Music Inside: A VR Rhythm Game

I'd lightly recommend this game on sale. It's fun, challenging, a bit of a workout, and slightly addictive. The notes seem to be synced up well. You can use any song you want in this. Expectedly, this means it will sometimes confuse base-y tones for drum beats and you'll get awkward notes a lot. Some songs match up perfectly, others are a bit of a mess. Also, there are several virtually impossible or extremely obnoxious achievements.

Great concept, passable execution. Good group/social game since w/e's playing can DJ for the room off of SoundCloud or their own personal playlist.

Warning: Game appears to be abandoned by devs. The last update was over a year ago.

I picked up this game on sale for about $2 and while it is underdeveloped I do think it is worth grabbing, just not at full price. It's a somewhat original take on the VR rhythm game formula and it mostly plays pretty well.

Major considerations:
The game can play pretty much every song in my music library and I can even play them with friends who don't own those songs themselves. However, if you play a song from your own music library in multiplayer will have to wait for them to download the file from you every time you want to play it even if they do own it and have their own copy.

The game does generate custom beat maps for your own music and there will be moments where can see the beats lining up to the music... But this seems secondary to the game throwing a diverse layout on the drums at you. You have to be playing a pretty high difficulty to feel the rhythm lining up, you can't always tell which instrument track is being used at any given time (and it varies) and different tracks definitely do not coordinate with different parts of the drum set.

You are only going to be playing multiplayer with friends. The game does not really have a community, let alone an active one. But that's not unusual for VR titles.

There are 5 difficulty levels that can be played in 3 modes: 1 colour, 2 colours & 4 colours. On single colour, we were able to jump to difficulty 4 immediately with no issues. 5 felt a little spastic but I can see it being plausible to get used to it with practice. On 2 colour mode, difficulty 3 was very challenging. 4 colour mode was just awkward even on the lowest difficulties. Part of the problem is you can't pick the colours for each mode and the defaults are a bit stupid (red, magenta, yellow and bright green). So if you are colour blind you are going to be stuck playing songs in single colour mode. This is somewhat true even if you aren't colourblind (but then it's just annoying, not a deal breaker).

There are some pretty poor visual design choices all around really. There is a whole bunch of visual noise assaulting you at all times, from diamonds buzzing around you like flies, an actual noise pattern constantly moving about on the floor and asteroids that will sometimes fly right through you even in the middle of a match. It looks alright initially but eventually, you wish you could turn it all off and stop being distracted by it.

In summary to be clear this is not an amazing product. Or even a good one. But if you can pick it up cheap it does do what it sets out to do somewhat decently. Just manage your expectations. It's not going to compete with audio shield, but it is something you can mix things up a bit with if you audio shield is getting stale.

+Somewhat fun beat game

-Expensive
-Lackluster Experience
-Drum simulator where beat is off a little
-Better alternatives

2/5

There are much better VR Rhythm games out there. This one is quite lackluster in many areas especially when compared to other VR titles of the same type. It's a bland Rockband Drummer simulator, the drums are not always Synced up with the music, the backgrounds are quite boring, the delivery method for hitting the drums isn't as good as it could be.

I think it would be 100% better if they'd make it a "real" drumset (Or something like Into the Rythm VR), Change up the delivery method, and allow the background/scenery be more than just some techno-y place (maybe workshop support so people can make their own). For example a garage, auditorium, someplace you'd actually be playing drums in addition to the fantasy/techno-y places.

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I had high hopes for this game, but unfortunately, I was disappointed. It's certainly no Rock Band or even Piano Tiles. Personally I felt so disconnected from the game while playing. The syncing seems to be a bit off and after about 10 minutes of playing it I lost interest and didn't even bother trying my own songs. I am glad I got it for a huge discount so not much is lost.

For a rhythm game, I recommend Audio Shield which I bought a couple of weeks ago, and I am having a blast with that game.

Update - turns out I fixed the problem - it was just a case of going into the Oculus menu on the right controller and resetting the view. From then on the drums were within the barrier. If I hadn't read that as a tip elsewhere I'd never have thought of it! So yes, this is a fun little game. I'll leave the old review text below the dashes, but obviously the problem no longer exists.

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Don't get me wrong - I liked what I saw and really wanted to play more of this on my Rift. It has great features such as working with your own music, and lettign you easily raise and lower drum height.

