Alpha Nomos Review — Rock the Toybox

Have you ever wondered what a rock concert on the Island of Misfit Toys might sound like? No? Well, aren’t you interesting!

Alpha Nomos puts us in the little puppety shoes of Cello, a sentient toy lost within a forest full of terrifying, evil little sock puppets who want nothing more than to unpack your stuffing. Armed with a range of weaponized instruments and backed by a village of similarly misplaced misfit toys, you have to beat these freaks to the beat and uncover the mysteries of the lost world around you.

Right off the bat, Alpha Nomos throws a lot of fun ideas at you. It’s a rhythm game, but it’s also a roguelike, and it features a cast of Rankin/Bassian living toys who are but a color palette change away from being right at home in a Hot Topic merch line aimed at the creepiest of emo kids. The mechanical systems alone are a fun idea, but pairing them with such a unique world is a really good idea, and one that you probably wouldn’t have expected if you heard the game’s concept: Old toys brought to life, and murderous puppets aren’t usually what we associate with rhythm games, especially ones that allow you to weaponize rock and roll with a literal electric guitar as a weapon.

The unique mechanical premise works as follows: You progress through the game as you would any other roguelike, defeating short stages in order to collect power-ups or currencies to upgrade yourself during your run, along with some permanent currencies to enhance future attempts when you inevitably lose (something that, theoretically, should be more difficult to do in this particular roguelike). These stages are filled with enemies, and you win combat by fighting to the beat.

What this means is that you will be prompted to attack and dodge in time with the beat, as shown by a digital metronome display of your own choosing. You can, of course, move freely and dodge and attack whenever you like, regardless of whether or not it’s on the beat. However, doing so will greatly weaken the effectiveness of your attacks, as well as remove the chance to get any empowering effects from dodging right on time.

Of course, the real challenge is not simply hitting the attack button on the beat, but executing combo attacks that demand specific inputs in time with the ever-shifting rhythm.

I said a paragraph above that, theoretically, Alpha Nomos is a roguelike that should be harder to lose at. That is, assuming you are a really good rhythm game player with an incredible sense of rhythm, you can deal perfect damage and avoid all incoming attacks just by staying on beat. Hitting the correct input in response to your metronome’s indication rewards you with near-invincibility, if you can stay perfectly on beat. This makes enemies theoretically easier to deal with because they can’t strike you if it isn’t on the beat, giving you more of a pattern to follow.

I, of course, took just as many hits and lost just as many runs as I would have in any other roguelike title, but I digress.

I will say that, as fun as this system is, it can get a little repetitive. You will start to feel a sort of sameness to your runs after your third or fourth attempt. This problem is partly because you start every run with the same power-up options, a very poor choice for a roguelike (there generally don’t seem to be many power-ups to unlock in the game), and because the music is the same in every run.

That isn’t to say that it doesn’t shift, but rather that it starts with the same song, at the same tempo, with the same rhythm at the start of every run. While for some audiences, particularly those who are big fans of rhythm games, I can see this being a plus (if you’ve played a lot of rhythm games, you’ll know that the best way to get good at a particular level or song is to practice it over and over again), for the roguelike formula, I feel like it’s a kind of repetition that does the game a disservice. Every run, I know, is going to feel pretty similar because I’m going to be fighting to the same beat. There is very little, if any, change to how I actually play a level because, regardless of the differences in the encounters, I just have to follow the same beat the same way I always would to win.

If there was a part of the game I thought was particularly strong, it was the characters.

I mentioned before how much I like the game’s choice to use misfit toys as its cast, filling the hub area with classically themed stuffies and wind-up figurines with unique personalities that match (or contrast with) their designs. It’s a really fun concept, taking a bunch of toys and giving them a serious edge, and it just seems to fit really well with the game’s musical theme. Cello herself has become one of my favorite new video game protagonists. Something about a little clown doll beating the stuffing out of an army of sock puppets while rocking out on an electric guitar just stuck with me in a way that is hard to describe.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a Steam code for this PC review of Alpha Nomos. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Alpha Nomos is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.