, if you turned on simulated window movement (allowing consoles and other devices that won't display the screen movement well to still have it by creating a simulated desktop) and played a level with it, files on the simulated desktop with lyrics from 2-1N imply that it's Cole's. As of Act 5, however, likely because a new boss that uses it was added, these files are now gone, but the location (the folder Care Less) still imply it's his, though not as explicitly.
• Endless Game: Beans Hopper, a bonus minigame that's unlocked after clearing Act 2, in which the Samurai jumps over a crate of beans being pushed back and forth by Logan and Hailey.
• Epic Rocking: "Dreams Don't Stop", the fifth boss song, is more than six minutes long.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Several patients don't have given names, and are only known by their occupations or the conditions they suffer from. (Samurai, Insomniac, Miner, etc.)
• Everything Has Rhythm: Including heartbeats, evidently.
• Evolving Credits: In a meta sense. The credits level, "Helping Hands", features a segment taking place on the hospital's rooftop. Originally bare when the first early access included it, once the act 5 update was released, this scene was updated to include the baseball training equipment for the Samurai from its appearance in stage 5-X.
• Exorcist Head: The Insomniac's head is constantly spinning as if it's on a swivel.
• The Faceless: Dr. Edega is always seen with his face buried in a clipboard, or from the back, never showing what he looks like.
• Featureless Protagonist: Since the intern, for all intents and purposes, is the player, they never appear on screen (aside from their hand) and have no in-game dialogue.
• Flat "What": In 5-X, "Dreams Don't Stop", Lucky's reaction to Samurai asking him to teach him how to play baseball is "wait what" with no capitalization or punctuation.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: If you manage to pause a recording just after Ada stops stammering in the cutscene midway through the boss stage of Act 3, One Shift More, you'll see some extra dialogue that isn't voiced. And it doesn't sound good.
  Ada: u-u-u-urkgurgirguqhrigujkurk
• Gimmick Level:
  • The boss levels have the gimmick of a Life Meter that instantly ends the level if you miss too many notes, but more importantly pile on loads of Interface Screw:
    • The first boss, "Battleworn Insomniac", introduces a signal-jamming virus which causes Ominous Visual Glitches, static, and skipping/looping audio.
    • The second boss, "All The Times", has the game window shrink itself, then move around your monitor.
    • The third boss, "One Shift More", averts this, as its gimmick is simply that it's a Musical Episode mainly from Dr. Paige's perspective. However, one segment of it does use irregular beat patterns, where the seventh beat must be "felt" because the EKG pulses move with the vocals instead of in a specific tempo.
    • The fourth boss, "Super Battleworn Insomniac", is a Dark Reprise of the first boss with the added twist of falling into Uncommon Time while ramping up the Interface Screw to extreme levels.
    • The fifth boss, "Dreams Don't Stop", combines the gimmicks of the first and second levels and adds in the game window changing in shape and size throughout the song.
  • A handful of non-boss levels also have unique gimmicks in other ways.
    • Since 2-1, the tutorial for SVT beats, only requires you to hit the button to a constant beat the entire way through, the game tries to distract you in the latter half by having Ian manage the samurai's incredibly irregular heartbeat at the top of the screen.
    • 2-3N, Bomb Sniffing Pomeranian, is the only level where you must manage two SVT beats at the same time; The nurse calls out the timing for one line and Ian calls out the timing for the other.
    • 4-3 features four birds along with Mrs. Stevenson; Throughout the level, which group you're managing switches off periodically while Ian handles the other set.
    • 4-1N, Rollerdisco Rumble, uses the same window movement gimmick as some of the boss levels. It also is the only level that combines held beats and SVT beats, showing that held beats will "catch" other beats while they're being held.
• Gratuitous Panning: In 2-X, "All The Times", as the window moves around the screen, the music also pans from speaker to speaker.
• Hate Sink: Richard Hugh is sleazy ungrateful bastard that cuts the doctors pay … while still expecting them to help him.
