SOUND SHOOTING!!Rhythm Shooter

Review by eFreeware

If you have ever bounced between a rhythm game and a side-scrolling shooter and wished one cartridge held both, SOUND SHOOTING!!Rhythm Shooter is the game to look at first. It is a free Android title from EZDAEMON that puts falling-note timing and one-finger shooting into the same campaign, then hangs eight boss fights and a voiced cast of characters on top. The people most likely to enjoy it are players who already like music games and want a shooter attached, or shooter fans curious about a rhythm layer.

It has been out since April 2019 and has passed 100,000 installs, with a 4.6 average from just under 3,000 ratings. That is a small enough sample that I would treat the score as encouraging rather than definitive, but it suggests the mix works for the audience it found. The game is free to download, carries no ads, and offers in-app purchases.

Two heroines, eight bosses, one odd premise

The premise is deliberately silly: two heroines, Monica and Liz, fight through musical stages toward eight bosses, and the game openly asks whether it is a rhythm game or a shooter. The answer, from what the developer describes, is that it is both at once. Music drives the action, and the shooting is scored against the same beat.

Monica is characterized as the clever one and Liz as the wild one, and both are fully voiced. In fact, the developer says every character has voice work, enemies included, with Nanahira as Melody and a supporting cast covering the rest. That is an unusual amount of voice for a game of this size, and it is clearly meant to be part of the appeal rather than a background detail.

The tone stays light throughout. The boss roster, the cartoon machines, and the character chatter all point to a game that wants to be energetic rather than serious, which fits the arcade-style shooting it borrows from.

How a stage actually plays

A stage starts with a song and a difficulty choice. The rhythm half is intentionally plain: notes fall down the screen and you tap or hold them in time with the music. There are three difficulty levels, NORMAL, HARD and EXTREME, and you pick per song, so a beginner and an expert can both find something playable in the same track list.

The shooting half runs alongside it. You move and fire with a single finger, which keeps the controls from fighting the rhythm inputs. The developer lists enemies that fly, tanks that crawl along the ground, fixed artillery, mid-sized aircraft and large machines firing thick lasers, all in a 2D horizontal-scrolling format. Power-up items strengthen your ship, and the weapon list includes wide shots, missiles, lasers and spread bombs.

The most interesting wrinkle is high-tension mode, where shooting enemy bullets turns them into score items instead of simply avoiding them. That flips the usual bullet-hell instinct, since the bullets become something you want to touch with your fire rather than dodge. Closing in on heavy machines or bosses is the way to finish them, which adds a risk-and-reward layer on top of the dodging.

Difficulty carries over to this half too. Each stage offers NORMAL, HARD and EXTREME, so the shooting ramps up on the same terms as the music. The top end is bullet hell, and the combination of falling notes and dense fire is the part I would expect to separate casual players from the ones who stick around.

Melody Run, MB and the shop

Between stages, there is a side loop. Melody Run is a mini game where running and jumping earns MB, and MB is what unlocks new music. If you would rather not play the mini game, the game lets you skip ahead to unlock songs instead, so the music list is not gated behind one activity.

MB also spends in the shop. Purchases there can make Melody Run more effective, speed up unlocking, or buy extra lives for Melody in the shooting sections. That gives the currency two uses: convenience in the mini game and a safety net in the shooter. The shop is where the in-app purchases come in.

Skill points and the climb to KAIDEN

The long-term hook is scoring. Each song awards skill points based on your result, and your player skill is the total of your thirty highest-scoring songs. That structure rewards breadth as well as mastery, since thirty tracks count toward the number rather than one favorite.

Player skill also determines your rank, and the top rank is called KAIDEN. For players who like a visible ladder to climb, this gives the game a goal beyond clearing stages. It also means improving an old score still matters, because a better result can push one of your thirty counting songs upward.

One thing to know about the ranking side: the developer's partner service behind the online ranking ended, and online ranking closed on April 1, 2024. The skill and rank systems described above still frame the game's progression, but the online leaderboard era is over.

What it costs and what you get

SOUND SHOOTING is free to download. It carries no ads, which is a meaningful plus for a game built around uninterrupted music and fast shooting, and it offers in-app purchases. The shop described above is where those purchases sit.

The content rating is Teen. The install base sits above 100,000, and the rating average is 4.6 from just under 3,000 ratings, which is a healthy sign for a niche hybrid. Version 1.26 changed the tap sound in the rhythm portion, a small quality-of-life fix rather than a content drop.

If you are deciding whether to try it, the free download and absence of ads lower the barrier considerably. The purchases are there if you want them, but the game is playable without knowing anything about them up front.

A hybrid worth trying for the right player

My take is that SOUND SHOOTING!!Rhythm Shooter is a good fit for players who want both halves of the name and are happy to switch between them. The rhythm side is deliberately simple, so it will not satisfy someone hunting for a deep note-charting challenge on its own, but paired with the shooter it becomes a different kind of test: keeping time while dodging and firing.

The voiced cast, the eight bosses and the KAIDEN rank give it personality and a reason to keep playing past the first clear. The free price makes it easy to try, and the three difficulty tiers mean the game can grow with you rather than running out of headroom.

If you like rhythm games and shooters separately and have wondered how they would sit together, this is the game built for that question. If you want one of those genres in a pure form, the other half will always be present, and that is the trade the game makes.

What's new in version 1.26

Ver. 1.26 *Changed tap sound of rhythm game part