Full disclosure: I have been a fan of this title ever since I got to play a few tracks of it at PAX East a few years ago. Completely drawn in by the music and the very tactile feel playing it using a mixer it felt like the music and rhythm game revolution I’d been waiting for. Later, playing it on the PC, I was pleased that tactile feel managed to come through using my trackball mouse as well, and over the course of Early Access on Steam it was great to see the team behind the game fine tuning the way you interacted with the tracks. 

Unlike the button-pressing frenzy most games in the space have pursued since the amazing success of the Guitar Hero era, Spin Rhythm is more focused on you hitting beats, keeping up with the lines, spinning, and scratching. It’s that act of spinning and the very analog feel of that action that scared me a bit about it coming to Switch and being constrained by a controller. Within the first 20 minutes of playing it on Switch though all of my concerns melted away. The controller actually feels just fine, helped a bit by a wonderfully subtle use of rumble, and it had me working through some of my favorite tracks killing it in no time. 

The best thing is that aside from having great tracks that will pull you into a flow the degree of challenge is also very scalable. Starting at Easy, just about anyone should be able to get started, and then with each new skill level additional elements are added to the mix, raising the level of complexity. Granted, once you move past Normal you’ll really begin to feel the complexity on high-intensity tracks but the real joy is just being in the flow of the music and finding yourself moving with it in many ways rather than abstractly keeping track of which buttons to press. There’s no question in my mind this is absolutely the most approachable and satisfyingly deep indie music title out there, easily able to compete with anything else out there, and anyone who is a genre fan should be checking it out!