• Heroic Mime: Played with. The intern is implied to be you, but since your machine doesn't come equipped with a voice module, your patients and seniors will often ask you questions only to remember that they won't be able to hear your answer.
• Interface Screw:
  • The early boss level "Battleworn Insomniac" has no real changes to one's input timings, unlike any other level in the game... but becomes severely chopped-and-screwed due to the patient's connectifia abortus infection damaging the wi-fi. "Super Battleworn Insomniac" has not only more glitches, but a grueling 7/8 time signature represented by the patient's heart having a fragment broken off.
  • 2-X does something completely different with connectifia abortus: it shrinks the whole game down into a tiny desktop window, and begins hurtling the window across the screen as you try to treat both Cole and Nicole.
  • The effect present in 2-X also reappears in a more extreme form during 5-X, where it goes as far as resizing the window as it moves around, as well as during 4-1N.
• It's All About Me: Richard Hugh, the Health Secretary who barges into the hospital, demands immediate treatment at the expense of other patients, then complains about getting the Rhythm Doctor treatment (despite him being the one who approved its use in the first place).
• Leitmotif: The central guitar riff for 1-2 "Intimate" becomes representative of Logan and Hailey as a whole, notably appearing later in 4-4N, "Murmurs", when the two characters become involved in the song.
• Letters 2 Numbers: In the chorus of 5-1N, "One Slip Too Late", the scoreboard in the background shows the lyrics, replacing certain words with a homophone number. For each of those words, you also have to hit a corresponding number of notes (which the nurse says out loud in time with the lyrics as an audio gameplay cue).
  1 slip 2 late, 3 strikes 4 me.
• Level Editor: Rhythm Doctor features a powerful level editor with many user-created levels. As of early access, the level editor has been implemented into the game itself.
• Life Meter: Boss levels differ from normal songs in that there's a life meter, which instantly causes a game over if it empties, forcing you to restart the song. Most of them also have a second life meter representing the virus' strength, but this is mostly for show as it's not possible to finish the song without that meter getting empty.
• Literally Shattered Lives: A variant with the patients' hearts, which indicate how many times you've missed inputs by how many cracks are on them; after enough screw-ups, the heart breaks apart like an egg, complete with a tiny chick sitting in the remains. Thankfully the patient doesn't die if it happens, though it usually means you've messed up too many times to get a rank that lets you move on from the stage.
• Locomotive Level: Act 4 features several of the patients taking a train ride through the desert, the instigator being Hailey, who wanted to leave the hospital to visit her grandmother's hometown. The long-distance functionality of the rhythm doctor machine is used to keep them safe.
• Love Epiphany: There seems to be one in the Act 2 boss stage, since Cole sprints out of his room once he realizes that we wants to know Nicole better and accept her as his muse. The end of the song even shows a big heart in the electrocardiogram just as he finally reaches her cafe.
• Love Hurts: Quite literally for Logan and Hailey, two teenage patients who are in love with each other but Cannot Spit It Out. They confuse the pain of their lovesickness for a literal heart attack and have themselves committed to a hospital for treatment.
• Magical Defibrillator: Subverted. Although your defibrillator helps with the abnormal heart rhythms caused by the patients' various ailments, it's only a stopgap solution: it's mentioned that the problem needs to be solved at its root for the condition to fully subside (for example, Cole's caffeine addiction). The game's premise is based on managing clearly dysfunctional heart rhythms, and mismanagement will mangle hearts regardless of defibrillator use.
  • In Act 5, Dr. Edega begins openly pushing for the Rhythm Doctor treatment to be used as a literal magical defibrillator, insisting to Lucky that it's a miracle cure that will be able to heal his torn shoulder muscles and nerves while foisting the actual details on Ian. Ian insisting to Dr. Edega that his goals are dangerous, irresponsible, and also physically impossible doesn't appear to faze him.
