Traditional rhythm games give players a series of set songs to tap along to. In Project Rap Rabbit, the newly-announced collaboration between Parappa the Rapper‘s Masaya Matsuura and Gitaroo Man‘s Keiichi Yano, players participate in rap battles powered by RPG-style dialogue trees.
According to the Kickstarter video for Project Rap Rabbit, the battle system in the game was inspired by the sort of dialogue trees found in many modern role-playing games. Rather than simply tapping along to a song and being scored for their accuracy, players will use an emotion-based dialogue wheel and keywords to counter their enemy’s lyrical assault.
Battles play out in three steps. First, the player listens to their opponent’s rap, during which specific keywords will be highlighted. Then the player chooses which of those keywords to run with and which type of lyric to bust back at their opponent — boast, laugh, joke or coerce. Finally their rap plays out, and they tap along with it for maximum impact.
In the video, Matsuura explains that one of the criticisms weighed on the Parappa the Rapper series was that it was a rhythm game and not a “rap game”. With Project Rap Rabbit, the creative duo believe they have created a true rap game system.
You can learn more about Project Rap Rabbit over at the PlayStation Blog. The Kickstarter project for the game launched today, looking for £855,000 ($1.5 million) to make it happen in August of 2018.
Comments
4 responses to “Project Rap Rabbit Is A Rhythm Game With RPG-Style Rap Battles”
You had me at Gitaroo Man.
Indeed. This is sounding so awesome!!!
But lost me at PS4 🙁
Hoping it’ll hit the Switch stretch goal, but damn that’s all the way at the end of the ladder. Hate when they do that, feels like they mightn’t make it because anyone hanging out for that goal won’t pledge until it’s hit.
Well the pedigree seems okay but after some other high profile kickstarter flops I’ll wait until the game is ready to be released before committing any money. Good luck with the making the game!
Pledged!