Ratatan

My first hour with Ratatan felt like rediscovering a language I half-remembered from a childhood dream. The game comes from Hiroyuki Kotani, the original designer behind Patapon, and the DNA is unmistakable in the looping chants, the one-eyed little Cobun troopers, and the side-scrolling tide of chaotic melee. But this is not a nostalgia product. Ratatan grafts a proper roguelite skeleton onto that rhythmic core, and the result is something noisier, more modern, and genuinely its own thing. The command system sits at the heart of everything. You play one of eight playable Ratatan characters, each wielding a mystical instrument called a Melodium, and you issue orders to your Cobun army by pressing rhythmic sequences built from three distinct sounds: RATA, ZUN-TAKA, and YA-HOI. Six commands total cover attacking, guarding, jumping, repositioning with Fall In, and two special Hustle Tech skills that cost MP but hit much harder. Nail consecutive measures cleanly and the game shifts into Fever Mode, then Super Fever Mode, amplifying your army's power while the music itself transforms into a call-and-response sing-off between your Ratatan and the Cobuns. That Fever-induced moment, when the whole battlefield suddenly feels synchronized and the track kicks into a higher gear, is the purest expression of what this game wants to be. Outside of runs, you return to Rataport, a hub town that slowly fills with merchants and townsfolk, where you craft new weapons for your Cobuns (ranging from common gear all the way up to legendary), permanently unlock characters, and upgrade base stats before the next attempt. The rough edges in this Early Access build are real and worth knowing before you commit. The difficulty curve in later worlds steepens sharply, and the damage numbers can feel deflating against bosses with enormous HP pools, making mandatory grinding through earlier worlds feel like homework rather than progression. Per-stage music loops repeat heavily during roguelite runs, and while each individual track is genuinely catchy with a soundtrack that includes work from veteran composer Kemmei Adachi and a guest track by David Wise, hearing the same loop cycle for the fifth failed attempt starts to wear. A more pointed friction point: when enemy attacks land mid-command-sequence, you have to choose between absorbing the hit to complete your rhythm input or breaking the chain to dodge, which some reviewers have found disrupts immersion in what is supposed to be a music-forward experience. The story is thin, basically an amnesiac Ratatan setting off toward a place called The Everafter to meet a goddess, and it is not the reason you will keep playing. What keeps you playing is the co-op. Four-player online runs transform the game from a focused rhythm exercise into something beautifully chaotic, with over a hundred characters filling the screen and boss fights that feel genuinely manageable when coordination clicks. The hand-drawn 2D animation holds up under that chaos too, with a saturated toy-box aesthetic that moves away from Patapon's darker silhouette style toward something more immediately joyful. Cobun war-cry text bubbles translating cheerful violence add a layer of dry humor that lands more often than it should. The devs have shown consistent engagement with player feedback throughout Early Access, rolling out balance adjustments, a Super Fever Skill update with per-character special moves, legendary accessories with Decorune modifiers, and a Dark Ratatan story arc update, which signals genuine commitment to getting this to a clean 1.0. If you are a former Patapon devotee or a Crypt of the NecroDancer player looking for the next rhythm-action obsession, Ratatan in its current state has more than enough to hold you, especially in co-op. If you are rhythm-game-averse or allergic to repetitive roguelite grinding, the uneven balance of the Early Access build will chafe before it charms. The bones are exceptionally good. The full version, with additional worlds and characters on the roadmap, could genuinely be something special.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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