• Mean Boss: Dr. Edega almost constantly hounds Ian and Ada so that they don't take unsolicited breaks, and uses the Rhythm Doctor program as a crutch to avoid hiring more employees, leaving everyone stressed out. Later begins pushing the program as an outright miracle cure, which the other doctors worry will result in ineffective or even harmful treatments.
• Meaningful Name: Maximo Jonronero - the full name of the Act 5 character Lucky - translates to "maximum home run hitter", directly relating to his career as a baseball star.
• Most Writers Are Writers: Cole's alternate song, "i wish i could care less", is basically about him trying and failing to get back into regularly composing music presented in musical form. The song also shows him going through computer files filled with tracks and failed songs.
• Must Have Caffeine: Cole, one of the two main patients of Act 2, is dependent on coffee to be able to produce his music. This does a number on his heart, and is the main reason he's in need of care.
• Must Have Nicotine: Nicole often smokes on the job, and even smokes on the hospital floor.
• Nintendo Hard: The one-button control scheme hides how brutal the game can get. Like its inspiration Rhythm Heaven, Rhythm Doctor doesn't allow for close-enough inputs; you either hit or you miss, with little in-between. As the levels go on, increased numbers of patients with differing heartbeats and numerous visual and audio tricks makes getting the ranks to progress even harder.
• Non-Standard Game Over: In most stages, you are given a rank at the end of the song, with B or greater being required to advance to the next stage, therefore anything less can be considered a failure. Boss stages, however, are not ranked. Your patient instead has a health meter, and you will instantly fail the song if this meter runs out.
• Not That Kind of Doctor: Ada and Ian begin running into this problem with increasing frequency due to the hospital's staff being slashed to the bone. It especially becomes an issue in Act 5, where they have to service the Physiotherapy ward, despite neither of them being qualified PT's and the Rhythm Doctor machine having a negligible-at-best effect on such injuries. Sure enough, the treatment in this chapter is used mostly to regulate the patient's stress-induced arrhythmia as he struggles with the fact his busted shoulder won't heal in time to save his budding baseball career.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: A recurring theme, relating to the fact that you're operating a remote connection that may be disrupted.
  • This is the central gimmick of the first "boss" level, Battleworn Insomniac: Despite being a consistent 7th-beat pattern all the way through, a wifi-hampering virus named "Connectifia abortis" begins causing the visuals and audio of the stage to glitch while you must keep the beat in your head. The virus later reappears during the boss levels of Act 2 and Act 5.
  • The night shift version of the first boss goes even further with its glitching, to the point of making even the stage intro glitch out.
  • In an example unrelated to explicit technical issues, "Lucky Break" begins to digitally break down after the reveal that the level is a dream.
• One-Steve Limit: Lampshaded. Both the tutorial character and one of the patients later in the game are named Hugh (the former by first name, and the latter by last name). The latter does not like this, and demands that the former change his name.
• Original Position Fallacy: Richard Hugh complains about how the Rhythm Doctor treatment is administered by an intern who's working from home (that's you), despite the fact that he's the nation's Health Secretary and personally approved of it. That's because he didn't think that he'd be one of those who'd ever get that kind of treatment.
• Phlebotinum Overdose: It is revealed in act 5 that the connectifia abortus virus may be a side effect of the Rhythm Doctor treatment itself.
• Pink Means Feminine: Hailey, a romance-minded Girly Girl, wears a pink shirt, skirt, and hair bow. Her room at the hospital is also pink.
• Player Nudge: At the end of "One Shift More", there's a note that doesn't have a timing, and the player can hit it at any time...but in case a player waits for an additional prompt for too long, Richard Hugh will pop up and goad them to just press the button and get on with it.
• Punny Name: Cole Brew (cold brew), Nicole Ting (nicotine), and Richard Dan Hugh (richer than you).