However, the game puts the drums beyond my Oculus guardian barrier, so every time I hit them the guardian wall appears in front of me - really distracting. I tried recalibrating SteamVR as standing only, and chose a location at the back of my play space, but Music Inside still insists on putting the drums beyond the guardian wall. I tried contacting the devs, but no response yet. One easy solution would be making one of the thumbsticks bring the drums forward or back. Or just match the stand location chosen in SteamVR. Until then I hate seeing the guardian wall continually glowing in front of me as I play, so uninstalled it. If this gets fixed I look forward to playing the game for much longer, and introducing my friends to it (and changing this review to a positive).

This was the first music driven game I have played in VR and I really hope it won't be the last. VR opens up so many more possibilities for immersion and music. There are music driven games out there that can really pull you in, and VR has the capability of taking that and pushing it to the next level.

This game is okay. It's not the best, I wouldn't say it's next level material but I did get that hyped-up and happy feeling from playing a few of my favourite songs. Your surroundings are bright, colourful and it dances with your music. I found it fun to even stand and look around, let alone bust out some drum moves.

I won't lie to you, I held back a bit seeing as I was banging imaginary drums like a moron to no music in the family dining area. If I would have been alone I think I would of gone in on this a lot more enthusiastically and gotten my rave on. With that said though I still found this to be a very enjoyable game.

When I booted up the game I was a little concerned that I would have to download some music for it to go from or be forced to use some lame sample music that music driven games tend to provide. The fun in these games for me comes from being able to put my own music tastes into the game. I was pleasantly surprised to find that you can actually pick some music from the SoundCloud top 50 (so of course I had to get on that Despacito bandwagon).

The only thing I thought might make this game better was if hitting the drum actually did something. I mean, it does something, it determines your score and all. I just thought that it would feel a lot better if when you hit it, it actually made a sound.
If you loosely compare it to guitar hero, in guitar hero the music will play as long as you're playing it properly. Hitting the notes will continue to play the song and if you miss it you get that horrid noise that breaks the flow and makes you feel like the worst musician ever. Then when you actually hit the notes correctly you feel a lot more accomplished and it gets you more hyped up during the song.

That was my only fault on it, besides that I enjoyed it and would recommend it for someone that might just want a chill jam on the virtual reality drums.


TL;DR : Not the best music driven game ever, it might not take advantage of the new possibilities VR provides, but it's still an all around sound game to jam out on.

[quote]Controller support: Not included (VR only)
Local music files: Included
Online streaming: Included, SoundCloud browsing[/quote]
[quote]For more reviews of this genre, check out my curator page The Best: Music Driven Games ♫
Where we review games able to be driven by your own music. [/quote]

Great VR rythm game, with good graphics and feedback.
You can play your own music or some from the soundcloud library, very nice.

Don't let the forgettable name and messy-looking screenshots fool you; Rhythm Inside is one surprisingly great, made-for-VR rhythm game. Despite owning Audioshield and Soundboxing, Music Inside is the one I've spent the most hours in and keep coming back to.

Pros:

• Good beat detection. Some songs work better than others, but on the whole, it's miles better than vanilla Audioshield.
  
• Satisfying, addicting gameplay. The subtle haptics work well for every drum hit, and the grading system encourages you to go back and ace or S-rank every song you can.
  
• Scalable difficulty. In addition to 5 difficulty levels (affects how many notes appear), you can also change how many colors will be in play — up to 4 at once — requiring you to toggle between drumsticks with the trigger button. This game can be a relaxing, casual stroll, or it can be blazingly fast and murdurously difficult. It scales extremely well based on the settings, so it's up to you!
  
• Soundcloud support
  
• Local file support
  
• A leveling system. Nothing super important or in depth, but there's a small bit of progression in place for those who want it.
  

• No Youtube support. It's nice that it has Soundcloud support, but it also means you're going to be limited to a lot of mashups, covers, and remixes of songs, instead of originals which can always be found on Youtube.
  
• Visuals are pretty basic, though all of it pretty much fades once you're invested in a song anyway. Note: things aren't cluttered and hard to see at all in-game, despite looking messy in the screenshots. The spacial awareness that VR offers addresses that completely.
  
[*]Varying bugs: sometimes crashes after selecting a song, rarely songs will give a "corrupted" error requiring a restart, and adding songs to your "favorites" list only works if you star it from the main menu, not the post-song screen.

It's good to feel the beat directly by hand.
I don't get bored because I can play with a lot of music.
Especially It's very fun, when I play with my favorite songs.
It's also nice to be able to multiplay with my friends.

My first impressions are bad, to be honest.

Tried a few of the built-in tracks in easy and medium-ish modes and it did not feel particularly well synched. I will probably give this another session at some point and try even harder difficulties in case the synch improves as with audioshield.

