- Genre: Music/Rhythm
- Spoiler Free Review: Mostly, not much to spoil.
- Time Played: ~2 Hours
- Too Short/Long: It's fine.
- Did I cry: I audibly bawled within the first half hour, to a point where Naga was concerned, got up from her place in the corner and laid next to me, causing me to bawl even harder.
- Soundtrack: For a music game it's uh... not the best. It's not "bad" by any means, it's music, there are rhythms. But they're more just like little jingles for you to play to for the most part.
- Why I played: I wanted to play something thematic as we approached the Halloween season and it looked cute.
- Jank: I would say there is jank in how it handles/responds, but really that's the only thing I can call out and I'm not positive it's not the way it is by design and I'm just bad at it.
- Difficulty: While it's certainly not the hardest game, it did frustrate me at certain points.
- Something I liked: The art was very cute, it was overall just a little sweet game.
- Pleased/Disappointed: It's fine, it met expectations.
- Recommend to others: Not exactly. Unless you look at it and like me, immediately think you have to get it, regardless of it's actual contents, then sure. If you wanna cry about dogs, sure.
Puppergeist is a harsh reminder how bad I am at rhythm games. Even the ones I enjoy most I'm not particularly good at. "Real" music games that have like a 1-10 skill rating, or 3-5, whether it's numbers, score, stated difficulty, are not games I generally am able to play on the higher difficulties, like at all. I understand the skill ceiling is ridiculous. People play music games like people play games for competitive tournaments, sinking hundreds, if not thousands of hours into individual music games.
I avoided earlier music games partially because I didn't find earlier music games to have very engaging mechanics and I was also just not super into music until I was well into my teens anyway. When I got my first car, I owned 3 CDs - in a time where those were the dominate technology for over a decade. (Fun stats: ~95% of the market share a the time, more than digital music media has today at around 85%, that's including both purchase and streaming revenue)