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Published Jul 1, 2026, 8:01 AM EDT
Nintendo's wacky music game isn't as strange as it once was, but it's still a charmer
Rhythm Heaven Groove is a half-beat behind its competitors
Image: Nintendo
When I was first acquainted with Nintendo’s Rhythm Heaven series in 2011, it felt like I had discovered a hidden artifact from an alien planet. During my senior year of college, I woke up one morning to find my roommate playing a bizarre game I’d never heard of on the Wii that looked like a series of playable doodles. It was unlike anything I had seen at the time — full of mumbling luchadores and weird birds rhythmically bouncing along to the beat of bubbly pop music. One-of-a-kind games like that have a way of sticking in your memory for decades.
A lot has changed between the launch of Rhythm Heaven Fever in 2011 and Rhythm Heaven Groove, the latest installment in the quirky music series on Nintendo Switch. While the series once felt like the wackiest thing in the world, Rhythm Heaven Groove is now fairly average on the weird-o-meter. Its brand of musical minigames isn’t unique anymore either; plenty of games inspired by Rhythm Heaven have sprouted out in the past 15 years, and even raised the bar it set in every way.
That leaves Rhythm Heaven Groove in a tricky spot. It’s a content-rich collection of delightful minigames, but it’s missing the freshness that once made the series a standout oddity. As fun as it is as a digital music toy, Groove is just one duck in the flock rather than the bird setting the rhythm of the flight formation.
The Rhythm Heaven formula hasn’t changed a bit in Groove. Its primary single-player mode has you tapping your way through playlists of musical minigames, each culminating in a Remix stage that pulls everything together into one pop quiz. Each minigame drops you into a small cartoon, where you need to hit buttons in time to the music using telegraphed audio cues and visual indicators. Most levels only revolve around two or three rhythmic cues, throwing curveballs at you by mixing them together in the context of a song and placing cues on offbeats. It’s a test of both your rhythm and reaction time, set against playfully silly animations that occasionally try to distract you from your goal of clearing stages, and perfecting them with practice to earn medals. (If this sounds like a long-winded introduction to simple rules, know that each minigame starts with its own skippable tutorial that’s sometimes as long as the game itself.)
Image: Nintendo
Some minigames spice up an old formula with unusual rhythm patterns; one has me catching frisbees as a dog, but I need to press A on the seventh beat so the pup nabs it on the eighth. Others play with two-button setups, like one standout game that has me controlling two little freaks hopping over windshield wipers. Ideas like that keep Groove varied enough in its limited rhythm premise, as do some true earworm bops that are a joy to tap along to. But there are times when it feels like the series has hit its ceiling. How do you iterate on an idea like this and keep it fresh over decades? Maybe Groove is about as good as it can get for Rhythm Heaven.
Rhythm Heaven Groove is a little too comfortable playing the hits.
Few of these experiences really get enough time to develop into something you’d play more than once or twice. A potentially excellent game where players need to blast blocks on beat to get to the center of a grid only flirts with the idea of a tactical minigame filled with special blocks that open the door for Bomberman-style strategy. I’d welcome a Rhythm Heaven game that fleshed out a few strong modes rather than one that tries to fill a chest with as many music toys as it can.
Image: Nintendo
Considering that it’s been over a decade since the series’ last installment, it’s reasonable that Rhythm Heaven Groove acts as a reintroduction rather than a reinvention. It reheats some reliable, toe-tapping silliness for a new generation of Nintendo players, and packs in just enough curiosities to surprise old fans returning to a static series for the sixth time. But without the outsider charm that once made the series wholly unique, Groove is a little too comfortable playing the hits. A fresh sound, or at least a good remix, is in order if the series is going to keep sharing the stage with a new class of musical weirdos.
Rhythm Heaven Groove will be released July 2 on Nintendo Switch. The game was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 using a prerelease download code provided by Nintendo. You can findadditional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.