[Review] Avicii Invector - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Hello There Games
Published By: Wired Productions
Categories: Rhythm Game
Release Date:  9.8.20

Before playing AVICII Invector, I wasn’t a fan of AVICII’s music. After playing it, I’m not still not quite a fan of majority of the setlist, but I left experiencing a surprisingly good rhythm game that reminds me of the per-instrument peripheral days of Harmonix. It goes without saying that the game consists of 25 songs (35 in the Encore Edition) by the late Tim Bergling, better known as Avicii, which are all clubby, electric, pop tunes.

Each song has you in your ship, on a trail, with color coded beats for each of the face buttons, bumps for drum on the L button, and the occasional beat that requires you to move to a different field or part of the trail. I did find that last part was a bit inconsistent, as times you’d get those beats to guide you to move, and then more often than not you’ll get nothing. With just moving to another part of the main trail, usually of three sections, it’s fine, but I found myself getting a little confused at times when it requires you to move to another field entirely with no prior warning. You do get used to it, but at times it feels almost as if the game expects you to just know about these ahead of time. That aside, even as someone who didn’t like majority of the music in the game, I found playing really satisfying when I was performing well.

The narrative has you as a pilot in her ship flying through space, to planets doing a whole lot of nothing, with the songs between stops. Rhythm games usually don’t need to strong of a story, depending on how the game plays, especially with licensed music so what it does have is nice, even if the cutscenes do come off a little cheap at times. When in a song though, the game shows off it’s sleek, loud, futuristic style. Lots of a reds, blues, and purples. The beats are all color coded as to not blend in and if they weren’t I’m sure I’d play the game more poorly. If there’s something to lower the game’s art style, it that it does seem rather samey after a while.

It takes a decent framework for a rhythm game to push someone who doesn’t care for the music in the game to keep on playing more and more of the songs to want to play more. I feel as if I might be repeating myself a bit much with this point, but I cannot understate how much I enjoy playing the game despite it’s flaws I’m sure I could grow to get used to. I’d love to see the developers work with more musicians in the future.