There are options, but no options (that I could find) relating to the haptic feedback strength or any way to just turn it off. It feels ridiculous, I'm not sure if they just maxed it out, but it's far too strong when all that's needed is a light bit of feedback for when you make a hit.

Buy it while it is on discount
Can't complain with its low price

works well and pretty enjoy playing it.
However, it is better for them to improve the loading scene, adding drum model, and adding another game mode.

Could become something special if they add haptic feedback when you strike the drum, also add some type of audio when the drum is hit.

The synchronisation in this game is better than Audioshield but worse than Beat Boxer. There were times when I felt like I was playing the drums to the music and it felt awesome... but at other times I just felt like I was playing a game of whackamole sort of to the music and times where I wondered if turning the music off might actually help my score as I would no longer be trying to time my hits to the beat.

I think the biggest problem here is that it is a game that is specifically trying to be a drum kit, but it's algorithm can't even tell the difference between a drum hit and vocals or any other instrument. There were times when I was wondering exactly what the game thought I was supposed to be whacking when there were no drums playing at all... Dianne van Giersbergen's vocal chords perhaps? The other rhythm games don't have this issue since they aren't trying to be a specific instrument, so it doesn't matter what they synchronise to so long as it follows the song.

A suggestion on the forums recommends using USB audio for lower latency, but I noticed no significant difference between USB and HDMI audio - when the hits were out it was because the algorithm either missed a beat, or picked something that was not percussion to synchronise to.

If this is supposed to be a drum kit, why are there no cymbals, hi-hats, etc? There are just 10 circles that light up at random with no relationship to the percussion being played, and their placement only vaguely resembles a drum kit. The game does allow you to change the size and spacing between the circles (and they definitely need to be made a little larger than the default), but I can't help but think it would play better if I was sitting in front of an actual virtual drum kit and even better if I could adjust the placement of each instrument independently.

The game frustratingly ignores Steam's designation of which controller is in the left and right hands and offers no way to change the dominant hand. Thing is - I'm right handed along with most of the population, but it kept putting the pointer in my left hand, which was the opposite to what the tutorial was telling me, and the only way I could find to fix it was to take the wrist straps off and swap the controllers around in my hands. Other than that the UI works well and is quite polished - I had no problems navigating the filesystem to find my music, and it had no problem playing my collection of .ogg files :)

I hope this review does not come across as being overly negative - I still enjoyed the game and am likely to keep playing.

This is no Rock Band or Guitar Hero. The idea is good, the graphics OK, and the gameplay is ok, but I would say that in my opinion the biggest disappointment for me is that hitting the right or wrong note makes no sound. I find that ludicrous in a music game.
I feel you should be able to load a drum kit sound or theme and when you hit the right note it plays that noise. A choice to play a "mistake" sound if you miss could be added but not important.

I found on the three choices of my music that the drum beats and required hits were not really in synch and I would have achieved a much better score if I turned the volume right down, which would ruin the gameplay though.

This COULD have been the most awesome music game, setting standards and even beating Audio Shield perhaps, but in its current form (which is not early access unfortuntaley, so that's it I guess) I really think it is overpriced and deserves to have a better game come along and topple it from the chart.

I will probably refund it, but will have another go before making the final decision. I think my feelings are just frustrated disappointment in that it was not all it could be. I loved Rock Band, especially the drums, and prefer that, though my VIVE is always up, but RB isnt.

Glad I didn't try to save that $20 and purchased this game. I would rate this higher than Audioshield in terms of VR music game. Yes it's graphics are pretty simple, nothing flashy, and a bit hard to start, but I would treat this game as the VOS(if anyone know what that means to the music game genre) for VR MG.
First the greatest thing about this game is the judgement. A serious music game is not about you hit the note, but hit it precisely on the beat. That's the only way you can feel the rhythm of the music and start to enjoy the game. I'm a heavy Jubeat player and I found Music Inside's judgement (Also the score system) matches Jubeat - which is one of the best music games in history.
Still there is a ton lot of improvements can be made - which I hope the author doesn't just stop here. I'll skip the UI or graphics part as that's the easiest thing to make a change. Here is my wish list for the upcoming patches:
1. Animation for Great/Good/Bad, which helps you to find the right pace back.
2. Keynote sounds. That's a big disappointment that there is no keynote sound. This will improve the feedback further on top of the vibration. We can use different sounds too just like Reflecbeat.
3. Adjustable drum size. I feel the current one's a bit too small, also if we can adjust the space between the drums or even place them where we want would be great.
4. Most important - The option to play premade charts and a chart editor. The chat generation is brilliant, but given the depth of this game (10 drums and 2+2 switchable colors) it's chaotic at higher levels. I've played a lot of music games that generate charts instead of premade. It's OK at easier levels but when it comes to the top levels, random charts just make the game stupidly unplayable. You can still show the skill and how fast you can move but it defeats the purpose of "playing" the music. Good Music + Well designed chart make songs epic.
5. I'm not sure what's the plan for the tuning switchs at the bottom side, but really wish to see some motion play around them.