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: 5-X, "Dreams Don't Stop", has many of the Middlesea Hospital patients being trained into skilled baseball players by Lucky. Despite the fact that they all suffer from some kind of heart condition, and that none of them have ever played baseball before (with many of them not even being interested in sports at all), Lucky's training and coaching ends up allowing them to beat the local university's team.
• Rank Inflation: Ranking on a level can go all the way up to S+ for a perfect score, though only a B is needed to continue the story and A for the level's alternate version.
• Samaritan Syndrome: 3-X, "One Shift More", features your senior doctor, Ada, being unable to ignore her patients yet starting to break down from overwork (while patients and budget-cutting politicians cut in):
  I'm the one that needs some HEEEEEEELP!! / Someone save me from this he-ell! / ...shouldn't have gone to med school.
  ...
  You see, I've been on call this week / I'm barely getting any sleep / I'd love to catch up, I really would, / But they've been waiting for so long~
• Series Mascot: The Samurai, your first patient, serves as both the game's icon on Steam and the developer's profile picture on social media.
• Shout-Out: The night shift version of stage 2-3, "Bomb-Sniffing Pomeranian", has Cole and Nicole playing a fighting game that is strongly implied to be Super Smash Bros..
  Nicole: Oh, you're going Falcon?
  Cole: You bet!
  Ian: Oh no! Not Falcon dittos!!!
• Sleazy Politician: Richard Hugh, a politician who barges into the hospital during Act 3, demanding immediate medical attention despite not even having an appointment and threatening to defund the hospital if the doctors don't comply.
• Standard Snippet: 5-1N, "One Slip Too Late", incorporates the famous baseball "Charge!" organ into the chorus' instrumentation. 5-X, "Dreams Don't Stop" also uses it to signal the start of the Big Game and briefly in the song's outro.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: In stage 5-X "Dreams Don't Stop", Samurai is shown suddenly appearing in Cole's room, as Cole puts away his phone after declining to join the baseball team. This apparently intimidated him quite a lot, as he then decides to join the team after all.
• Suddenly Voiced:
  • "One Shift More", as part of being a sudden musical number, switches from textboxes to voiced lyrics for the doctors, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson.
  • "One Slip Too Late" provides singing voices for Logan and Hailey as they briefly appear in the song.
• Super Doc: Despite working in a hospital for humans, you end up treating birds on at least three occasions.
• Training Montage: "Dreams Don't Stop", the Chapter 5 boss, has one part showing Lucky teaching the Middlesea Hospital patients how to play baseball and training them into competent athletes, with Samurai hitting home runs, playing Beans Hopper, and "jogging", or rather rolling, with Lucky, (with other patients joining them as they're recruited to the team). This pays off when they win the game against the University.
• Translated Cover Version: Some songs will be available in an English and a Chinese version. Most of these sounds will show up after Act 2 starts.
• Triumphant Reprise: The credits song, "Helping Hands", uses parts of "One Shift More" to once again take the patients' perspective, but this time it's used to show that they don't mind not getting treatment immediately because they know how hard the rhythm doctors are working for them. The rest of the song carries a positive tone, with the patients appreciating all they do.
• Uncommon Time:
  • The night-shift mode of "Battleworn Insomniac", called "Super Battleworn Insomniac", features a virus breaking off part of the patient's heart half way through, shifting the beat from 8/8 to 7/8.
  • After getting the player used to freeze beats, the latter half of 5-2 ("Lo-fi Beats For Patients To Chill To") goes into quintuplet swing, with the SVT beats following along.
  • The credits song, "Helping Hands", is in 5/4 time.
• The Voice: The nurse assisting you and the doctors. She never appears in gameplay, but her voice and other musical talents are part of the game's cue system, mostly used for the tutorials.
• Work Info Title: The first stage's song, "Samurai Techno" and its night shift version, "Samurai Dubstep" are named after their genres.
• X-Ray Sparks: One animation for missing a beat with Cole has him get zapped by his boombox, showing his skeleton.

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