Thumper was a game I bought for the Switch back in the Summer of 2017. It was a futuristic rhythm game where timing was critical, and for those lacking those skills, such as myself, it was frustrating, as it was such a visceral experience with its amazing visuals and ethereal soundtrack. Extracting the best parts, we now have Thrasher.
I was under the impression that this was a sequel to Thumper. It had the same distinctive aesthetics in the screenshots, and that makes sense: the developer, Puddle, features the artist and composer behind the first game. However, that’s the only comparison, as this is a different kind of game.
Where could ‘they’ take us next with this game? Will it be an extension of the first, or something different? Definitely the latter, but again, this isn’t a sequel and shouldn’t be considered one. Instead, it’s an abstract time trial-type experience that has you posing as a futuritic eel that has to crash through a series of shapes in the fastest time possible.
Playable via a gamepad or mouse, I started with the sticks on the Steam Deck, and it was incredibly responsive. Using small circular motions, you’ll navigate your vessel like a Red Arrow on speed, and with the grace of something… fancy. Stages in Thrasher are relatively short with a dominant timer at the top of the screen, encouraging you to move as swiftly as possible. At first, these movements and the timing make you feel like a god as you repeatedly achieve an S-rank, including with the boss.
After a few stages, said boss appears and you repeat the actions of before to then trigger a bomb that is like a next-generation Star Wing experience. Defeat the boss and then it’s on to the next few stages, rinsing and repeating the same methods with incremental difficulty, and then… new worlds, new bosses, and new techniques.
It’s quite tricky to say just how good Thrasher is with its simplicity. Aside from the movement of your eel with the left stick, the two main buttons are to slow down and speed up. The former is great for precision, though, while it seems like milliseconds that you use it, it doesn’t bode well for your time, and it’s quite easy to drop from an S-rank to a B-rank. The alternative? Speed up. Naturally, boosting through these crystal-like shards will speedrun your way through, taking into account the dangers of hitting obstacles that obliterate your time, but taking these risks increases your combos and thus some of the best times to enter the leaderboard for bragging rights.
For those who are looking to shave off time without any ‘gimmicks’, the Time Trial mode is pure, unadulterated speedrunning without combos and focusing on the fundamentals. This is my preferred method, though the timer will add a little unnecessary stress and may cause a few mistakes here and there. The final mode is Play+, which is essentially the same as the base game, only for people who are as hard as nails.
As stated earlier, it’s tricky to pinpoint how good this game is without adding a few too many surplus paragraphs. It’s cliché, but Thrasher is incredibly easy to grasp, but difficult to master. And though timing is critical, it is unlike Thumper and somewhat more forgiving as it’s possible to progress simply for the experience, but let’s face it: we really want to get the best times possible, and to do that, it’s going to take a lot of practice, yet utterly worth it. Prepare to be thrashed. Ahem.