Extremely highly recommended if you are a serious music game player. For casual players I would suggest try to ignore the rough graphics as the system mechanics of this game is best on the market for this genre so far.

After v1.1.1 patch: Ok the game is really fun now. Difficulty 5 is now enjoyable. Flac support is now added withother audio format as well. Now I can enjoy my high quality weeb K-on songs. It is still generating random notes on quiet part or when the song is going to end.

They fixed the lag when going back from play to music browsing especially with high favourite count. Unfortunately, they haven't fixed the damn sorting of music folders. They added a search feature but it is only searching on the current open folder and will only search for music (not folders). Still can't search songs really fast and I still need to put them on the favourite songs.

I'm switching my review from Not recommended to recommended. But pleaeaaaaaaasseee, folder sorting or searching pleaseee. Or do like what audioshield is doing, open file explorer!!.

Video comparison on Difficulty 5:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5ES_REzrq0

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Previous Patch review below so you can see how my opinion improved:

Pretty decent note generation. It's far from perfect especially on the hardest difficulty. It's like the game is trying to add more notes just to say it's "harder". Anyways Difficulty 3 and 4 is pretty ok, with the exception when the song is near ending and is slowing down. The game is giving you notes that doesn't really properly map on the song. Despite that, game is still pretty fun to play on Diff 3 and 4, maybe you need a slower paced song in diff 5 to make it better.


If you want a song that has decent note generation, it looks like pop and slower genres are preferable. Noisy song like rock and most vocaloid songs are a no-no. Bad note generation on those


There are also some issues that makes this game more annoying for me:

1) Music browser for folders is not sorted properly (not alphabetized). I have 1.6k song folders in my library and I can't fucking browse the music I want easily.

2) Extreme lag when going back from playing the song to music browser. I need to close my eyes a few sec just to prevent getting sick

Because this game is not in early access, I have to put a not recommended right now due to those annoying things that I listed that breaks with the enjoyment of the game. There's also only .mp3 support, so your high quality flac, aac, alac music wont be played

I refunded for now until the devs polished this. Wait for it to be improved/patch before getting this.

I'm really enjoying this game. The fact that I can load up any song and it just makes the steps for it automatically is actually insane. I've always wanted that feature for like DDR or Guitar Hero. And this started it.

You can play it sitting or standing or however you want since you can move the drums up and down.

I just need to get all the songs I love and play them on here now.

I generally like rhythm games but there is one issue that prevents this to be enjoyable: there is almost no correlation from the track being played and the drum hits sequence.

There is a reason why the most successful games of the genre release the tracks with the game itself or in DLC packs. The hits must be manually tailored on the track, or the algorithm that generates them should be exceptionally good.

I should be required to hit the drums when I hear drums in them music and vice-versa. In the current state, you might as well remove the music altogether.

There are other minor issues that I could live with and could probably be fixed, like the occasional stutter or hitting the drums by mistake from below when moving the stick from a previous hit.

Given the fairly high price tag, I cannot justify these flaws and I requested my first refund ever.

Was a bit wary about spending $20 on this but i'm glad i did. It's not as physical as Audioshield and closer to Holodance only this time you're standing in one spot playing a kind of virtual 'whack-a-mole' with drums. My wife is the litmus test for new VR games in our household - if it's not challenging (or so difficult she gets frustrated) then it gets abandoned for me to play but this one she likes.
It can be a real test of co-ordination but there are options that can take it from easy to insanely hard. You earn in game points which can be used to change the look of game assets like drumsticks and navigating through Soundcloud and your own files is easy. In Audioshield it's critical to match the song but i didn't find many that don't work well with this.

Graphics are fine - i'm using a 1080 [email protected] but i'm guessing lesser GPU's won't have a problem. Frankly whilst i'm trying to get it together enough to hit something i don't even notice what's going on around me anyway. One downside is that FLAC files aren't recognised, but it's not a huge hassle to convert to MP3.

Best rhythm game I have played in VR.
I was looking for a VR game I can play everyday under 30mins.
I think this is the one!
If you bought a Vive, this is the one of the "MUST HAVE" game.

Cons : need more improvement on graphics